Tracy L. Snell, Bureau of Justice Statistics

December 10, 2000    NCJ 184795

Presents characteristics of persons under sentence of death on December 31, 1999, and of persons executed in 1999. Preliminary data on executions in 2000 include State, method used, and race of inmate. The report summarizes the movement of prisoners into and out of death sentence status during 1999. Numerical tables present data on offenders' sex, race, Hispanic origin, education, marital status, age at time of arrest for capital offense, legal status at time of capital offense, methods of execution, trends, and time between imposition of death sentence and execution. Historical tables present executions since 1930 and sentencing since 1973.

Highlights:

• At yearend 1999, 37 States and the Federal prison system held 3,527 prisoners under sentence of death, 2% more than in 1998.
• The 325 Hispanic inmates under sentence of death accounted for 10% of inmates with a known ethnicity.
• Fifty women were under a sentence of death in 1999, up from 35 in 1990.
• Among persons for whom arrest information was available, the average age at time of arrest was 28; 2% of inmates were age 17 or younger. At yearend the youngest inmate was 18; the oldest was 84.

Part of the Capital Punishment Series

Press Release
Full report (PDF 85K)
ASCII file (44K)
Spreadsheet (18K)
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