Yes, death row is still a thing in the United States. About 2,092 men and women were under a sentence of death at the start of 2025, 27 states still authorize capital punishment, and 25 people were executed in 2024.1Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment, 2023 – Statistical Tables The population has been shrinking for two decades, several states have paused or abolished executions, and the pace is nowhere near its late-1990s peak. But the housing units, the legal framework, and the people living under a death sentence are all still in place.
How Many People Are on Death Row Right Now
Roughly 2,092 people were on death row or awaiting capital resentencing at the start of 2025. The Bureau of Justice Statistics counted 2,331 at year-end 2023, down from a peak of around 3,600 in the early 2000s.1Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment, 2023 – Statistical Tables Three drivers explain the decline: fewer new death sentences, more court reversals, and natural deaths in custody.
Executions have continued at a modest pace. Twenty-five people were put to death in 2024, and 27 had been executed in the first seven months of 2025. Those figures sit far below the late-1990s high of close to 100 per year, but they confirm that death row is not a legal fossil. For a share of the people housed there, it still ends in an execution chamber.
Which States Still Have the Death Penalty
Twenty-seven states have active death penalty statutes. The federal government operates under its own authority through the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994, which lets prosecutors seek death for certain federal crimes regardless of where the offense occurred.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3591 – Sentence of Death Three people remained on federal death row as of early 2025. The military maintains a separate condemned population of seven service members, though the last military execution took place in 1961.
The direction over the past decade has been toward fewer death penalty states, not more. New Hampshire repealed its statute in 2019, Colorado in 2020, Virginia in 2021, and Washington in 2023. Virginia’s repeal stood out because the state had historically carried out more executions than almost any other. No state that abolished the death penalty during this stretch has reinstated it.
States Where the Law Exists but No One Is Being Executed
Having a death penalty on the books is not the same as using it. Several governors have paused executions indefinitely by executive action. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order in 2019 that imposed a moratorium, withdrew the state’s lethal injection protocol, and closed the execution chamber at San Quentin.3Governor of California. Governor Gavin Newsom Orders a Halt to the Death Penalty in California That order is still in effect, and California still holds the country’s largest condemned population at roughly 589 people. Pennsylvania and Oregon have maintained their own executive pauses for years. Ohio’s governor said in early 2025 that he does not expect any executions during his term.
The result is a strange limbo. Hundreds of people remain legally sentenced to death with no execution date in sight. Sentences stand, appeals continue, and daily life in a condemned housing unit goes on. The physical act of carrying out the sentence is simply frozen for as long as the current governor keeps the pause in place, and a successor could lift it on day one.
The Federal Death Penalty Keeps Turning On and Off
Federal policy has swung sharply with each change in administration. During President Trump’s first term, the federal government executed 13 people between July 2020 and January 2021, breaking a 17-year gap in federal executions. In July 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland imposed a moratorium on federal executions under President Biden. That moratorium held until February 2025, when Attorney General Pamela Bondi lifted it under a directive from President Trump.4Congress.gov. Implementing President Trump’s Order The Department of Justice has also moved to expand the federal execution protocol beyond lethal injection to include the firing squad.5United States Department of Justice. The Justice Department Takes Actions to Strengthen the Federal Death Penalty
Federal death row inmates face a layer of uncertainty beyond the ordinary unpredictability of capital punishment. Whether the government is scheduling executions or standing down depends almost entirely on who won the last presidential election.
What Death Row Actually Looks Like
The physical reality of death row is extreme isolation. Most condemned inmates are locked in a small single cell for 22 to 24 hours a day with severely limited human contact. Family visits are typically non-contact, conducted through glass. Access to the educational programs, vocational training, and recreation available in general population is sharply reduced or absent. The cells were designed as temporary holding, but the actual timeline has turned them into long-term housing.
That timeline keeps stretching. More than half of all current death row inmates have been there for over 18 years. People executed in 2025 had spent an average of 27 years awaiting their sentence. Some have been on death row for more than 40 years. Researchers and courts have documented serious mental health deterioration in long-term condemned populations, sometimes called “death row syndrome,” including anxiety, psychosis, and suicidal behavior. The population is also aging, with hundreds of inmates now over 60.
So when people ask whether death row is still a thing, this is often what they’re really asking about: a system that was supposed to be a short holding period before execution, but functions for most of its population as decades of near-solitary confinement that may or may not end in a death chamber.
Why People Stay on Death Row for Decades
The reason sentences take so long to carry out is the appeals process, which is long by design. Capital cases move through several layers, each meant to catch errors a prior court missed:
- Direct appeal to the state’s highest criminal court, with a possible petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, which accepts only about 1% of cases it receives.
- State post-conviction review, where the defense raises issues outside the trial record, such as ineffective counsel, prosecutorial misconduct, or newly discovered evidence.
- Federal habeas corpus in federal district court, arguing that confinement violates the U.S. Constitution. Federal legislation passed in 1996 significantly restricted these petitions, but they remain a critical safeguard, with further appeals possible to a federal circuit court and the Supreme Court.
Each stage can run several years. The cumulative result is the 27-year average between sentence and execution seen in 2025. The length frustrates everyone: opponents view decades of confinement as its own form of cruelty, while supporters see it as an inexcusable delay in carrying out a lawful sentence.
Exonerations and Wrongful Convictions
Since 1973, at least 202 people sentenced to death in the United States have been exonerated of all charges tied to their capital convictions. The most common causes are official misconduct and perjury or false accusations. Discredited forensic techniques, including investigative hypnosis, and the denial of access to DNA testing have shown up repeatedly as well.
A structural issue is that appeals focus mostly on legal errors rather than factual innocence. A defendant can have strong evidence of innocence and still lose on appeal if no procedural rule was violated at trial. Several of the 202 exonerees spent 30 or more years on death row before they were cleared. Seventeen people exonerated between 2010 and 2021 had waited at least 25 years. These cases are a significant reason public support for the death penalty, while still above 50%, has declined over the past two decades, and a significant reason the overall death row population continues to shrink without being eliminated.
The Short Answer
Death row exists, it holds thousands of people, and executions are still being carried out. It is also smaller than it used to be, concentrated in fewer states, paused in some of the largest ones, and shaped by a federal policy that can reverse with a new administration. Whether you encounter it as a legal reality or a political question depends mostly on which state you live in and what the current governor or president has decided to do with the authority already on the books.