At least 420 people have died in custody in Delaware

How deaths in custody are reported in Delaware

Delaware has no county or city jails. The Delaware Department of Correction runs the state's four prisons, and it holds people awaiting trial as well as people serving sentences.¹² The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics counts Delaware's prisons and jails as one integrated system; by its count, at least 287 people died in the department's custody from 2001 through 2019, at least 33 of them by suicide.³ Children are held by the Division of Youth Rehabilitative Services of the Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families, at the Stevenson House Detention Center in Milford, the New Castle County Detention Center and the Ferris School.⁴⁵

The Department of Correction announces deaths in news releases, posted in its online newsroom from 2016 on, that give the person's name and age, the prison, and the time and place of death.⁶⁷ The Adult Correction Healthcare Review Committee, nine appointed members placed within the Criminal Justice Council, must review the medical records and autopsies of every person who dies while incarcerated, and it reports once a year to the governor and the General Assembly. State law says the committee is not a public body.⁸

For the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act, the Criminal Justice Council has the Statistical Analysis Center collect a report on each death from police agencies, the Department of Correction and the Division of Youth Rehabilitative Services, and a quarterly form from each agency that had none. The center asks for the first report within 15 business days of a death and says it searches for deaths that were not reported. It holds that the agencies own the data, and the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance does not release identifiable records.⁹ Senate Bill 291, signed on July 23, 2026, wrote these duties into state law. It requires the medical examiner to mark the death record of anyone who dies in custody, requires the Criminal Justice Council to report each agency's compliance to the governor and the General Assembly by December 1 each year, and has the Department of Justice check those reports. An agency the council finds out of compliance loses certain federal and state grants until it complies.¹⁰¹¹

What has changed

1. 1731Colonial authorities burned Catherine Bevan alive. Before 1976, Delaware executed at least 24 people.¹²
2. 1903George White, a Black farm laborer, was held in the New Castle County Workhouse. On June 21, a local minister urged at least 3,000 white residents to take vengeance on him. Two mobs had already tried to take him from the workhouse, and members of a third told police their plans in advance, but the authorities did not move him. Early on June 23, a crowd of thousands stormed the workhouse; officers led the mob to his cell and handed him over. The mob took him to Price's Corner and burned him alive, and people took pieces of his remains. No one was convicted.¹³¹⁴ A state historical marker was unveiled in June 2019, stolen weeks later, and replaced in October.¹⁵
3. 1958-1961Delaware abolished the death penalty in 1958; in 1961 the legislature restored it over the governor's veto.¹²
4. 1992-1996Delaware executed Steven Pennell in 1992, its first execution after 1976. In 1991 the legislature had given judges, not juries, the final say on death sentences. On January 25, 1996, Billy Bailey, who had been sentenced before lethal injection replaced hanging, chose to be hanged, the third hanging in the United States since 1976. The gallows were taken down in 2003.¹²¹⁶
5. 2006After a U.S. Department of Justice investigation, the department concluded that medical care, mental health care and suicide prevention at four Delaware prisons violated the constitutional rights of the people held there. Delaware signed an agreement with the department on December 29, 2006, and was released from it in 2012.¹⁷¹⁸ The Adult Correction Healthcare Review Committee was created in response.¹⁸
6. 2011Robert Jackson III was executed on July 29. He was 18 at the time of the offense and spent 18 years on death row. He said he was innocent and, at his execution, implied that another man was responsible. He challenged the state's new use of pentobarbital in executions, without success.¹²
7. 2012In January, Governor Jack Markell granted clemency to Robert Gattis, the first clemency for a person on death row in state history.¹² On April 20, Delaware executed Shannon Johnson, who had given up his appeals; it was the state's last execution, and its 16th since 1992.¹⁶ Lawyers for his relatives sought a review of his mental state. Chief U.S. District Judge Gregory Sleet twice stayed the execution over flaws in the state's competency proceedings, and the Third Circuit lifted both stays. Sleet later wrote that the execution "highlights profound failings in our judicial process."¹⁹
8. 2014Ronald Shoup, 48, died in February at Sussex Correctional Institution. Officers restrained him four times while he was in alcohol withdrawal; the last time, they put their weight on him as he lay face down and broke dozens of his ribs, according to the autopsies cited in his family's lawsuit. His death was ruled a homicide from blunt force injuries. In December 2015 Attorney General Matt Denn charged no one.²⁰²¹
9. 2016In April, James J. Daniels, 40, collapsed in the dining hall of the Sussex Community Corrections Center. A nurse for the department's medical contractor, Connections Community Support Programs, left him in distress more than once and waited about 18 minutes, until she found no pulse, to call 911; the company's policy barred calling 911 without its chief medical officer's approval unless a person was in cardiac arrest or had been found hanging. He died at Beebe Medical Center about an hour later. The state Board of Nursing suspended her license for a year.²² On August 2, in Rauf v. State, the Delaware Supreme Court struck down the death penalty statute because it let judges, not juries, find the facts needed for a death sentence and allowed death sentences without a unanimous jury. On December 15 it applied the ruling to the 13 people on death row.²³
10. 2017On January 19, Isaiah McCoy was acquitted at a retrial and freed. The Delaware Supreme Court had overturned his conviction in 2015 because of prosecutorial misconduct.¹²
11. 2018Tiffany Reeves, 37, died at Sussex Correctional Institution on October 8. A Connections nurse failed to give her methadone during opioid withdrawal, then falsified records and lied to law enforcement, and in 2021 was convicted of record tampering. Her mother's lawsuit was dismissed because her lawyer failed to serve the defendants on time.²⁴² Luis Cabrera, 49, died in his cell at Howard R. Young Correctional Institution on November 8, of a perforated ulcer. According to his family's lawsuit, nurses recorded him crying and writhing in pain for about three days; the family's lawyer said staff never sent him to a hospital.²⁵
12. 2019A review by ChristianaCare, ordered by Correction Commissioner Claire DeMatteis, found that health care for people in Delaware prisons had not been improving. The Attorney General's office was investigating allegations that Connections had ordered staff to forge records of mental health treatment that never took place.²⁶
13. 2020-2023At least 13 people held in Delaware prisons died of COVID-19, by the count of the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project.²⁷ Centurion, a subsidiary of Centene Corp., ran prison health care during the pandemic. In October 2023 the ACLU of Delaware filed a class action against prison officials, Centurion, Centene and the new contractor, VitalCore, saying they delayed and denied care and "have shortened the lives of hundreds of incarcerated persons."¹ Two whistleblowers had filed a fraud suit against Centurion in September 2023; Attorney General Kathy Jennings later joined it.²⁸¹⁸
14. 2024On September 26, Governor John Carney signed House Bill 70, removing the death penalty from state law.²³
15. 2026On April 19, Fred O'Neal III, 73, held by the Department of Correction at the Delaware Psychiatric Hospital in New Castle, was critically injured; State Police said another person held there injured him. He died at a hospital.²⁹ On May 28, Shane Mullen, 49, died by suicide while held alone in a holding cell at Delaware State Police Troop 3 in Camden.³⁰ In May, a staff report of the Division of Legislative Services found that "Delaware lacks a health care oversight system with the independence, structure, and data-driven processes needed to identify systemic issues."¹⁸ On July 23, Governor Matt Meyer signed Senate Bill 291 on reporting deaths in custody.¹¹ The same day, Superior Court Judge Calvin Scott issued a certificate of innocence to Jermaine "Marlow" Wright, sentenced to death in 1992 on a confession he gave while under the influence of heroin and the false testimony of a jailhouse informant; prosecutors had withheld evidence that pointed elsewhere.³¹

How far the official numbers can be trusted

The committee that must review every death in the prisons reports far fewer deaths than the department announces. For January through November 2019, the Adult Correction Healthcare Review Committee reported reviewing 13 deaths, 29 morbidity and mortality reports and nine autopsies.³² For the same months of 2025 it reported two deaths, one mortality review and no autopsies.³³ In those months the department announced by name the deaths of at least 16 people in its custody.³⁴ Both reports say, in the same words, that the department may wait more than six months for the autopsy in an uncomplicated case, which keeps the committee from doing its work; the 2025 report adds that when a homicide, an accidental overdose or a crime is suspected, the Division of Forensic Science must get the Department of Justice's approval before it releases the autopsy.³²³³

The department's news releases do not cover every death. In 2016 it announced eight deaths by name, while it reported 14 deaths that year to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.³⁵³ The death of Fred O'Neal III in April 2026 was announced by the Delaware State Police; the department's newsroom has no release about it.²⁹⁶ The list of deaths from 2015 through 2019 that the department released to the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project has 65 deaths, five fewer than the department reported to the Bureau of Justice Statistics for those years.³⁶³