Forty-three years after the Supreme Court reversed course and reinstated the death penalty, reliable data on the individuals sent to death row is maddeningly difficult to obtain. The Intercept set out to compile a comprehensive dataset on everyone sentenced to die in active death penalty jurisdictions since 1976. Our findings show that capital punishment remains as “arbitrary and capricious” as ever.
The death penalty, they say, is dying. Both executions and new death sentences are declining year after year. This trend is partly rooted in research that continues to expose enduring problems with the death penalty, particularly its racism, arbitrary application, and failure to deliver on claims of public safety. Such findings are significant, but they are also all too familiar. They mirror the very same evidence that led the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the death penalty more than 47 years ago in its historic decision in Furman v. Georgia. Decided amid dampening support for the death penalty and a long pause on executions, Furman declared that the death penalty was arbitrarily and capriciously applied. There were clear signs of racial bias and no evidence that it worked as a deterrent. Nevertheless, the response to Furman was swift: States immediately began enacting new death penalty laws designed to pass constitutional muster. Just four years after Furman, in 1976, the court upheld a new set of statutes in Gregg v. Georgia, signaling the start of the “modern” death penalty era.
As the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Gregg v. Georgia neared in 2016, it seemed clear to us that the death penalty remained as problematic today as it was in 1972. But we wondered what the numbers would show. We were curious, not only about who was on death row in the country’s remaining death penalty states, but how many people had been removed from death row — a sizable but largely invisible population in the ongoing death penalty debate. We decided to compile a dataset of individuals sentenced to death starting on July 2, 1976, the day Gregg was announced. Such data would allow us to see who had ended up on death row, where they were from, and the outcome of each case. The goal was to create a high-level snapshot of four decades of “modern” capital punishment.
Data on individuals sentenced to death over the last 43 years was gathered using a number of sources, including state and federal departments of correction, state and federal public defenders, lawyers working for advocacy groups, and individuals who had been tracking this data in their respective states. For each individual sentenced to die, we asked for specific data: name, date of birth, race, gender, sentencing date, and current status. Each of these fields is reflected in the dataset provided here. The data also contains additional information indicating individuals who have died or killed themselves while on death row; individuals who have been resentenced and their current sentence; individuals who have given up their appeals and “volunteered” for execution; and individuals who have been released from prison, exonerated of the charges against them, or had their death sentences commuted by executive branch action.
As of November 30, 2019, the dataset contains information on 7,335 individual death sentences handed down since July 1976. Of these, 2,752 individuals are currently on death row and 1,448 have been executed, while 3,135 people have been removed from death row for a reason other than execution. More than 2,000 have had their sentences reduced. Hundreds have died or killed themselves while on death row. Hundreds more have been released from prison altogether.
For more on how we collected the data, along with notes about its limitations, please read “Counting the Condemned.” To share information about death-sentenced individuals that could help to perfect The Intercept’s dataset, email [email protected].
This data will be updated three times per year.
Key for current_sentence column:
DR: Death RowLWOP: Life Without ParoleLPP: Life With Possibility of ParoleY: Term of YearsM: Term of MonthsTIME: Time Served
Project Editors: Andrea Jones, Roger Hodge.
Reporters: Liliana Segura, Jordan Smith.
Research: Josh Begley, Elisa Cho, Talya Cooper, Eseosa Olumhense, Miriam Pensack, Moiz Syed, John Thomason.
Creative Direction: Philipp Hubert.
Art Direction: Soohee Cho, Fei Liu.
Photo Editing: Ariel Zambelich, Andrea Wise.
Research Engineer: Akil Harris.
Copy Edit: Rashmee Kumar.
Product Development: LJ Ruell.
Software Engineering: Stephanie Harris, Carl Licata, Raby Yuson.
Editor-in-Chief: Betsy Reed.