Winter 2020 Death Row USA: U.S. Death Row Shrinks 20% During the 2010s

The number of people on death row across the United States or facing potential capital resentencings declined by nearly 20% in the 2010s, according to a Death Penalty Information Center analysis of data from the latest quarterly death-row census by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF).

The Winter 2020 edition of Death Row USA (DRUSA), released in March 2020, reports that 2,620 people were on death row as of January 1, 2020, down 2.6% from the 2,690 LDF reported in January 1, 2019. The death-row population dropped by 19.7% over the course of the last decade—down from 3,261 on January 1, 2010—and has fallen by 28.3% since January 1, 2000, when LDF reported 3,652 people on death row or facing capital resentencing.

The DPIC analysis found that fewer people were on death row or facing capital resentencing in the United States at the start of this decade than at the start of any year since 1992, when the December 1991 DRUSA reported 2,547 death-row prisoners or capital defendants sentenced to death or facing capital resentencing.

The number of U.S. prisoners facing active death sentences also continued to decline. A DPIC analysis of LDF’s death-row count found 240 individuals whose convictions or death sentences had been reversed who were awaiting retrial, resentencing, or completion of the appeals process. That left 2,380 prisoners facing active death sentences, 74 fewer (a decrease of 3.0%) than the 2,454 active death sentences at the start of 2019.

34.6% of those on death row or facing capital resentencing at the start of the decade (906 prisoners) were in states with moratoria on executions. Subtracting the cases in moratorium states and the cases in which convictions or death sentences have been overturned, LDF found that there were 1,525 currently enforceable death sentences in the country. The percentage of the nation’s death-row prisoners who do not have active and enforceable death sentences remained stable at just under 42%.

California’s death row remains the largest in the nation, with 725 prisoners, followed by Florida (347), Texas (218), Alabama (175), and Pennsylvania (147). 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.