Report: After 20 Years of Decline, Spring 2021 Death-Row Population Matches Level in 1991

The num­ber of peo­ple on death row or fac­ing pos­si­ble cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing across the United States now match­es a three-decade low, accord­ing to data com­piled by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) and ana­lyzed by the Death Penalty Information Center.

The Spring 2021 edi­tion of LDF’s Death Row USA (DRUSA), the organization’s quar­ter­ly death-row cen­sus, reports that 2,504 peo­ple were impris­oned on state, fed­er­al, or mil­i­tary death rows in the United States or still faced jeop­ardy of death in pend­ing cap­i­tal retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings on April 1, 2021, match­ing the total LDF report­ed in August 1991 as death row was climb­ing towards its peak of 3,717 peo­ple in July 2001. The num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death or fac­ing reim­po­si­tion of the death penal­ty in pend­ing cap­i­tal pro­ceed­ings has declined by 32.6% since that time and has fall­en every year since 2001. 

The cap­i­tal con­vic­tions or death sen­tences of 223 peo­ple list­ed in the LDF report have been over­turned, leav­ing rough­ly one in eleven cas­es await­ing retri­al or resen­tenc­ing or with grants of relief still sub­ject to pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al appeal. Excluding those indi­vid­u­als, the num­ber peo­ple in the United States fac­ing active death sen­tences fell to 2,281.

34.4% (861 peo­ple) of those on death row or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing as of April 1, 2021 were in states with mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions. Including those in oth­er states whose whose death sen­tences have been reversed, LDF cal­cu­lat­ed that there were 1,036 cur­rent­ly unen­force­able death sen­tences, com­pris­ing 41.4% of all active cas­es in which a death sen­tence has been imposed. LDF report­ed that 1,468 death-row pris­on­ers had cur­rent­ly enforce­able death sen­tences.

California’s death row declined to 704 pris­on­ers but remained by far the largest in the nation. It was fol­lowed by Florida (343), Texas (205), and Alabama (170). Nationwide, 42.4% of death-row pris­on­ers were white, 41.3% were Black, 13.5% Latinx, 1.8% Asian, and 1.0% were Native American. Among states with at least 10 pris­on­ers on death row, Nebraska (75.0%), Texas (72.7%), Louisiana (72.4%), California (67.2%) and Pennsylvania (62.4%) were the states with the high­est per­cent­age of indi­vid­u­als of col­or on death row. Two per­cent of all death-row pris­on­ers are women.

LDF released its Spring 2021 report on August 31, 2021.