2018 was a record-low year for death-penal­ty usage in the United States, as eigh­teen death-penal­ty states set or matched records for the fewest new death sen­tences imposed in the mod­ern his­to­ry of U.S. cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. (Click here to enlarge map.) Thirty-five U.S. states — includ­ing six­teen that autho­rized cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 2018 — did not impose any death sen­tences in 2018, while California and Pennsylvania, which col­lec­tive­ly account for near­ly one-third of the nation’s death-row pop­u­la­tion, imposed record lows. Every west­ern state except Arizona and Nevada set or tied a record low, and Arizona, which imposed two new death sen­tences, and Nevada, which imposed one, were just one above their record lows. Several south­ern states that were once among the heav­i­est users of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have now gone years with­out impos­ing any new death sentences.

For the first time in its mod­ern his­to­ry, North Carolina has gone two con­sec­u­tive years with­out a death sen­tence, and it has imposed one new death sen­tence in the past four years. Only three cap­i­tal tri­als took place in the state in 2018, and jurors reject­ed the death penal­ty in each. Gretchen Engel, exec­u­tive direc­tor of North Carolina’s Center for Death Penalty Litigation, said, ​“Jurors are turn­ing away from the death penal­ty and, in response to less favor­able jury pools, pros­e­cu­tors are seek­ing the death penal­ty less. And so, this trend away from the death penal­ty is real­ly being led by cit­i­zens who’ve been sum­moned for jury duty.” In Wake County (Raleigh), one of the 2% of U.S. coun­ties that was respon­si­ble for a major­i­ty of death-row pris­on­ers as of 2013, the last nine cap­i­tal tri­als—includ­ing one in 2018—have result­ed in life sen­tences. According to the North Carolina Office of Indigent Defense Services, tax­pay­ers would have saved $2.4 mil­lion if pros­e­cu­tors had not sought the death penal­ty in those cas­es. For the sev­enth con­sec­u­tive year, Virginia did not sen­tence any­one to death in 2018. Though sec­ond only to Texas in the num­ber of exe­cu­tions, Virginia has seen a dra­mat­ic decline in death sen­tences since estab­lish­ing region­al cap­i­tal defend­er offices to pro­vide qual­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion to cap­i­tal defen­dants. Georgia and South Carolina each marked four years with no new death sen­tences, a change that can also be attrib­uted, at least in part, to improved representation.

Two of the states with the nation’s largest death rows, California and Pennsylvania, had his­tor­i­cal­ly low num­bers of death sen­tences in 2018. California imposed only five death sen­tences, its fewest since rein­stat­ing the death penal­ty in 1978 and 38 few­er than its peak of 43 in 1999. Pennsylvania imposed a sin­gle death sen­tence for only the sec­ond time in the mod­ern era. The pre­vi­ous year in which only one sen­tence was imposed was 2016. Neither state has car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in more than a decade, but California has the largest death row in the U.S., with 740 pris­on­ers, and Pennsylvania has the fifth-largest, with 160.

(Robert Dunham, DPIC Analysis: Record-Low Death Sentencing in Most of the Country in 2018, Death Penalty Information Center, December 28, 2018; Antoinette Kerr, More NC Jurors Reject the Death Penalty, Public News Service – NC, December 17, 2018; Herbert L. White, NC juries pass on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for sec­ond straight year, The Charlotte Post, December 17, 2018; The Death Penalty in 2018: Year End Report, Death Penalty Information Center, December 14, 2018.) See Sentencing.

NOTE: Corrected on July 11, 2019 to reflect the dis­cov­ery of a new death sen­tence in Nevada.

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