Death Penalty Census

On June 29, 1972, the United States Supreme Court decid­ed Furman v. Georgia, strik­ing down all exist­ing death penal­ty laws in the United States and ush­er­ing in the mod­ern era of the U.S. death penal­ty. In the decades that fol­lowed — as juris­dic­tions revised their death-sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures in response to the Supreme Court’s rul­ings on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment — thou­sands of peo­ple were sen­tenced to death.

The Death Penalty Census is DPI’s effort to iden­ti­fy and doc­u­ment every death sen­tence imposed in the U.S. since Furman. The cen­sus cap­tures more than 9,800 death sen­tences imposed between the Supreme Court’s issuance of the Furman rul­ing and April 1, 2024. These sen­tences were imposed in 1,280 coun­ties across 40 states, as well as by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and the U.S. Military.

The cen­sus tracks every death sen­tence imposed, list­ing the name, race, and gen­der of the per­son sen­tenced to death; the juris­dic­tion (state/​federal/​military and county/​federal district/​military branch) in which the charges were brought; the year the sen­tence was imposed; a mul­ti-sen­tence code to iden­ti­fy whether the defen­dan­t’s death sen­tence was reversed and reim­posed on retri­al or resen­tenc­ing and whether the defen­dant was also sen­tenced to death in a sep­a­rate case; the out­come of the sen­tence; and the ulti­mate out­come of the case.

The data reveal that the sin­gle most like­ly out­come of a death sen­tence imposed in the United States is that the sen­tence or con­vic­tion is ulti­mate­ly over­turned and not re-imposed. Nearly half of the sen­tences (49.9%) were reversed as a result of court deci­sions. By com­par­i­son, few­er than one in six (15.7%) death sen­tences end­ed in execution.

Note: In the graph­ic above, ​“On Death Row” refers to active death sen­tences, plus grants of relief that are still sub­ject to appeal and are there­fore not final. Sentences with a final grant of relief, in which the pris­on­er is await­ing resen­tenc­ing or retri­al, are includ­ed in ​“Reversal” on the Sentences tab, but in ​“Reversal Not Final” on the Cases tab, because the sen­tence has been over­turned, but the defen­dant could still be resen­tenced to death on retri­al. The case sta­tus num­ber totals on the data­base view will be dif­fer­ent than those dis­played in the Tableau visu­al­iza­tion above because the num­bers are answer­ing slight­ly dif­fer­ent ques­tions. On the Cases tab, the visu­al­iza­tion answers ​“how many cas­es have a par­tic­u­lar out­come?”. The data­base answers ​“how many sen­tences have a par­tic­u­lar case out­come?”. The num­ber of exon­er­a­tions dif­fers from DPI’s Exoneration List because the Exoneration List includes peo­ple sen­tenced to death before 1972 (if they were exon­er­at­ed after 1973) and peo­ple exon­er­at­ed after April 1, 2024.

The totals in the above graph­ic will be greater than the total num­ber of sen­tences or cas­es in the data­base, because some cas­es are count­ed in two cat­e­gories. For exam­ple, exon­er­a­tions are count­ed in both ​“Exoneration” and ​“Reversal.”

In com­pil­ing the Death Penalty Census, DPI start­ed with our exist­ing death-row, exe­cu­tion, exon­er­a­tion, and com­mu­ta­tion data­bas­es and our annu­al track­ing of new death sen­tences imposed in the U.S. We built on that data­base by obtain­ing nation­al, state, and coun­ty data­bas­es from researchers, depart­ments of cor­rec­tions, legal defense orga­ni­za­tions and pros­e­cu­tors, and advo­ca­cy groups. We also con­duct­ed our own inde­pen­dent review of media archives and avail­able court records. Where data­bas­es employed dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tions or had incon­sis­tent or con­tra­dic­to­ry data, we rec­on­ciled the dif­fer­ences and then engaged in a mul­ti-step process to ver­i­fy the data.

To DPI’s knowl­edge, the Death Penalty Census is the most com­pre­hen­sive com­pi­la­tion of infor­ma­tion on indi­vid­ual death sen­tences ever assem­bled. No oth­er data­base exists that tracks every death sen­tence in the U.S. since 1972. A project years in the mak­ing, the Death Penalty Census is intend­ed to pro­vide clar­i­ty on an impor­tant, but often poor­ly or dis­parate­ly doc­u­ment­ed, facet of the American legal sys­tem. It is our hope that the cen­sus data­base will fos­ter addi­tion­al research on the sub­ject and enable the pub­lic, the media, aca­d­e­mics, advo­cates, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, and oth­ers work­ing in the death penal­ty field to engage in edu­cat­ed dis­course and make informed decisions.