The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s ​“Death Row, USA” reports that the num­ber of peo­ple on death row in the United States rose slight­ly to 3,350 as of January 1, 2007, an increase of 6 inmates from October 1, 2006, but a decline of 23 inmates from a year ago. The slight increase appears to be part­ly the result of the rel­a­tive­ly few exe­cu­tions in the last quar­ter of 2006. California (660), Florida (397), and Texas (393) con­tin­ued to have the largest death row populations. 


Nationally, the racial com­po­si­tion of those on death row is 45% white, 42% black, and 11% Latino/​Latina. Of juris­dic­tions with more than 10 peo­ple on death row, Texas and Pennsylvania con­tin­ue to have the largest per­cent­age of minori­ties on death row, 69% and 70% respec­tive­ly. Nearly 80% of the mur­der vic­tims in the crimes that result­ed in exe­cu­tions were white. (Generally, only about 48% of mur­der vic­tims are white.)


“Death Row, USA” is pub­lished quar­ter­ly and con­tains the names and race of every­one on death row, exe­cu­tion sta­tis­tics, and an overview of recent Supreme Court deci­sions relat­ed to capital punishment.


(NAACP Legal Defense Fund, ​“Death Row, USA, Winter 2007”, January 1, 2007. See Death Row and DPIC’s 2006 Year End Report for a dis­cus­sion of the over­all decline in the use of the death penalty.

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