NAACP Legal Defense Fund: U.S. Death Row Falls to Lowest Level in Nearly Three Decades

The num­ber of peo­ple on death row or fac­ing pos­si­ble cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing in the United States has fall­en to its low­est lev­el in near­ly three decades, accord­ing to a DPIC analy­sis of the lat­est death-row data com­piled by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF).

LDF’s Winter 2021 edi­tion of its quar­ter­ly Death Row USA (DRUSA) cen­sus, released on August 31, 2021, reports that 2,528 peo­ple were impris­oned on state, fed­er­al, or mil­i­tary death rows in the United States as of January 1, 2021 or still faced jeop­ardy of death in pend­ing cap­i­tal retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings. DPIC’s review of his­tor­i­cal data found that the last time death row in the United States was small­er was in August 1991, when LDF report­ed that 2,504 peo­ple were sen­tenced to death or fac­ing reim­po­si­tion of the death penal­ty in pend­ing capital proceedings.

LDF list­ed 92 few­er peo­ple in its Winter 2021 DRUSA report than appeared in the organization’s January 1, 2020 death-row cen­sus, a one-year decline of 3.5%. The biggest declines were in California and Pennsylvania, whose death-row pop­u­la­tions fell by 17 and 12 pris­on­ers, respec­tive­ly, with­out car­ry­ing out any exe­cu­tions. Nineteen California death-row pris­on­ers died in 2020, 13 from COVID-19. In Pennsylvania, three death-row pris­on­ers were exon­er­at­ed and nine oth­ers were resen­tenced to life or less. 

In the fourth quar­ter of 2020, the num­ber of peo­ple on death row or fac­ing poten­tial cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing declined by 25, from LDF’s October 1 total of 2,553. Pennsylvania led the decline with sev­en in the three-month period.

The U.S. death-row pop­u­la­tion has steadi­ly fall­en since its peak in July 2001, when a report­ed 3,717 peo­ple were on death row or fac­ing pos­si­ble cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing. The January 2021 num­bers are 32.0% below that peak.

The num­ber of active death sen­tences — that is, indi­vid­u­als on death row whose death sen­tences have not been reversed — also con­tin­ued to decline. The LDF report iden­ti­fied 232 peo­ple whose sen­tences have been reversed and are await­ing retri­al or resen­tenc­ing, or whose grants of relief are still sub­ject to appeal. Removing those indi­vid­u­als leaves 2,296 peo­ple fac­ing active death sen­tences, an 84-per­son reduc­tion (3.5%) from the 2,380 active death sen­tences report­ed on January 1, 2020 and a 30-per­son reduc­tion (1.2%) from October 1, 2020.

34.3% (867 peo­ple) of those on death row or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing as of January 1, 2021 were in states with mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions. Subtracting those on death row in the mora­to­ri­um states and those whose death sen­tences have been reversed, LDF cal­cu­lat­ed that there were 1,478 cur­rent­ly enforce­able sen­tences. 1,050 death sen­tences are cur­rent­ly unen­force­able, either because the death sen­tence has been over­turned or the pris­on­er is in a state with a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. The total rep­re­sents 41.5% of all active cas­es in which a death sen­tence has been imposed. 

California’s death row was once again the largest in the nation, with 708 pris­on­ers, fol­lowed by Florida (345), Texas (207), and Alabama (170). North Carolina (141) and Ohio (138) moved into the fifth and sixth posi­tions, sur­pass­ing Pennsylvania, whose death-row pop­u­la­tion fell to 135. 

Nationwide, 42.3% of death-row pris­on­ers were white, 41.5% were Black, 13.5% Latinx, 1.8% Asian, and 0.9% were Native American. Among states with at least 10 pris­on­ers on death row, Nebraska (75%), Texas (72%), Louisiana (72%), California (67%) and Pennsylvania (63%) were the states with the high­est per­cent­age of indi­vid­u­als of col­or on death row. Two per­cent of all death-row pris­on­ers are women.

LDF also released its Spring 2021 Death Row USA report on August 31. DPIC will have an analy­sis of that report next week.