Around 2 , 250 prisoners currently face execution in the United States. The national death-row population has declined for 20 consecutive years, as sentence reversals, executions, and deaths by other causes are outpacing new death sentences.
Includes information such as the length of time prisoners spend on death row
Racial demographics of death-row prisoners
How a Minority of Counties Produce Most Death Cases at Enormous Costs to All
Information on new death sentences
Source: Death Row Population Figures from NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. “DEATH ROW USA” (As of July 1, 2024).
* Figures include persons whose death sentences have been overturned but who still face the possibility of being re-sentenced to death after a new trial or new sentencing hearing. The number of prisoners in the U.S. facing active death sentences is lower.
** The state-by-state total of individuals on death row is greater than the national total because three prisoners are sentenced to death in two different states.
"I miss the stars. You know, I haven't seen the stars in years and years and years. I miss the rain. I miss food. I miss all these things. But what it comes down to the most -- and this is the thing that will scar me the most and that I'll carry with me as a scar the longest -- the thing I miss the most is being treated like a human being."
— CNN interview with Damien Echols on Arkansas death row since 1993
(Jan. 13 , 2011 ) (released August 2011 ).
The number of people sentenced to death or facing the possibility of a death sentence in pending capital retrial or resentencing proceedings continued its more than two-decade decline in the third quarter of last year, according to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund ( LDF ) Summer 2022 quarterly census of death rows across the United…
The nationwide erosion of the death penalty in the United States continued in the quarter of 2022 , as the death rows of eleven states decreased in size and no state or federal death row grew larger, according to the Legal Defense Fund’s Spring 2022 Death Row USA ( DRUSA ) report on capital…
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…
The number of people sentenced to death or facing continuing jeopardy of execution in pending capital retrial or resentencing proceedings continued its more than two-decade decline in the third quarter of 2021 , according to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund ( LDF ) Fall 2021 quarterly census of death rows across the United…
Fewer people were on death rows across the United States as of July 1 , 2021 or faced continuing jeopardy of execution in pending capital retrial or resentencing proceedings than at any other time in more than three decades, according to data compiled by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund ( LDF ) and analyzed by the Death Penalty Information…
DPIC page on foreign nationals executed or sentenced to death in the U.S. and related policy issues
DPIC page on women and the death penalty
DPIC page on Native Americans and the death penalty
