Spring 2022 Death Row USA: 11 State Death Rows Decrease in Size as Nationwide Erosion of Capital Punishment Continues in First Quarter of 2022

The nation­wide ero­sion of the death penal­ty in the United States con­tin­ued in the quar­ter of 2022, as the death rows of eleven states decreased in size and no state or fed­er­al death row grew larg­er, accord­ing to the Legal Defense Fund’s Spring 2022 Death Row USA (DRUSA) report on capital punishment.

Overall, the num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death in the United States or fac­ing con­tin­u­ing jeop­ardy of exe­cu­tion in pend­ing cap­i­tal retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings on April 1, 2022 fell by 22 to 2,414 — a 0.9% decline over the course of the quar­ter and 3.6% below the 2,504 peo­ple with active or reversed death sen­tences on April 1, 2021. Florida led the decline, with sev­en pris­on­ers com­ing off death row with­out an exe­cu­tion. Alabama was next with a four-pris­on­er decline, one of whom was executed.

Only three pris­on­ers were exe­cut­ed in the first quar­ter of 2022, mean­ing that nine­teen more peo­ple were removed from death row as a result of non-cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ings, death, or exon­er­a­tion than were added by new death sen­tences. The decline con­tin­ues a more than two-decade trend that began after the U.S. death-row pop­u­la­tion peaked at 3,717 in the July 2001 DRUSA report. Death row has fall­en by 1,303 pris­on­ers, or 35.1%, since then, post­ing annu­al declines every year in the 21^st century.

The Legal Defense Fund (LDF), for­mer­ly known as the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, has pub­lished Death Row USA, its quar­ter­ly ros­ter of the indi­vid­u­als on state and fed­er­al death rows across the United States, for more than forty years. The Spring 2022 edi­tion was post­ed on the organization’s web­site in late August 2022.

A Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of LDF’s Spring 2022 DRUSA data found that the cap­i­tal con­vic­tions or death sen­tences of 206 peo­ple list­ed in its report have been reversed, sub­ject to pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al appeal or to retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings. That equates to 8.5% of all indi­vid­u­als fac­ing con­tin­u­ing jeop­ardy of death, or one rever­sal for every 10.7 active death sen­tences. Excluding those with reversed con­vic­tions or death sen­tences, the num­ber of peo­ple in the United States fac­ing active death sen­tences fell to 2,208, down ten from the end of 2021. There were 73 few­er active death sen­tences com­pared to the total of 2,281 iden­ti­fied by LDF in April 2021, a 3.2% decline. The Spring 2022 DRUSA report­ed 2,366 peo­ple on state death rows or fac­ing con­tin­u­ing jeop­ardy of exe­cu­tion in state court pro­ceed­ings as of April 1, 2022, the fewest since May 1990.

LDF report­ed that 883 peo­ple, or 36.6% of those on death row or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing as of April 1, 2022 were in juris­dic­tions with mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions — California, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and fed­er­al civil­ian death row. 839 peo­ple were on death rows or faced cap­i­tal retri­als or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ing in the three mora­to­ri­um states, com­pris­ing 35.5% of all state death sen­tences. Excluding those on death row in mora­to­ri­um juris­dic­tions and those whose death sen­tences have been reversed, LDF cal­cu­lat­ed that 1,385 death sen­tences were ​“enforce­able.” The 1,051 cur­rent­ly unen­force­able death sen­tences rep­re­sent 43.1% of all active cas­es in which a death sen­tence has been imposed.

California’s death row, the nation’s largest, declined by two to 690 pris­on­ers. Florida (323), Texas (199), and Alabama (166) were the only oth­er states with 140 or more death sen­tences. Nationwide, 59.2% of death-row pris­on­ers were indi­vid­u­als of col­or: 42.4% were white; 40.8% were Black; 13.9% Latinx; 1.9% Asian; and 1.0% were Native American. The states with the high­est per­cent­age of indi­vid­u­als of col­or on death row remained the same. Among states with at least 10 pris­on­ers on death row, they were: Texas (73.4%); Louisiana (72.6%); California (67.2%); Nebraska (66.7%); and Mississippi (62.2%). 2.1% of all death-row pris­on­ers are women.

The oth­er states with death-row declines were Oklahoma, down two, both by exe­cu­tion; and Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, one each, with no executions.