SPRING 2019 ‘DEATH ROW USA’ DOCUMENTS FURTHER SHRINKING OF U.S. DEATH-ROW POPULATION

July 11, 2019: The number of people on death row or facing capital resentencing in the United States has continued its 19-year decline, according to a new death-row census by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). The Spring 2019 edition of Death Row USA, released in early July, reports that 2,673 people in 30 states and in U.S. federal or military custody were on death rows across the U.S. as of April 1, 2019. That total reflects a 2.6% drop from the same time in 2018 and an 18.6% decline over the course of the past decade (3,284 as of April 1, 2009). The decline has come at a time in which executions remain near historic lows, as more people have been resentenced to life or less or come off of death row by exoneration, clemency, or deaths other than by execution than have been added to death row through new death sentences. Nearly 1,000 prisoners have come off death row in the past decade by means other than execution, nearly tripling the 344 executions over that same period. LDF includes in its total 230 people who have overturned their convictions or sentences in the courts but still face the possibility of having their sentences reinstated on appeal or reimposed after new trial or sentencing proceedings. The other 2,443 people in the death-row census face active death sentences, continuing the decline in the number of prisoners in current jeopardy of execution. April 2018 was the first time in more than a quarter century that the number of active death sentences fell below 2,500. For the first time, the LDF census offered a count of individuals on death rows in states with moratoria on executions (California, Colorado, Oregon, and Pennsylvania). Death Row USA reports that 923 people, or 34.5% of all U.S. death-row prisoners, are in these states. Excluding these states and the individuals whose convictions or death sentences have been overturned, 1,570 death-row prisoners in the United States have what LDF describes as “enforceable sentences.” California’s death row remains the largest in the nation, with 733 prisoners. Florida (349), Texas (225), Alabama (181), and Pennsylvania (155) are also among the five largest state death rows. Some death rows have very few prisoners: 1 in New Hampshire and Wyoming, 2 in Montana, New Mexico and South Dakota, 3 in Colorado, and Virginia, 4 on the military death row. 60 men and 1 woman are detained on federal death row. Divided by race, there are 41.98% Whites (1,122), 41.68% Blacks (1,114), 13.43% Hispanics (359), 1.83% Asians (49), 1.05% Native Americans (28), plus a prisoner whose race is not determined. Divided by gender, there are 2,619 men (97.98%) and 54 women (2.02%) on death row. From the first execution in modern era (January 17, 1977) to Jan. 1, 2019, 1,490 people were executed: 831 Whites, 510 Blacks, 126 Hispanics, 16 Native Americans, 7 Asians. In total, 1,474 men and 16 women (1.07% of the total). "Death Row USA" also records the race and gender of the victims related to the performed executions. The 1490 people executed were accused of killing a total of 2177 people. Divided by race, the victims were 1645 white (75.563%), 333 black (15.30%), 153 Hispanic (7.03%), 41 Asian (1.88%), and 5 Indians (0.23%). Divided by gender, the victims were 1,113 males (50.99%), and 1,067 females (49.99%). 10% of those executed (148) 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). (Sources: DPIC)