Size of Death Row by Year

The size of death row in the United States has declined every year since 2001. Currently, 2,241 men and women are on state or fed­er­al death rows across the United States or face the pos­si­bil­i­ty of being resen­tenced to death in new death penal­ty tri­als (the total pop­u­la­tion is now at its low­est num­ber since 1989). That num­ber is down by more than a quar­ter from a peak of near­ly 3,600 at the turn of the 21^st cen­tu­ry, with a 17% decrease over the course of the decade from April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2018. The num­ber of pris­on­ers fac­ing active death sen­tences in the United States — that is, whose death sen­tences have not been over­turned in the courts — has also fall­en sharply. In the Spring of 2018, it dropped below 2,500 for the first time in more than a quar­ter cen­tu­ry. The year­ly decline in the size of death row has con­sis­tent­ly exceed­ed the num­ber of exe­cu­tions car­ried out, mean­ing that more for­mer death-row pris­on­ers have been resen­tenced to life or less after over­turn­ing their death sen­tences, died from non-exe­cu­tion caus­es, or been exon­er­at­ed than have been added to the row with new death sentences.

Size of Death Row (1968 – present)

Sources: Bureau of Justice Statistics: ​“Capital Punishment” for Years 1968 — 2016
*NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. ​“Death Row USA” for Years 2017 – 2023 (sources use slight­ly dif­fer­ent cri­te­ria for count­ing death-row prisoners).