IStock Photo 9307390 © Georg Winkens

Tomorrow, November 10, John Allen Muhammad, one of the 2 DC-area snipers who randomly shot and killed 10 people in 2002, is slated for execution. Since the 1608 execution of Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony of Virginia—the first recorded application of the death penalty in America—capital punishment has remained one of the most enduring cultural institutions in the United States. Even as many countries have rejected the state’s right to end a life, American support for the death penalty is widespread, although declining. According to a 2008 Gallup Poll, most Americans, 64%, support the death penalty; that number is down 5% from 2007 and down from a peak of 80% in 1994. At the end of 2007, thirty-seven states and the federal government had capital statutes in place and 3,220 inmates were held on death row across the country—a number that decreased in 2007 for the seventh consecutive year.

A look at the demographics of inmates held on death row reveals an interesting cross-section of the American population. In a country where 1 in 1.93 (52%) adults is female, women account for only 1 in 58.82 inmates sentenced to death. In the past 100 years, only 48 women have faced execution. In 2006 alone, 53 men met the same fate.

While the odds are 1 in 3.99 that a given adult has a bachelor’s degree or more education, only 1 in 10.87 death row inmates has attained some college education or more. This may have something to do with the relatively low median age of death row prisoners at the time they were arrested—27 years as compared to the national median age of 36.7 years. Still, with 2007’s youngest death row inmate aged 19 years, 1 in 7.25 prisoners on death row has no high school education, compared to 1 in 15.63 people 25 or older in the US population.

Race is the most controversial characteristic when it comes to the death row population. While 1 in 1.22 (82%) American adults is white and 1 in 8.19 adults is black, only 1 in 1.79 (56%) death row inmates is white while 1 in 2.39 inmates is black. Recent legislation like the Racial Justice Act, which was instituted in North Carolina in August 2009, has been aimed at preventing racial bias through the use of statistics and trends showing racial disparities in death sentences. The hope is to avoid situations in which the death penalty, rather than life in prison, is imposed on a defendant based on his or her skin color or the skin color of the victim of a crime.

Despite the large number of prisoners being held on death row awaiting execution, only 42 inmates were executed in 2007—1 in 76.67 inmates sentenced to death. Many still awaiting execution have been held for long periods of time. In 2007, the average inmate had spent 141 months or nearly 12 years on death row, often in solitary confinement, since being sentenced. This lag between sentencing and execution has resulted in an aging death row population. While only 0.1% of prisoners awaiting execution in 2007 were 65 or older at the time they were arrested, the odds a prisoner on death row has reached the age of 65 or older are 1 in 53.67.

An exception to all the odds is 94-year-old Viva Leroy Nash, currently the oldest person on death row, who has spent 69 years behind bars. Twice he escaped, the last time in 1982 at the age of 67. Within weeks of that escape, he robbed a coin shop and killed a 23-year-old who had just been married. Pending the results of upcoming legal review in Arizona, Nash is still hoping to get the opportunity to relinquish his undistinguished title.