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The new death penalty: COVID has now killed more US prisoners in months than the US death penalty has in the last two decades

By Douglas Berman

The UCLA Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project has been doing a terrific job keeping an updated count, via this spreadsheet, of confirmed COVID deaths of persons serving time in state and federal facilities.  As of the morning of Sunday, August 23, this UCLA accounting had tabulated 858 “Confirmed Deaths (Residents).” 

This considerable number is sad and disconcerting on its own terms, but it is even more remarkable given that it amounts to more prisoner deaths than has been produced by carrying out formal death sentences in the United States for the entire period from 2001 to 2020.  According to DPIC data, there were a total of 839 executions from the start of 2001 through today.

Of course, comparing capital punishment and COVID incarceration carnage is problematic in many ways.  All persons executed in the US in recent times have been convicted of the most aggravated forms of murder.  The majority of prisoners to die of COVID were not responsible for a death (although, as noted here, some persons on California’s death row are part of the COVID prisoner death count).  In a few prior posts here and here, I noted that nearly half of the early reported deaths of federal prisoners involved individuals serving time for drug crimes.  Another such offender died just last week according to this BOP press release: Luis A. Velez contracted COVID in FCI Coleman this summer and died on August 18; he was only 58-year-old and had been in federal prison for five years (of a 13-year sentence) after his conviction of possession with intent to distribute meth.

Another problem with comparing capital punishment and COVID incarceration carnage relates to that correctional staff do not die from administering capital punishment, but many have died from COVID.  The UCLA spreadsheet currently reports “only” 72 “Confirmed Deaths (Staff).  I am pleasantly surprised that this number is not bigger, but I will be ever troubled by the thought it could have been much lower along with the prisoner death number if more aggressive depopulation efforts were taken to more the most vulnerable and least risky offenders out of the super-spreader environment that prisons represent.

A few of many prior related posts: