THERE are more than 50 prisoners on death row in the US.
Nine people have already been executed this year as the Trump administration rushes to put inmates to death before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
There are currently 53 prisoners on death row in the US.
22 of those prisoners are white, 23 are black, seven are Latino and one is Asian.
This number includes one person whose death sentence reversal is still subject to a possible appeal.
Gary Alvord was the nation’s longest serving death row inmate.
He was sentenced to death on April 9, 1974, and spent 40 years behind bars before he died of natural causes in 2013.
Alvord was 66-years-old when he died.
He was convicted of murdering Georgia Tully, 53; Ann Herrman, 36, and Lynne Herrman, 18 in Hillsborough County, Florida, after breaking into a residence and strangling the women with a nylon cord.
Alvord raped Lynne before killing her.
He suffered from schizophrenia and had no close family.
In the time Alvord spent on death row, 75 other inmates were executed in Florida.
Bill Sheppard, who represented Alvord for almost four decades, said, “Gary is a product of a sick system. He was a living example of why we should not have the death penalty…. I would love for the state of Florida to tell us how much money they wasted trying to kill a guy they couldn’t kill.
“The death penalty is getting us nothing but broke.”
The death penalty is legal in 31 states.
There are sixteen people that have been executed this year so far, the highest in a single year since 1896.
These are:
The US government has been rushing to put inmates to death in a pandemic before President Donald Trump leaves office.
In recent years, New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire and Colorado have legally abolished the death penalty.
In many US states, death row prisoners create a menu for their last meal.
Food photographer Henry Hargreaves compiled a photograph series of death row inmates’ last meals after becoming fascinated with the tradition in 2011.
“I dug into [researching] it … and found a public record [of the meals]. For the first time, these people became humanized,” he told Business Insider.
His series No Seconds and A Year of Killing explore the inmates’ requested last meals through staged photographs.
“You don’t know if they’re being served on china plates, or plastic, or eating on their laps, or at a wooden table, so I tried to explore all these variations,” he said.
Victor Feguer who was lethally injected in 1963 for kidnap and murder requested a single olive with a pit in it for his last meal.
Notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy who was convicted of rape and 33 counts of murder ordered 12 fried shrimp, a bucket of original recipe KFC, french fries, and a pound of strawberries before he was lethally injected.
Timothy McVeigh, a domestic terrorist who carried out the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, wanted two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream.
Stephen Anderson, who died by lethal injection in 2002 for his crimes, specifically wanted two grilled cheese sandwiches, a pint of cottage cheese, Hominy/corn mixture, peach pie, chocolate-chip ice cream and radishes.
