The nation’s death rows con­tin­ue to shrink more rapid­ly than new defen­dants are being sen­tenced to death, accord­ing to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) sta­tis­ti­cal brief, ​“Capital Punishment, 2016,” released April 30, 2018. (Click image to enlarge.) The sta­tis­ti­cal brief, which ana­lyzes infor­ma­tion on those under sen­tence of death in the United States as of December 31, 2016, con­tains offi­cial gov­ern­ment fig­ures doc­u­ment­ing con­tin­u­ing declines in exe­cu­tions, new death sen­tences, and death-row pop­u­la­tions across the U.S. BJS reports that 2,814 pris­on­ers remained under sen­tence of death in 32 states and the fed­er­al sys­tem at the end of 2016, rep­re­sent­ing a decrease of 58 pris­on­ers and a 2% decline in the U.S. death-row pop­u­la­tion in 2016. It was the six­teenth con­sec­u­tive annu­al decrease in the num­ber of pris­on­ers under sen­tence of death in the U.S., down 787 (22%) since the year-end high of 3,601 on December 31, 2000. BJS tracks the sta­tus of death-row pris­on­ers from the date they are admit­ted to a state or fed­er­al cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty on cap­i­tal charges, not the date they were actu­al­ly sen­tenced. According to BJS, 32 pris­on­ers were admit­ted to state or fed­er­al death rows in 2016. (DPIC uses a slight­ly dif­fer­ent count­ing method that report­ed 31 new death sen­tences imposed in 2016.) The BJS data indi­cates that the decline in the size of death row is attrib­ut­able to fac­tors oth­er than exe­cu­tion. BJS reports that 70 pris­on­ers were removed from death row in 2016 by means oth­er than exe­cu­tion, such as exon­er­a­tion, the rever­sal of a con­vic­tion or death sen­tence, com­mu­ta­tion, or death by oth­er caus­es, as com­pared with 20 who were exe­cut­ed. Nineteen pris­on­ers were report­ed to have died on death rows of nat­ur­al caus­es; 11 pris­on­ers were removed from Connecticut​’s death row when its state supreme court declared its death-penal­ty statute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al; and 40 were released from death rows when their con­vic­tions and/​or death sen­tences were over­turned in the courts.

(Elizabeth Davis and Tracy L. Snell, Statistical Brief: Capital Punishment, 2016, Bureau of Justice Statistics, April 2018.) See Studies. Read DPIC’s Year End Report for 2016.

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