Summer 2019 ​“Death Row USA” Shows Smallest U.S. Death-Row Population in 27 Years

The num­ber of peo­ple on death row or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing in the United States is at a 27-year low, accord­ing to a DPIC analy­sis of data from a new death-row cen­sus by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). The Summer 2019 edi­tion of Death Row USA, released ear­li­er this month, reports that 2,656 peo­ple were on death row as of July 1, 2019. That last time DRUSA report­ed a death-row pop­u­la­tion that small was in the Fall of 1992, when LDF found that 2,636 peo­ple across were sen­tenced to death or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing across the country. 

The sum­mer 2019 death row count reflects a 3% drop from last year’s July report and a 26% decline from the height of the U.S. death-row pop­u­la­tion at the turn of the cen­tu­ry. death row was high­est at the turn of the cen­tu­ry. The decline in death row size is greater than the num­ber of exe­cu­tions indi­cat­ing that it is a result of the num­ber of death row pris­on­ers resen­tenced to life or less or dying on death row exceed­ing the num­ber of new death sentences imposed.

While the num­ber of death-row pris­on­ers con­tin­ues to shrink, so too has its geo­graph­ic scope. The Summer 2019 Death Row USA is the first report to reflect that the state of New Mexico no longer has any­one on death row. A June rul­ing from the state supreme court, vacat­ed the death sen­tences of the state’s final two death-row pris­on­ers who had remained on death row despite New Mexico’s abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in 2009. The abo­li­tion law had only applied to future cases.

As of July 2019, 30 states, plus the U.S. fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and the mil­i­tary, had at least one pris­on­er on death row. However, that fig­ure includes four states (California, Colorado, Oregon, and Pennsylvania) that have imposed mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions and New Hampshire, which became the 21^st state to abol­ish the death penal­ty ear­li­er this year and has a sin­gle pris­on­er on its death row. According to Death Row USA, more than one-third of the nation’s death-row pris­on­ers (918 peo­ple, or 35%) are in the moratorium states.

The 2,656 pris­on­er total also includes 187 peo­ple in non-mora­to­ri­um states who are not under active death sen­tences because their con­vic­tions or death sen­tences have been over­turned in the courts but whose death sen­tences may be rein­stat­ed by appeals courts or re-imposed in a new tri­al. Taking the court rever­sals and the state mora­to­ria into account, Death Row USA cal­cu­lates that 1,551 death-row pris­on­ers have ​“enforce­able” death sen­tences. Nearly 42% 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 729 pris­on­ers, fol­lowed by Florida (348), Texas (224), Alabama (177), and Pennsylvania (154). Nationwide, the death row pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to reflect racial dis­par­i­ties in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. 42% of death-row pris­on­ers were white, 42% were Black, 13% Latinx, 2% Asian, and 1% were Native American. Among states with at least 10 pris­on­ers on death row, states that had the high­est per­cent­age of racial and eth­nic minori­ties were Nebraska (75%), Texas (73%), and Louisiana (71%). Two per­cent of all death-row pris­on­ers are women.