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.