Winter 2022 Death Row USA: State Death Rows Drop Below 2,400 For First Time Since 1990

The num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death or fac­ing con­tin­u­ing jeop­ardy of exe­cu­tion in pend­ing cap­i­tal retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings in U.S. states has dropped below 2,400 for the first time since 1990, a Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) data has shown. 

In its Winter 2022 edi­tion of Death Row USA (DRUSA), released in late February of 2022, LDF report­ed that the num­ber of peo­ple on state death rows or fac­ing pos­si­ble cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing in state courts across the United States had fall­en to 2,388 as of January 1, 2022, down from 2,406 on October 1, 2021. That matched the total fac­ing active death sen­tences or pos­si­ble cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ings in state courts in September 1990, the last time LDF report­ed few­er than 2,400 peo­ple fac­ing con­tin­u­ing jeop­ardy of death in U.S. state courts.

With 48 peo­ple on U.S. fed­er­al or mil­i­tary death rows, LDF report­ed 2,436 peo­ple on U.S. death rows or fac­ing jeop­ardy of being resen­tenced to death as of January 1, 2022. That total was down by 92 from LDF’s Winter 2021 report and was the low­est total since January 1991 when 2,412 peo­ple were on U.S. state or fed­er­al death rows or faced jeop­ardy of being resen­tenced to death. Death row peaked at 3,717 in the July 2001 DRUSA report and has declined by 1,281, or 34.5%, since then. Death row has declined in size in the United States every year for the past 21 years.

LDF found that the cap­i­tal con­vic­tions or death sen­tences of 218 peo­ple list­ed in its report have been reversed, mean­ing that one in eleven cur­rent death sen­tences have been reversed, sub­ject to pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al appeal or retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings. Excluding those indi­vid­u­als, the num­ber of peo­ple in the United States fac­ing active death sen­tences fell to 2,218, from its total of 2,296 in January 2021. Historically, the most like­ly out­come of a death sen­tence imposed in the U.S. since the Supreme Court struck down exist­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statutes in 1972 is that the con­vic­tion or death sen­tence will be over­turned and the defen­dant will be resen­tenced to life impris­on­ment or less. 

LDF report­ed that 887 peo­ple, or 36.4% of those on death row or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing as of January 1, 2022 were in juris­dic­tions with mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions. Subtracting those on death row in the mora­to­ri­um juris­dic­tions — California, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and the fed­er­al civil­ian death penal­ty — and those whose death sen­tences have been reversed, LDF cal­cu­lat­ed that there were 1,385 cur­rent­ly enforce­able sen­tences. 1,051 death sen­tences are cur­rent­ly unen­force­able, either because the death sen­tence has been over­turned or the pris­on­er is in a juris­dic­tion with a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. That total rep­re­sents 43.1% of all active cas­es in which a death sen­tence has been imposed.

California’s death row declined to 692 pris­on­ers but remained more than dou­ble the size of death row in any oth­er state. It was fol­lowed by Florida (330), Texas (199), and Alabama (170). Nationwide, 42.4% of death-row pris­on­ers were white, 40.1% were Black, 13.8% Latinx, 1.9% Asian, and 1.0% were Native American. Among states with at least 10 pris­on­ers on death row, Texas (73.4%), Louisiana (72.6%), California (67.1%), Nebraska (66.7%), and Mississippi (62.2%) were the states with the high­est per­cent­age of indi­vid­u­als of col­or on death row. Two per­cent of all death-row pris­on­ers are women.