Presents statistics on the death penalty. The report discusses the number of states that have authorized the death penalty, the methods of execution, and the number and demographics of prisoners who were under sentence of death during 2019. The report also provides data on the number of prisoners executed in 2019 and advance counts of executions in 2020. Findings are based on data from BJS’s Capital Punishment (NPS-8) series, which has annually collected data on national and state-level year-end counts of persons sentenced to death since 1953 and persons executed since 1930.
• Eleven states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) received a total of 31 prisoners under sentence of death in 2019.
• Seven states executed a total of 22 prisoners in 2019
• Twenty-one states and the BOP removed a total of 65 prisoners from under sentence of death by means other than execution.
• The New Hampshire legislature repealed the death penalty provision of the capital murder statute, but the repeal was prospective, leaving one male prisoner under a previously imposed sentence of death.
• The New Mexico Supreme Court declared the state capital statute unconstitutional, and the two prisoners under sentence of death were resentenced to life.