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Spring 2025 Death Row USA: U.S. Death Row Down 7.2% in Past Year; Recent Executions Point to Growing Race-of-Victim Bias

Outlier practices continue to drive U.S. death-row developments
  • By
  • Robert Dunham

The number of prisoners on death rows or facing capital retrials or resentencing proceedings across the United States has fallen to 2,067 as of April 1, 2025, according to the Spring 2025 Death Row U.S.A. (“DRUSA”),1 a quarterly census of the U.S. death row population by the Legal Defense Fund. The new total represents a decline of 25 prisoners (1.2%) from the 2,092 people whom LDF reported faced active death sentences or possible resentencing at the start of the year.2

Historically, the extent of the decline in the national death-row population in any single quarter does not predict what will happen the coming months, although the long-term trends are clear. The nation’s death-row population declined by only 0.6% (14 people) in the first quarter of 2024, but ended the year with 149 fewer death-row prisoners, the largest death-row population decline in more than two decades and the highest annual percentage decline (6.6%) in nearly a half-century. LDF’s Spring 2025 death-row census, released on May 2, reported 160 fewer individuals on death-row or facing continuing jeopardy of capital resentencing than in its Spring 2024 census,3 marking a one-year decline of 7.2%. LDF has reported a decline in the number of people on death row in the U.S. in every quarterly DRUSA census since January 2010 and in each of the last 24 years. Overall, the U.S. death-row population has fallen 44.5% since its peak of 3,726 at the close of 2000.

A Death Penalty Policy Project analysis of the Spring 2025 DRUSA data found that the convictions or death sentences of at least 131 of the men and women in the DRUSA census have been overturned in the courts, and those individuals are now awaiting retrial or resentencing proceedings or the outcome of the prosecution’s appeals challenging their grants of relief. The remaining 1,936 prisoners in the April 1 census have active death sentences. However, 658 of those prisoners were sentenced to death in either California or Pennsylvania, which have moratoria on executions that make their sentences unenforceable. As of April 1, 2025, 1,278 prisoners in 24 states or on federal or U.S. military death row faced death sentences LDF described as active and enforceable.4

Three U.S. states account for half of the country’s death-row population. California continues to have the nation’s largest death row, with 585 men and women either sentenced to death or in jeopardy of having reversed death sentences reimposed. It accounts for 28.3% of the prisoners on death row across the U.S. Florida is next, with 278 people on its death row (13.4% of the national total), followed by Texas, with 176 death-row prisoners (8.5% of the national total). The other states with 100 or more people on death row or facing potential capital resentencing are: Alabama (161), North Carolina (124), Ohio (116), Arizona (113), and Pennsylvania (106).5 One-third of those on the nation’s death rows (33.4%) are in the moratorium states of California and Pennsylvania.

The extreme outlier practices of Alabama and Florida continue to have a disproportionate impact on U.S. death penalty developments. Those two states, plus Delaware, permitted trial judges to sentence to death defendants whose juries had voted for life or had not unanimously voted for death. Delaware has since abolished the death penalty and resentenced its death-row prisoners to life without parole. Alabama and Florida have abolished judicial override but both still permit the execution of those who were sentenced to death under that procedure. Both also continue to execute individuals whom judges condemned based upon non-unanimous sentencing votes by their juries.

289 men and women sentenced to death under these aberrant practices remain in jeopardy of execution in Alabama and Florida, and together they account for 14.0% of everyone on death row in the United States. More than three quarters of Alabama’s death row (124 people, 77.0% of death row) were sentenced to death under these practices: judges overrode the jury’s votes for life in 29 cases (18.0% of Alabama’s death row) and 95 other men and women were sentenced to death despite jury disagreement on the appropriate sentence (59.0% of the state’s death row). In Florida, 165 people (59.4% of Florida’s death row) are in jeopardy of execution because of these practices: 163 were sentenced to death despite jury non-unanimity (58.%) and two others are on death row as a result of judicial override of jury votes for life.6

Thirty percent of the executions in the United States in the first quarter of 2025 — two in Florida7 and one in Alabama8 — were non-unanimity cases. Additionally, three prisoners whose death sentences had previously been reversed because of constitutional violations relating to Florida’s non-unanimity practices were resentenced to life in the first quarter of the year.9 In Alabama, Governor Kay Ivey commuted the death sentence of Robin “Rocky” Myers, an intellectually impaired and likely innocent prisoner whose trial judge overrode the jury’s recommendation that he be sentenced to life.10

In the past 15 years alone, Alabama has executed 29 men who would not have been sentenced to death in the first place almost anywhere else in the country. 80.0% of Alabama’s execution attempts since 2010 (32 of 40) have been in cases in which prosecutors had failed to persuade jurors to unanimously vote for death. Six of the execution attempts (15.0%) and five of the executions (13.5%) have been in cases in which the jury as a whole voted for a life sentence.

The executions in the first quarter of 2025 also illustrate concerning — and in some instances growing — racial disparities in the U.S. death penalty. Historically, about half the murder victims in the United States have been White,11 but three quarters of the death penalty cases that have resulted in executions have involved White victims.12 The White-victim disparity has increased recently, with nine of the ten executions in the first quarter of 2025 and the last six executions in 2024 involving only White victims. 27 of the 32 executions in the one-year period between April 1, 2024 and March 31, 2025 involved only White victims (84.4%), including 93.8% of the last 16 executions in that time period.13

U.S. death row remains disproportionately individuals of color. Although a plurality of those with active death sentences or facing possible capital resentencing are White (42.4%), 1,191 of the 2,067 people in LDF’s Spring 2025 census (57.6%) are racial or ethnic minorities. The largest group (832) are African American, comprising 40.3% of death row; 301 (14.6%) are Latino or Latina; 38 (1.8%) are Asian; and 20 (1.0%) are Native American.14

More than three-quarters of those facing execution in Texas as of April 1 (75.6%) were prisoners of color. Nearly half (83, 47.2%) are Black and more than a quarter (48, 27.3%) are Latino/a. Three others are Native American or Asian (1.7%). Eight of the eleven prisoners on Nebraska’s death row (72.7%) are individuals of color, including six Latino (54.5%) and two Black (18.2%) prisoners. The death rows of five other states are more than 60% racial or ethnic minorities: Louisiana (69.8%), California (67.8%), Mississippi (66.7%), North Carolina (62.1%), and Oklahoma (61.1%).15

Five states with death rows of ten or more people were majority Black: Louisiana, 40 of 61 prisoners (65.6%); Mississippi, 23 of 37 (62.2%), Ohio, 64 of 116 (55.2); North Carolina, 64 of 124 (51.6%), and Arkansas, 13 of 26 (50%). Four were 20% or more Latino/a: Nebraska, 6 of 11 (54.5%); California, 169 of 585 (28.9%); Texas, 48 of 176 (27.3%); and Arizona, 23 of 113 (20.4%).

  1. Legal Defense Fund, Death Row USA, Spring 2025, released May 2, 2025 (Spring 2025 DRUSA). ↩︎
  2. Legal Defense Fund, Death Row USA, Winter 2025 (as of January 1, 2025). ↩︎
  3. Legal Defense Fund, Death Row USA, Spring 2024 (as of April 1, 2024). ↩︎
  4. Spring 2025 DRUSA at 1. ↩︎
  5. Spring 2025 DRUSA at 37-38. ↩︎
  6. Spring 2025 DRUSA at 39. ↩︎
  7. James Ford and Edward James. ↩︎
  8. Demetrius Frazier. ↩︎
  9. Jason Looney was resentenced to life without parole on January 30, 2025. The formal sentencing order, entered on March 6, 2025, does not specify the jury vote. Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty, Wakulla County: Guerry Hertz & Jason Looney resentenced, March 28, 2025. On February 5, 2025, Corey Smith pled guilty to second-degree murder and other lesser charges and was resentenced to 30 years imprisonment after the trial court found that Miami prosecutors had committed misconduct and disqualified them from the case. New prosecutors then waived the death penalty citing difficulties in retrying the cases because some of its witnesses had died, others had recanted their testimony, and still others were uncooperative. In addition, a tape of a jailhouse phone call between an informant and the lead prosecutor showed that the prosecution had pressured witnesses to change their testimony to strengthen the prosecution’s case. Charles Rabin, Prosecutors drop death sentence of gang leader in bungled case. Pleads to lesser charge, Miami Herald, Feb. 5, 2025; Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty, Miami-Dade County: Corey Smith pleads to lower charges, Feb. 5, 2025. Kim Jackson was resentenced to life without parole on February 11, 2025 following a 8-4 jury vote for life. Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty, Duval County: Life verdict for Kim Jackson, Feb. 14, 2025. ↩︎
  10. Ivana Hrynkiw, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey commutes death sentence of Robin ‘Rocky’ Myers, AL.com, Feb. 28, 2025. ↩︎
  11. According to the latest Bureau of Justice Statistics report on the death penalty, the average length of time a death sentenced prisoner had been on death row as of December 31, 2022 was 21.0 years. Tracey L. Snell, Capital Punishment, 2022 – Statistical Tables, Table 5, at 10, U.S. Dept of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Dec. 2024). BJS reported that the average length of time between sentence and execution in 2022 was 249 months and the overall average between 1977 and 2022 was 149 months (12.4 years). Id., Table 7, at 12. Given the lapse of time between sentencing and execution, contrasting the racial composition of U.S. murder victims between 1976 and 2005 with the racial composition of victims in U.S. executions between 1977 and 2025 seems like a fair comparison.
    There were 588,066 murders in the United States in the three decades between 1976 and 2005. James Alan Fox & Marianne W. Zawitz, Homicide trends in the United States, 1976-2005, Homicide Victims by Race, at 60, U.S. Dept of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Jan. 2010). 299,522 of the victims (50.9%) were White; 275,981 were Black (46.9%), and 12,563 were other races (2.1%). ↩︎
  12. 1,227 of the 1,617 executions between January 1977 and March 31, 2025 (75.9%) involved only White victims; 213 of the cases (13.2%) involved only Black victims; 102 involved only Latino or Latina victims (6.3%); 29 involved only Asian victims (1.8%); and 5 involved only Native American victims (0.3%). 42 prisoners were executed for murders involving multiple victims of different races (2.6%). Spring 2025 DRUSA at 2. ↩︎
  13. Spring 2025 DRUSA at 36. ↩︎
  14. Spring 2025 DRUSA at 1. ↩︎
  15. Spring 2025 DRUSA at 37-38. ↩︎