Bureau of Justice Statistics Reports Number on Death Row Down, Average Time on Death Row Approaches 19 Years

The num­ber of pris­on­ers on death row across the United States con­tin­ues to decline while the aver­age amount of time they have been on death row approach­es 19 years, accord­ing to a new report from the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).

BJS’s June 2021 annu­al death penal­ty review found that 2,570 pris­on­ers were under sen­tence of death in the cus­tody of 29 states and the U.S. fed­er­al gov­ern­ment as of December 31, 2019, down 2.1% from the 2,626 pris­on­ers on death row at the end of 2018. BJS reports that 2019 was the nine­teenth con­sec­u­tive year in which the num­ber of pris­on­ers on the nation’s death row declined, down by more than a thou­sand since reach­ing a peak of 3,601 in 2000. 

The decrease in the num­ber of death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers comes even as the aver­age dura­tion of their stay on death row pri­or to exon­er­a­tion, resen­tenc­ing, death, or exe­cu­tion approach­es two decades. BJS reports that the aver­age amount of time a pris­on­er has been incar­cer­at­ed pur­suant to their lat­est death sen­tence is 18.7 years. That fig­ure is cal­cu­lat­ed from the date of a prisoner’s lat­est death sen­tence and does not take into con­sid­er­a­tion the time near­ly 10% of those on death row had pre­vi­ous­ly been impris­oned because of uncon­sti­tu­tion­al cap­i­tal tri­als or death sen­tences that had been judi­cial­ly reversed. More than half of the pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly on death row (1,317, or 51.7%) were sen­tenced to death in 2000 or earlier.

For the 22 pris­on­ers put to death in 2019, the aver­age time elapsed between the impo­si­tion of their death sen­tence and their exe­cu­tion was 264 months, or 22 years, by far the longest time between sen­tence and exe­cu­tion since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment resumed in the U.S. in the 1970s. It rep­re­sents a 21-month increase over the 243-month time span between sen­tence and exe­cu­tion in 2017 — the only oth­er time the aver­age sur­passed 20 years. The aver­age in 2019 was 26 months longer than 2018’s 238-month aver­age time lapse between sen­tence and execution.

The report pro­vid­ed fur­ther evi­dence of the aging of death row. Both the aver­age and the medi­an age of pris­on­ers on death row at the end of 2019 was 51 years, and 22.4% of death row pris­on­ers were age 60 or old­er. That com­pares to the year-end 2000 fig­ures, when the aver­age and medi­an age of death-row pris­on­ers was 38 and 2.7% of death-row pris­on­ers had reached age 60. 

The edu­ca­tion­al lev­el of new admis­sions to death row sug­gest­ed the greater vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of defen­dants now being sen­tenced to death. More than half of the new death-row pris­on­ers had less than a high school edu­ca­tion and 31.3% had com­plet­ed 8^th grade or less. Among all death-row pris­on­ers, 44.6% com­plet­ed 11^th grade or less and 11.8% had com­plet­ed 8^th grade or less.

Death row shrank by 56 pris­on­ers in 2019, rep­re­sent­ing 87 pris­on­ers who came off death row and 31 who were added. Death rows grew in only three states (North Carolina, South Carolina, and Ohio), which increased by a com­bined total of six pris­on­ers. By com­par­i­son, 19 states saw their death rows shrink. California (11), Pennsylvania (8), Texas (7) and Tennessee (6) account­ed for 57.1% of the reduc­tion nation­al­ly, while no oth­er state had as much as a five-pris­on­er shift in size.

Execution, once again, was not the main rea­son pris­on­ers were removed from death row in 2019: three-quar­ters (74.7%) of those who came off death row were not exe­cut­ed. More than half the pris­on­ers who came off death row in 2019 had their con­vic­tions or death sen­tences over­turned by courts (43) or received sen­tence com­mu­ta­tions (2). Twenty-two pris­on­ers were exe­cut­ed and 20 more died on death row of oth­er caus­es. The exe­cu­tions reflect­ed the con­tin­u­ing geo­graph­ic iso­la­tion of the death penal­ty, with 20 of the 22 exe­cu­tions car­ried out in the South. 

The BJS report cor­rob­o­rates DPIC’s June 2020 analy­sis of the time death-row pris­on­ers are spend­ing on death row. At that time, DPIC report­ed that, as of January 1, 2020, at least 1,344 death-row pris­on­ers — more than half of the nation’s total — had been on death row for 20 or more years, in vio­la­tion of U.S. human rights oblig­a­tions. DPIC report­ed that an addi­tion­al 191 pris­on­ers had been exe­cut­ed in the United States since the 1970s after spend­ing 20 or more years on death row.