Death Row Inmates by State: Counts, Methods, and Moratoriums

About 2,090 people were on death row in the United States as of early 2025, down from 2,192 at the end of 2023, and the population is concentrated in a small number of states.¹ Looking at death row inmates by state, California, Florida, and Texas together hold more than half of everyone under a sentence of death. Twenty-seven states, the federal government, and the U.S. military still authorize capital punishment, but only a handful actually carry out executions in any given year.

The National Picture

The Bureau of Justice Statistics counted 2,192 people under a sentence of death on December 31, 2023, a 3 percent drop from the 2,265 held a year earlier.¹ By early 2025 the count had fallen to roughly 2,090, the largest single-year decline in two decades.

The population is shrinking for a few reasons at once. Courts continue to overturn old sentences. Inmates die of natural causes after decades in condemned housing. And new death sentences have become rare: in the mid-1990s, courts imposed more than 320 death sentences a year; by 2019, that number was 31. Executions haven’t stopped, though. Nine states carried out 25 executions in 2024, and both federal and state execution activity picked up sharply in 2025.

States With the Largest Death Rows

Three states dominate the count. Based on the 2022 BJS tally, California held about 29 percent of all condemned inmates, Florida 13 percent, and Texas 8 percent.²

California had 667 people under a death sentence in the 2022 report and roughly 589 as of early 2025.² It still holds the country’s largest death row by a wide margin. California has not executed anyone since 2006, and a gubernatorial moratorium has been in place since 2019. The population declines only through court reversals, resentencing, and deaths in custody.

Florida held 304 people in the 2022 count, the second-largest death row in the country. Unlike California, Florida actively schedules and carries out executions.

Texas held 190 inmates in the same report. Texas has executed more people than any other state, and that ongoing pace keeps its death row smaller relative to the volume of sentences the state has imposed over the years.²

Below the top three, a middle tier of states holds roughly 100 to 150 people each: Alabama, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. The remaining states with active death penalty statutes generally house fewer than 50 condemned inmates apiece.

States That Actually Carry Out Executions

Having capital punishment on the books and using it are two different things. In 2024, nine states performed executions:

Alabama
Florida
Georgia
Indiana
Missouri
Oklahoma
South Carolina
Texas
Utah

Texas and Oklahoma have been the most frequent executors for decades and account for a disproportionate share of the national total. An active execution program means the state has resolved legal challenges to its lethal injection protocol, secured a supply of execution drugs, and has both legislative and executive willingness to sign death warrants.

Execution Methods by State

Lethal injection is the primary method everywhere that carries out executions, but backup methods vary. Alabama has used nitrogen hypoxia, becoming the first state to do so. Several states authorize electrocution as an alternative the inmate can elect. Mississippi and Oklahoma authorize four methods in a cascading order: lethal injection, then nitrogen hypoxia, then electrocution, then firing squad. Beginning in July 2026, Idaho will make the firing squad its primary method with lethal injection as the backup.

States With a Moratorium

Several states keep large death rows while refusing to carry out any executions. A moratorium is a temporary pause ordered by the governor, not a change to the criminal code. The penalty stays on the books, courts can still impose it, and inmates still sit in condemned housing. The governor simply declines to sign warrants.

California’s moratorium is the most consequential because of the state’s massive death row. Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order in 2019 granting reprieves to all condemned inmates and shutting down the execution chamber at San Quentin. Oregon’s governor has continued a moratorium that dates back over a decade, and the state’s legislature has narrowed its capital statute so much that only a few existing cases remain death-eligible. Pennsylvania’s governor has pledged not to sign any death warrants during his term and has called on the legislature to abolish the penalty outright.

A moratorium lasts only as long as the governor who imposed it. A successor can lift it and begin scheduling executions immediately, which leaves hundreds of inmates formally sentenced to death but with no execution date in sight.

States That Have Abolished the Death Penalty

Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have abolished capital punishment entirely. Michigan was first, in 1847. Maine and Wisconsin followed before 1900. A more recent wave of abolitions began in 2007:

2007: New Jersey and New York (New York’s statute was struck down by its highest court in 2004, and the legislature did not reenact it)
2009: New Mexico
2011: Illinois
2012: Connecticut
2013: Maryland
2016: Delaware, by state supreme court ruling
2018: Washington, declared unconstitutional by the state supreme court as arbitrarily and racially biased, then formally repealed by the legislature
2019: New Hampshire, when the legislature overrode the governor’s veto
2020: Colorado
2021: Virginia, the first Southern state to abolish

When a state abolishes the death penalty, existing death sentences typically convert to life without parole, the condemned housing is dismantled, and the option to seek a death sentence in future cases disappears. A court ruling striking down the penalty has the same practical effect, though the legislature sometimes follows up with a formal statutory repeal.

Federal and Military Death Row

The federal government and the U.S. military run their own capital systems, separate from any state. Federal death row inmates are housed at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. The federal death penalty applies to crimes like espionage, treason, large-scale drug trafficking resulting in death, and murders connected to federal jurisdiction, regardless of whether the state where the crime occurred has its own death penalty.³

The Biden administration imposed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021, pausing activity after 13 executions took place in the final months of the first Trump administration. In 2025, the Department of Justice formally rescinded the moratorium, clearing the way for federal executions to resume once condemned inmates exhaust their appeals. DOJ also announced plans to restrict clemency petitions from capital inmates until direct appeals and initial post-conviction challenges are resolved.⁴

Under federal law, the manner of execution follows the law of the state where the sentence was imposed; if that state has no method, the court designates another state whose law applies.⁵

Military death row currently holds four inmates at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The Uniform Code of Military Justice authorizes the death penalty for certain court-martial offenses, but a military execution requires personal approval of the death warrant by the President.⁶ No military execution has taken place since 1961.

Why the Numbers Keep Falling

The steady drop in the national death row population reflects the same trends showing up across the state figures: sharply fewer new sentences, active abolition in the Northeast and West, long-running moratoriums in states with the largest populations, and appellate courts overturning older sentences. In the states that still execute, warrants continue to be signed. In the states that don’t, the population thins through attrition rather than execution. The result is a system where the number of people condemned to die is falling every year, but where the person’s state still determines almost everything about what that sentence actually means.

1
Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment, 2023 – Statistical Tables
2
Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment, 2022 – Statistical Tables
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3591 – Sentence of Death
4
United States Department of Justice. The Justice Department Takes Actions to Strengthen the Federal Death Penalty
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3596 – Implementation of a Sentence of Death
6
Justia. 10 USC 871 – Art 71 Execution of Sentence Suspension of Sentence