Spring 2020 Death Row Report Documents Continuing Erosion of Death Row

The slow but steady ero­sion of U.S. death row con­tin­ued in the first quar­ter of 2020, data from the lat­est quar­ter­ly death-row cen­sus by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) has revealed. The Spring 2020 edi­tion of Death Row USA (DRUSA), released August 10, reports that 2,603 peo­ple were on death row or fac­ing resen­tenc­ing as of April 1, 2020. That marked a decline of 17 since the January 1, 2020 report and a 2.6% drop from the 2,673 LDF report­ed for April 1, 2019. 

The death-row pop­u­la­tion has declined every year since 2001 and has fall­en by 1,049 pris­on­ers (28.7%) since the turn of the cen­tu­ry, when LDF report­ed 3,652 peo­ple on death row or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing on January 1, 2000.

The num­ber of U.S. pris­on­ers fac­ing active death sen­tences also dipped slight­ly in the first quar­ter of 2020. A Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of LDF’s death-row count found that 230 indi­vid­u­als whose con­vic­tions or death sen­tences had been reversed were await­ing retri­al, resen­tenc­ing, or com­ple­tion of the appeals process. That left 2,373 pris­on­ers fac­ing active death sen­tences, sev­en few­er than at the start of 2020 and 70 few­er (a decrease of 2.9%) than the 2,443 death sen­tences that were active at the end of the first quar­ter of 2019.

The per­cent­age of the nation’s death-row pris­on­ers who are incar­cer­at­ed in states that have for­mal mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions fell frac­tion­al­ly from 34.6% to 34.5%, as Colorado abol­ished the death penal­ty and Governor Jared Polis com­mut­ed the death sen­tences of the men on the state’s death row. As of April 1, 897 peo­ple were on death rows or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing in the three remain­ing mora­to­ri­um states: California, Pennsylvania, and Oregon. Subtracting the cas­es in mora­to­ri­um states and the cas­es in which con­vic­tions or death sen­tences have been over­turned, LDF found that there were 1,523 cur­rent­ly enforce­able death sen­tences in the coun­try. 41.5% of the nation’s death-row pris­on­ers do not have active and enforce­able death sentences.

California’s death row remains the largest in the nation, with 724 pris­on­ers, fol­lowed by Florida (346), Texas (217), Alabama (173), and Pennsylvania and North Carolina (each with 145). Nationwide, the death row pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to reflect racial dis­par­i­ties in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. 42.2% of death-row pris­on­ers were white, 41.4% 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%), Texas (73%), and Louisiana (71%) remained the states that had the high­est per­cent­age of racial and eth­nic minori­ties. Two per­cent of all death-row pris­on­ers are women.