U.S. Death Row Population Drops Below 2,000 for First Time Since 1980s

The death row population in the U.S. has dropped below 2,000 for the first time since the 1980s, according to the latest report on national capital punishment trends released by the civil rights think tank Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF).

The Spring 2026 edition of Death Row U.S.A., which tracks state and national data on death row populations, executions, the race and sex of victims in execution cases, and the impact of moratoria and judicial reversals, shows that the nation's death row population now stands at 1,993, down 47% from its peak of 3,726 in January 2001. The current death-row population is the smallest recorded in LDF's more than 50 years of monitoring since December 1987, when 1,982 incarcerated people faced execution.

"The number of people on death rows across the United States is now lower than it has been at any time since the 1980s," said Karla McKanders, Director, TMI. "Nonetheless, racial bias continues to be an insidious failure of the death penalty, with capital sanctions disproportionately reserved for cases with white victims and Black people overrepresented in who is capitally prosecuted, sentenced to death, and executed. While jurisdictions with troubled racial and civil rights histories continued to carry out executions in the first quarter of 2026, juries are very rarely imposing new death sentences. LDF welcomes its continuing decline."

"The data is clear, the death penalty is no longer sustaining itself," said Robert Dunham, Director of the Death Penalty Policy Project. "New death sentences are at historic lows. Three times as many people are coming off death row than are being added to it. Capital punishment is exhibiting all the signs of a failed and dying government policy."

U.S death penalty cases have been marked by racial bias, ineffective legal assistance, wrongful convictions, and the disproportionate imposition of the punishment on defendants who have substantial intellectual disabilities and severe mental health conditions. Despite government efforts to expand death-eligible offenses, introduce new methods of execution, and accelerate executions, the Spring 2026 report shows the removal of individuals through resentencing, judicial reversals, and declining imposition of new death sentences is helping to shrink the death row population.

In 1972, LDF attorneys helped secure the only national moratorium on executions when the Supreme Court's Furman v. Georgia decision struck down all existing death penalty laws and emptied death rows nationwide. After states began to enact new death penalty laws in response, LDF began compiling an internal roster of individuals sentenced to death. In 1991, LDF began publicly releasing Death Row U.S.A. on a quarterly basis, when state death-sentencing rates were at a historic high.

Report Highlights:

• As of Q1 2026, 1,993 people remain on death row or face capital resentencing proceedings, the fewest since December 1987. Nearly 40% of the death sentences in these cases are not currently enforceable.
• Since 1976, 76% of executions have been for murders involving white victims, even though about a half of all U.S. homicide victims are Black or Latino/a.
• Black people make up 40% of the death row population despite being only about 11.7% of the national population. Latino/a individuals account for 15.1%.
• Executions have been concentrated in a few states: Texas accounted for 36.0% (598 executions) of the 1661 post-Furman executions, followed by Oklahoma at 7.8% (130), and Florida at 7.7% (129).
• 24 jurisdictions have abolished the death penalty, while California, Oregon, and Pennsylvania have imposed governor-ordered moratoria on executions. California and Pennsylvania collectively account for 681 people on death row (34.2% of the nation's total).

Read the full report here.

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Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is the nation's first civil rights legal organization. LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957, though it was founded under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall while he was at the NAACP. LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) is a division of LDF that undertakes innovative research and houses LDF's archive. In all media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF (do not include NAACP) and refer to the Institute as LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute or TMI.