“Death Row USA, Winter 2015” Shows More Than 12% Drop in U.S. Death Row in Last Decade

The latest edition of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row USA, which reports state-by-state information on death rows across the country, reflects a more than 12% decline in the size of death row nationwide. The Winter 2015 edition reports that 3,019 inmates were on America’s death rows as of December 31, 2014, down 12.6% from the 3,455 men and women reported ten years earlier. The racial demographics of death row are now 43% white, 42% black, and 13% Latino/Latina. California continued to have the largest death row, with 743 inmates, followed by Florida (403), Texas (276), Alabama (198), and Pennsylvania (188). Of those jurisdictions with at least 10 people on death row, those with the highest proportions of racial minorities were Delaware (76%), Texas (72%), and Louisiana (71%).

(NAACP Legal Defense Fund, “Death Row, USA,” January 1, 2015; DPIC posted April 13, 2015.) See Death Row and Studies.