As of 2015, there are 31 states with the death penalty, plus the federal government and the military. Nebraska was the last state to abolish the death penalty. And it was the first traditionally conservative state to do so. Prior to that, Maryland abolished the death penalty in 2013, Connecticut in 2012, and New Mexico in 2009. These states, however, had not made the law retroactive. So, there are still inmates awaiting execution in New Mexico and Connecticut, even though those states no longer sentence people to death. Notably, the state of Michigan has been without the death penalty the longest. It was abolished in 1846 and never reinstated. California and Florida have the largest death row populations. As of mid-2015, the most recent execution in Florida occurred in January 2015. California, however, has not executed anyone since 2006. One of the last people executed in California was Stanley Tookie Williams, who had helped found the gang of the street. , the Crips. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In 1979, Tookie participated in a pair of robberies that left four people dead. While on death row, Williams became an anti-violence advocate, writing children's books against gangs and violence. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. He was executed in 2005 after nearly 25 years on death row. Because California has not executed anyone since 2006, California voters voted in 2012 to repeal the death penalty based on the high cost the state was spending for not executing anyone. By a narrow margin, 52% to 48%, California residents voted in favor of retaining the death penalty. However, the state has yet to execute anyone since then. So what are people on death row like? They are generally middle aged. The average age is 47 years. But the population over sixty is growing. At the time of their arrest they were around 28 years old and most of them are single. Only a minority of people on death row are married, and about half have never finished high school. Most people on death row already have a conviction, but it is usually not another murder. Only 9% had a history of murder at the time of sentencing. Most people on death row have been there for a long time. Recall that Tookie Williams was on California's death row for 25 years before his execution. On average, a condemned man spends about 15 and a half years on death row before execution. And this time has already been increasing a few decades ago, when in 1993 the average time between conviction and execution was nine years. The nation's longest-serving inmate on death row, serving 40 years, was Gary Albert in Florida. He had spent more time on death row than any other inmate in the country, but he died of natural causes in May 2013. He was 66 and had been sentenced to death in 1974. Death penalty experts doubt, however, that he would never have been executed. He suffered from schizophrenia. Most recently, on June 3, 2015, Texas executed Lester Bower, Jr, who had been on death row for 31 years before being executed. He was 67 when he died and was the oldest inmate on death row. By far, the vast majority of people on death row are men. Of the people currently on death row, about 43 percent are white and nearly a percent are black. The representation of Latinos on death row is growing and amounts to approximately 13%. Now let's talkspecifically the death penalty in Florida. There are approximately 400 men and women on death row in Florida, more than any other state except California. All but four of these people are men, and most of the people on death row are white. There have been 90 executions in Florida since Greg v. Georgia reinstated the death penalty in 1976. That represents about 8 percent of all people who have been sentenced to death in the state. Most of these executions occurred for crimes committed in Miami Dade County. Most executions in Florida are by lethal injection, although the state has used electrocution in the past. We'll talk more about this in a future module. One aspect of Florida's death row that sets it apart from most states is that a judge, not the jury, makes the final sentencing decision. In all but three U.S. states, the jury decides whether a defendant should be sentenced to life in prison or death. And the jurors must unanimously agree on that decision. In Florida, however, the jury only provides a recommended sentence to the judge, after which the judge will make the final life or death decision. Furthermore, in Florida, that recommendation does not have to be unanimous. People in Florida were sentenced to death by 8 recommendations to 4, 9 to 3, 10 to 2. In most other states, however, since these are not unanimous votes, the defendant would have been sentenced to life in prison. The ability of a judge to make a decision is called judicial override, because the judge can ignore or change the jury's recommendation. Clemency is an appeal, usually to the governor or a clemency committee, for mercy. When a death row inmate asks for clemency, he is simply asking for mercy so that the governor or the clemency committee will spare his life. The prisoner is not released, but his sentence is converted to life imprisonment without parole. Leniency can be granted for any reason, although it is usually because there may be evidence that the defendant may not be guilty. Only six pardons have been granted in Florida, and none in the modern era of the death penalty. This is in contrast to other states. Texas issued two clemencies. Ohio issued 18. And in 2000, former Republican Illinois governor George Ryan granted clemency to every death row inmate. At the time he did so, Illinois had executed 13 inmates, but released 12 as innocent. And the conservative governor didn't like this. 25 innocent men have been released from death row in Florida. Well, 24 people were released and one of them died on death row before DNA evidence proved he was not guilty. That man, Frank Lee Smith, was sentenced to death in 1984 and wrongfully spent 14 years on death row before dying of cancer. He was acquitted of the crime 11 months after his death. The DNA also showed who committed the crime for which Frank had been convicted. Eddie Lee Mosley, a serial killer who went on to kill between 8 and 16 women before he was caught in 1988. Mosley's DNA was linked to at least one other wrongfully convicted man on death row in Florida. There have been more innocent people released from death row in Florida than in any other state. Also in Florida, in June 2013, Governor Rick Scott signed the Timely Justice Act of 2013. The law is designed to overhaul and expedite the capital punishment process. Creates tighter timeframes for a person sentenced to death to appeal post-conviction motions and imposes progress reporting requirementsof the case. It is up to the governor of each state to set an execution date for death row inmates. Some governors do not issue any death certificates and no one is executed during their term. As of July 2015, Florida governors Jeb Bush and Rick Scott have issued death certificates to more death row inmates than any other Florida governor, although the impending execution of Jerry Correll would put Scott at the top of the list, and It still has another 3 1/2 years left on it. As of mid-2015, there have been just over 1,400 executions in the United States since 1976. Most of these executions took place in Texas and Oklahoma, although Virginia is nearby. Texas and Oklahoma alone account for about half of all executions in the United States. The first decades of US history saw a greater number of executions. There were more executions in the 1930s than in any other decade in U.S. history. You can see the period when Furman collidesGeorgia was introduced, and then in 1976, when executions slowly resumed. In Florida there were seven executions. All executions in this country used lethal injection in 2014, although you may see different combinations of one, two or three drugs. Lethal injection is a current death penalty controversy in the United States today. And the different combinations represent states' efforts to replace the traditional three-drug combination when one of the key drugs was no longer being produced. Most executions take place in the south. A few occur in the west and northeast. Once again, Texas and Oklahoma account for a large portion of all executions in the United States. The vast majority of executions are by lethal injection, although the electric chair, gas chamber, hanging, and firing squad have been used since 1976. Rarely, historically, the United States has also used burning, pressing, extraction and quartering. as methods of execution in the 1600s, 1700s, and 1800s. If you look at all executions since the United States became a state, hanging is the most common technique. Now let's talk about people executed in the United States. Of those executed, 98.9% were men. And just over half of those executed were white and 34% were black. Before 1976, 56 percent of those executed for murder were black. And when we look at rape executions, which was outlawed in 1977, 98% of the people executed were black men, for the rape of a white woman. Back in the modern era, victims in death penalty cases were divided fairly evenly by gender. 49% of the victims were women and 51% were men. But a disproportionate number of victims were white. This means that if you kill a white person in the United States, you are more likely to be executed than someone who kills victims of any other race. This is disproportionate because whites represent only half of all homicide victims in the United States, but account for 77% of victims of executed defendants. Race still plays a role in who is executed in this country. Before Furman v. Georgia, black defendants were much more likely to be sentenced to death and executed than white defendants. And this played a key role in the Supreme Court's decision to temporarily suspend the death penalty. And since then, we still see evidence of a racial disparity, but linked more to white victims than black defendants. That is, a defendant is more likely to be executed for murder if the victim is white, regardless of the defendant's race or ethnicity. This trend holds true in all states. A defendant is more likely to come