11 April 2019 :
Death Row USA Fall 2018 Shows Ongoing Decline in Death Row Populations. According to the latest Death Row USA national census by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), released in March, 2,721 people were on death rows in 31 states and the U.S. federal and military death rows on October 1, 2018. The Fall 2018 death-row census reflects that death row has declined by 71 from the 2,792 reported on death row as of October 1, 2017, and by a little less of 18% over the course of the last decade. The overall decline in the number of people on death rows across the country is greater than the number of executions in that period, meaning that more former death-row prisoners have been resentenced to life or less after overturning their death sentences, died from non-execution causes, or been exonerated than have been added to the row with new death sentences. California (740), Florida (354), Texas (228), Alabama (182), Pennsylvania (158), North Carolina (143), Ohio (142) and Arizona (121) remain the nation’s largest death rows. Some death rows have very few prisoners: 1 in New Hampshire and Wyoming, 2 in Montana, New Mexico, 3 in Colorado, South Dakota and Virginia, 4 on the military death row. 61 men and 1 woman are detained on federal death row. Divided by race, there are 42.04% Whites (1,144), 41.53% Blacks (1,130), 13.45% Hispanics (366), 1.91% Asians (52), 1.03% Native Americans (28), plus a prisoner whose race is not determined. Divided by gender, there are 2,666 men (97.98%) and 55 women (2.02%) on death row. From the first execution in modern era (January 17, 1977) to October 1, 2018, 1,483 people were executed: 828 whites, 509 blacks, 123 Hispanics, 16 Native Americans, 7 Asians. In total, 1,467 men and 16 women (1.08% of the total). 10% of those executed (147) were “volunteers”, that means they had voluntarily renounced the possibility to appeal. From 1977 to the present, and before the Supreme Court banned the execution of minors in 2005, 23 people had been executed for crimes committed when juveniles (under age 18 at the time of the offense).
