“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.