The nation’s death rows are shrink­ing more rapid­ly than new defen­dants are being sen­tenced to death, accord­ing to a new Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) sta­tis­ti­cal brief, ​“Capital Punishment, 2014 – 2015.” The sta­tis­ti­cal brief, which ana­lyzes infor­ma­tion on those under sen­tence of death in the United States as of December 31, 2014 and December 31, 2015, doc­u­ments a con­tin­u­ing decline in exe­cu­tions, new death sen­tences, and death row pop­u­la­tions across the U.S. 2015 marked the fif­teenth con­sec­u­tive annu­al decrease in the num­ber of pris­on­ers under sen­tence of death in the U.S. According to BJS, 69 pris­on­ers were admit­ted to state or fed­er­al death rows in 2014 and 49 were admit­ted in 2015. (DPIC uses a slight­ly dif­fer­ent count­ing method that report­ed 73 death sen­tences imposed in 2014.) The data also indi­cates that the decline in the size of death row is attrib­ut­able to fac­tors oth­er than exe­cu­tion. According to BJS, 75 pris­on­ers were removed from death row in 2014 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 35 who were exe­cut­ed. In 2015, 82 pris­on­ers were tak­en off death row by means oth­er than exe­cu­tion, while 28 death-row pris­on­ers were exe­cut­ed. Over the two-year peri­od cov­ered by the data, 39 more pris­on­ers were removed from death row by means oth­er than exe­cu­tion than were admit­ted as a result of new death sen­tences. The gap between removals from death row and new admis­sions is expect­ed to widen even fur­ther in 2016 and 2017 as a result of record-low death-sen­tenc­ing rates and pris­on­ers being removed from death row due to death-penal­ty statutes hav­ing been declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in Florida, Delaware, and Connecticut. BJS reports that 2,881 pris­on­ers remained under sen­tence of death in 33 states and the fed­er­al sys­tem at the end of 2015. (Click image to enlarge.)

(T. Snell, ​“Statistical Brief: Capital Punishment, 2014 – 2015,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2017.) See Studies. Read DPIC’s Year End Reports for 2014 and 2015.

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