Race and the Death Penalty by the Numbers

More than 75% of death row defen­dants who have been exe­cut­ed were sen­tenced to death for killing white vic­tims, even though in soci­ety as a whole about half* of all homi­cide vic­tims are African American.

NOTES: The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment counts some cat­e­gories, such as Hispanics, as an eth­nic group rather than a race. DPI refers to all groups as races because the sources for much of our infor­ma­tion use these categories.

Current U.S. Death Row Population by Race