Death Penalty News

The Death Penalty Information Center has updated its Death Penalty Census, a database of every death sentence imposed since 1972.  The database now contains information accurate as of January 1, 2022, inclusive of the 50th year of the modern death penalty.  The Census contains information on 9,820 death sentences imposed on 8,842 defendants. It includes the name, race, and gender of each defendant, along with the region, state, county, and year in which the sentence was imposed.

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 32 states or 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. 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 337 executions over that same period. ...