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State-by-State Death Row Populations by Race. as of January 1, 2024. (In this table, the total of inmates on death row will be slightly higher than the national total of 2,241 because some inmates were sentenced to death in more than one state and hence will be counted twice.) Source: Death Row Population Figures from NAACP Legal Defense and ...
More than 75% of death row defendants who have been executed were sentenced to death for killing white victims, even though in society as a whole about half* of all homicide victims are African American.
Black and Hispanic people represent 31% of the U.S. population, but 53% of death row inmates—41.9% and 11.3% respectively (American Progress, 2019). The death row population is over 41% Black, even though Black people make up about 13% of the U.S. population (Prison Policy Initiative, 2016).
Black prisoners accounted for 41% of death row inmates, far higher than their 13% share of the nation’s adult population that year. White prisoners accounted for 56%, compared with their 77% share of the adult population.
At yearend 2020, about 56% of prisoners under sentence of death were white and 41% were black. Among prisoners under sentence of death at yearend 2020 with a known ethnicity, 15% were Hispanic. Prisoners under sentence of death on December 31, 2020 had been on death row for an average of 19.4 years.
Executions by Race and Race of Victim. "In 82% of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e., those who murdered whites were found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks."
The ethnic breakdown of individuals executed on death row in the United States shows a clear predominance of White individuals, who account for 885 of the 1,581 executions. Black individuals are the second-largest group, with 539 executions, followed by Latinx individuals with 131.
It also presents demographics (including sex, race and ethnicity, age, and education) and criminal history of prisoners under sentence of death. The report also provides advance counts of executions in 2021.
In 2020, 41% of all death row inmates were Black compared to 13% of the nation. Black Americans are the only race category with a disproportionate number of death row inmates compared to the overall US population. Hispanic ethnicity data was not reported for death row inmates in 2020.
Since 1973, at least 189 people wrongly convicted and sentenced to death have been exonerated. 100 of the death row exonerees are Black. Racism is inextricable from capital punishment. The death penalty has its roots in slavery, lynchings, white vigilantism, and the racial inequities in sentencing persist to this day.