Fall 2019 ​“Death Row USA” Shows Continuing Death-Row Decline

Death row and the number of prisoners facing active death sentences in the U.S. continue to decline, according to the latest quarterly survey of death row by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF).

The Fall 2019 edition of Death Row USA, released earlier this month, reports that 2,639 people were on death row or facing capital resentencing across the United States as of October 1, 2019. That number represents a 3.0% drop from last year’s October report and a 27% decline from the height of the U.S. death-row population at the turn of the century.

The number of U.S. prisoners facing active death sentences also continued to decline. A DPIC analysis of LDF’s death-row count found 232 individuals whose convictions or death sentences had been reversed who were awaiting retrial, resentencing, or completion of the appeals process. That left 2,407 prisoners facing active death sentences, 72 fewer (a decrease of 2.9%) than the 2,479 active death sentences at the same time in 2018.

LDF reports that 34.6% of those on death row or facing capital resentencing in the U.S. (913 prisoners) were in states with moratoria on executions. Subtracting the cases in moratorium states and the cases in which convictions or death sentences have been overturned, LDF found that there were 1545 currently enforceable death sentences in the country. Nearly 42% of the nation’s death-row prisoners do not have active and enforceable death sentences.

California’s death row remains the largest in the nation, with 727 prisoners, followed by Florida (348), Texas (219), Alabama (177), and Pennsylvania (152). Nationwide, the death row population continues to reflect racial disparities in capital punishment. 42% of death-row prisoners were white, 42% were Black, 13% Latinx, 2% Asian, and 1% were Native American. The percentage of non-white death-row inmates has actually increased over the past several decades, suggesting increasing racial disparities in the use of capital punishment.

Among states with at least 10 prisoners on death row, the states that had the highest percentage of racial and ethnic minorities were Nebraska (75%), Texas (74%), and Louisiana (71%), followed by the moratorium states of California (67%) and Pennsylvania (64%). Two percent of all death-row prisoners are women.