The Bureau of Justice Statistics released the 2008 ver­sion of its annu­al report on the death penal­ty in the U.S. in December 2009. Information drawn from the report includes:

  • The num­ber of peo­ple on death row declined from 3,215 in 2007 to 3,207 in 2008.
  • 50% of those on death row had not grad­u­at­ed from high school; only 9% had any college education.
  • 91% of those on death row had no pri­or homi­cide conviction.
  • 13.2% of those on death row at the end of 2008 were his­pan­ic.
  • 22% of those on death row were mar­ried.
  • 1,122 of those on death row were under the age of 25 at the time of their arrest.
  • The aver­age time between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion for all those exe­cut­ed in 2008 was 11.75 years.

(See Bureau of Justice Statistics, Capital Punishment, 2008 — Statistical Tables, released Dec. 3, 2009). See also DPIC’s 2009 Year End Report and Sentencing.

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