The Death Penalty Information Center has con­duct­ed a sur­vey of death row pop­u­la­tions as report­ed by the var­i­ous state depart­ments of cor­rec­tion in January/​February 2008. From that sur­vey, the cur­rent death row pop­u­la­tion across the coun­try is 3,263. California con­tin­ues to have the high­est death row pop­u­la­tion with 669 inmates. Florida fol­lows with 388, and Texas has 370 inmates. A state-by-state break­down appears below.

Except for Illinois and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, these num­bers are the offi­cial totals from each state’s prison sys­tem. The death row num­ber for Illinois comes from the Supreme Court Unit of the Public Defender’s Office in Springfield, while the fed­er­al num­ber comes from the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel and the Federal Defender Organization. 

Traditionally, death row sta­tis­tics have been avail­able from two sources: ​“Death Row USA,” pub­lished quar­ter­ly by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; and Capital Punishment Yearly Reports, pub­lished by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The most recent edi­tion of Death Row USA (DRUSA) was pub­lished in January 2007. At that time, DRUSA report­ed 3,350 inmates. DRUSA includes inmates whose death sen­tences have been tem­porar­i­ly over­turned, but who are await­ing the final dis­po­si­tion of their cas­es as well as the names, race, and gen­der of each inmate. The Bureau of Justice Statistics did not pub­lish a Capital Punishment report for 2006. However, they have made their sta­tis­ti­cal tables avail­able on the Internet (here). According to that source, the death row pop­u­la­tion at the start of 2007 was 3,228. BJS data do not include pris­on­ers on the mil­i­tary death row. DPIC’s death row sta­tis­tics include the mil­i­tary death row, as obtained from the Appellate Defense Counsel.

DPIC does not intend for its death row cen­sus to replace the oth­er sources not­ed above. Our pur­pose is to give the pub­lic a sense of whether there have been large shifts in death row num­bers over the past 14 months, a peri­od in which exe­cu­tions have come to a halt and death sen­tences remain low com­pared to a decade ago. We expect to refine our data gath­er­ing in the months ahead and we will also report on sim­i­lar stud­ies by oth­er orga­ni­za­tions.
(Posted February 18, 2008). See Death Row and Sentencing. See also State by State Information and Death Row Inmates by State.


 State Number of Inmates
Alabama
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
Illinois
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maryland
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Mexico
North Carolina
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Washington
Wyoming
U.S. Gov’t
U.S. Military
201
114
38
669
1
9
19
388
107
19
20
13
10
39
85
5
65
45
2
10
83
0
1
166
186
82
35
228
58
3
96
370
10
20
8
2
50
7
Total
3264

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