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.