Presents characteristics of persons under sentence of death on December 31, 2009, and persons executed in 2009. Preliminary data on executions by states during 2010 are included. Tables present state-by-state information on the movement of prisoners into and out of death sentence status during 2009, status of capital statutes, and methods of execution. Numerical tables also summarize data on offender characteristics such as gender, race, Hispanic origin, age at time of arrest for capital offense, legal status at time of capital offense, and time between imposition of death sentence and execution. Data are from the National Prisoner Statistics (NPS-8) series.

• In 2009, 52 inmates were executed: 24 in Texas; 6 in Alabama; 5 in Ohio; 3 each in Georgia, Oklahoma, and Virginia; 2 each in Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee; and 1 each in Indiana and Missouri.
• 51 executions were by lethal injection; 1 by electrocution.
• From January through November in 2010, 12 states executed 45 inmates, 3 fewer than the number executed during the same period in 2009.