According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s quar­ter­ly report, Death Row U.S.A., the num­ber of peo­ple on death rows around the coun­try declined again as of July 1, 2005. The lat­est count of inmates is 3,415, down from 3,452 as of April 1 and down con­sid­er­ably from the 3,692 inmates record­ed on October 1, 2002. About 54.5% of those on death row are mem­bers of racial minori­ties. Pennsylvania (70%) and Texas (69%) had the largest per­cent­age of minor­i­ty defen­dants on death row.

Among the states with largest declines were Texas (-27), North Carolina (-5) and Alabama (-4). Some of the declines are due to juve­nile offend­ers being removed from death row in accor­dance with the U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion in Roper v. Simmons (2005). Not all such juve­niles have been tak­en off death row. 

(NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Death Row U.S.A., Summer 2005 (July 1, 2005). See also Death Row.

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