50 Insane Death Row Facts Nobody Tells You

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There’s only one thing we want to tell you in this introduction, and that’s the fact you really don’t want to end up on death row. After hearing these 50 facts we guarantee you that your mind will be blown. 50. Ok, some hard facts first. Some of you might be wondering what exactly is death row. Well, it’s simply the name for a part of prison where inmates await their execution. For instance, if you get sentenced to death in California you’ll go to a death row unit at either Corcoran State Prison or San Quentin Prison. You’re thinking, tell me something I don’t know…ok, how about the fact that California leads the U.S. in terms of how many people are on death row. The current number is 725 as of January 1st, 2020. ‘ Florida is next with 347 death row inmates and Texas gets the bronze with 218 death row inmates. 49. We’ll give you some more hard facts soon, but let’s now add some insanity to this story. As you might guess, some death row inmates are not of a sound mind. They might not have been declared insane in the courts, but it’s very likely they were very much certifiably mad. In 2004, a man named Andre Thomas killed his estranged wife and two children. He used a different knife for each killing, later saying he didn’t want to contaminate them with “demons”. He removed some of their organs and subsequently stabbed himself in the chest. “He then left a voicemail message for his dead wife’s parents. It went like this, “I need y'alls help, something bad is happening to me and it keeps happening and I don't know what's going on. I need some help, I think I'm in hell. I need help.” He turned himself in and confessed to what he had done. While he was in jail he removed one of his eyes, and later three doctors confirmed this guy had schizophrenia. The state didn’t care, and the man stood trial and was sentenced to death. While serving time on death row he removed another eye... and proceeded to eat it. He’s still waiting for his execution. Yep, that’s a crazy story, and they will get even crazier. 48. So, which states have executed the most death row inmates since 1976? The top three states are: Oklahoma with 112, Virginia with one more at 113, and Texas far away at number one with 566 executions. 47. A lot of you don’t know this, but it can take a really long time to get yourself executed, often between 15 and 20 years. The average time spent on death row before execution or release – yep, a lot of guys have been innocent on death row – is 16 years. 46. People literally go mad waiting to be killed by the state, and this madness is actually a phenomenon with a name. It’s called, “death row phenomenon”, and we are going to talk more about that later. For now, all you need to know is it means basically losing your mind. 45. Ok, so you can spend a lot of time on death row. As you’ll see, more inmates on death row have been innocent that you would believe. In fact. It’s mind-blowing, and sad, just how many folks have gotten off death row. One man spent 39 years there and his name was Gary Alvord. He murdered three people and was sentenced in 1974, but like the guy we just talked about, he had a long history of severe mental illnesses including schizophrenia. The state knew very well he was totally insane, and that’s why he could never be executed. He waited 39 years and saw 75 other death row inmates in Florida leave and never come back. He died of a brain tumor in 2013. 44. Ok, so one more person that spent a long time on death row was a guy named Jack Alderman, and he spent 33 years fighting for his freedom. He was accused of killing his wife, although there was no forensic evidence and the story is just plain weird. He was sentenced only on the testimony of another man…a man who might have actually been the killer. The execution of Alderman has been called a gross miscarriage of justice, because it is highly unlikely he killed his wife. He was offered all kinds of deals, and wouldn’t have been executed if he’d only said he was guilty. He refused to do this every time he was offered a plea deal, and said he just couldn’t admit to doing something he hadn’t done. He was executed in 2008. 43. You don’t actually have to kill someone to be convicted of murder. You can end up on death row having been convicted of murder, but you might not have been sentenced for actually killing someone. 42. If that’s confusing to you, here’s a story. One night you are hanging out at the park, but this particular night there are a couple of guys you don’t know that well. All you guys get a bit drunk and then decide to go into town. Those two new guys get into a fight. They beat some dude so bad he dies. You were merely there, and you didn’t even throw a punch, plus you didn’t know these guys very well. But if you’re poor, have a crappy lawyer and maybe a couple of minor crimes to your name, you might be charged with something called “felony murder.” If you are African American you are even more screwed. Sadly, racial bias in the American justice system is still prevalent. Ok, the point is, you sometimes just have to be there. If you do your research, you’ll find lists of people who were executed for just being there. It was the other guy that pulled the trigger or stuck in the blade. You’ll find names such as G.W. Green, Carlos Santana, Joseph Garcia and many more. 41. One more thing you need to know is that you could get charged for murder if one of your friends dies. Yep, if you’ve heard of the “Elkhart Four”, you’ll know that four kids decided to burglarize a house and the house owner shot and killed one of those kids. The three other kids were charged with felony murder and were looking as 55, 50 and 55 years behind bars… for something some guy did when protecting his house. They didn’t end up spending any time on death row and eventually got much lower sentences, but it’s a warning to you all. 40. A guy named Nick Yarris spent 22 years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. He educated himself there, and he was later released after DNA evidence proved that he did not commit the crime. Yarris sued the Delaware County District Attorney's Office and the settlement was $3 million. You can see his story in the documentary film, “The Fear of 13.” 39. What about lethal injection, what is that? It’s a three shot cocktail. The first part is usually sodium thiopental, a super-strength barbiturate that basically knocks the person out. Then, pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant, should make the lungs not work so well and the third part is potassium chloride. Enough of this will affect the heart and should bring on cardiac arrest. We should also say that certain states have their own recipes. 38. Actually, lethal injection, while generally viewed as the most humane form of execution in modern times, has a really high botch rate at 7.1 percent. Yep, that’s a lot of botching, and you could ask if the formidable guillotine at least caused less pain for some folks. Firing squads also had a 100 percent success rate. The botch rate of the electric chair is 1.9 percent, hanging, 3.1 percent, and the gas chamber, 5.4 percent. 37. You might now be thinking, wait a minute, in recent years there have been bodies piling up all over the USA during what we call the opioid crisis. In 2018, there were 46,802 deaths related to opioids such as heroin and fentanyl and the new tidal wave of prescription opioids. The numbers were similar in 2017 and 2019. So, that's around 150,000 deaths, which if you’ve ever seen one, pretty much means going to sleep and not waking up. It seems pretty humane. Since 1999, there have been around 800,000 deaths in the USA because of drugs, and mainly the deaths were opiate related, although the opiates might have been mixed with another drug such as a benzodiazepine. Then there’s the lethal threesome, the opioid, the benzo… and the booze. Anyway, some people have said why not give people a strong drug like Fentanyl when you want to execute them. It’s obviously a formidable killer on the streets, so why not mainline murderers with it. Well, in 2018, Nebraska became the first state to use Fentanyl as part of a lethal injection and they even threw in a benzodiazepine. They knocked him out with the opioid, slowed him down with the relaxant, and for good measure they threw in some of the heart stopping potassium chloride. 36. Lethal injection often fails simply because the executioners can’t find a vein, but on one occasion they actually injected the substances into the flesh of a man and not his veins. 35 minutes later and he got another shot. That kind of timeframe is what we now call “cruel and unusual punishment.” Others have just reacted badly to the cocktail, with their bodies going into spasms and moans coming from their mouths. Still, the real horror stories involved the gas chamber and the electric chair. This you’ll hear about later. 35. There might also be two separate cartridges during a lethal injection. The second one is a back-up. 34. A guy named Romell Broom actually survived his execution in 2009. Over the period of two hours, the executioners tried to find a vein. Romell, reportedly sobbing at times, even helped them. But it failed. They took him off the gurney and the state was accused of “cruel and unusual punishment.” Romell is still on death row today. 33. Ok, so this was before modern death row, but when the British first settled in the colonies they had a list of 222 crimes that were punishable by death. If you destroyed a fish pond you could die. Or if you messed with a rabbit warren you could be strung up. Painting your face black at night was also a capital crime. Yep, that’s crazy, but we have more “crazy” down the line. 32. Serial killer Phillip Carl Jablonski was on San Quentin’s death row for many years. He was an avid letter writer, and had pen pals all over the world. He would sometimes draw cartoons on the letters, but often they were quite disturbing. In fact, his letters could be pleasant in parts, and then suddenly he’d talk about really gruesome things he’d done. He actually killed his first wife, but married a female pen pal while doing time for that murder. When he got out, they could finally be together as a real married couple. He soon killed his new wife and also killed her mother. Jablonski would kill again, and he would get caught. Believe or not, more women proposed to him when he was on death row. He recently died in his cell, so he’s no longer an eligible death row bachelor. 31. In fact, a few people have gotten married while on death row. One of the worst serial killers of all time got married even though his hobby was brutally killing women. His name was Ted Bundy. Some women have a thing for killers. There is a term for it. It’s called “hybristophilia.” 30. The death penalty was actually abolished for a while, but it came back in 1976. In the U.S., there are only 29 states in which you can be legally killed by the state. 29. Since 1976, there have been 1,512 executions in the US. 28. Only 15 of those executions were of women, and twenty two of the executed people were juveniles. 27. Since the death penalty there have been a total of 294 cases of clemency. This is when someone with power steps in and says this guy should not be killed. The president or the state governor could do this, but they will have to weigh up a lot of facts and also think about the public’s reaction. This doesn’t mean the person is released, or what we call “exonerated”. It just means the person’s death sentence has been commuted to another sentence. And yes, it sometimes happens like it does in the movies. That is, it can happen just hours before the execution is due to be carried out. In 2020, a guy named Jimmy Meders was given clemency just a few hours before he was about to get a lethal injection. His sentence was reduced to life without the possibility of parole. Meders was accused of killing a store clerk, but he says another guy did it. He’s even tried to get DNA evidence to support this, but that hasn’t been possible yet. He claims he is innocent. He had no criminal history before the event and has a spotless prison record, which was all taken into consideration when he was granted clemency. We will soon tell you shocking facts about innocent people on death row, but we think you need to hear other facts first. 26. One Republican governor shocked the world in the early 2000s. His name was George Ryan and in 2003 he said, ok, enough is enough, something stinks here, and he pardoned every death row prisoner. Yep, all 163 men and four women who’d already served collectively over 2,000 years were taken off death row. Why would he do such a thing, you might be wondering? Ok, let’s just give you his statement. It’s best you hear it from him: “'The facts that I have seen in reviewing each and every one of these cases raised questions not only about the innocence of people on death row, but about the fairness of the death penalty system as a whole. Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die.” A lot of people were upset, and not only die-hard fans of legalized killing.Some of the families of the victims were annoyed and upset. The thing is? Were they gunning for the right man to die? Mr. Ryan made his decision after seeing that his state had executed 12 people but had exonerated 13 innocent men who had been wrongly convicted. 25. If you actually look at pardons given all over the U.S. you will see they are not given that often. In fact, Illinois leads the way with 187 pardons, and in second place is Ohio with 21. The majority of states have just 1, 2 or 3 pardons. 24. Has a pardon ever happened like in the movies when the minute hand is on the screen and the prisoner gets saved at the very last minute? The answer is yes. It happened in 2018 to a guy named Thomas "Bart" Whitaker. Bart was only in his early twenties when he decided to kill his whole family and claim the inheritance money. The family was quite wealthy, we should say. The son got his roommate to kill his mother and brother, but his father survived being shot. It was the father years later who would protest to the governor and get his son off death row. The two had become good friends. The father said his son was the last of his family, so to kill him would be to leave him with no one. It seems the governor couldn’t ignore that plea. 23. In the past when a prisoner was being marched to the death chamber the guards would shout, “Dead Man Walking.” People on death row have said when someone goes it’s always a very depressing day. . 22. Death Row in some prisons has been criticized for its conditions. In some places, so much so, that the prison has been forced to close the wing down and build a new one. Death row inmates are usually locked down in solitary for 23 hours a day. They will sit in that windowless cell for many years, and unlike other prisoners, other murderers, they don’t generally get to mix with people in the yard or have prison jobs. This drives them absolutely crazy. The American Civil Liberties Union actually sued the state of Oklahoma and won. It said its solitary confinement could only be described as being “buried alive”. It said the men get three showers a week, and five times a week can leave their cell for an hour. But they never get to see the sun or the sky, since their exercise time is just in another concrete box…a bigger concrete box. But, every prison is not the same, and we saw some prisons where death row inmates could work and communicate with other prisoners. We should say that in some cases this had come after lawsuits. 21. These conditions can and have led to something called “death row syndrome.” This might mean men wanting to take their own lives, but even that’s not easy in solitary confinement. Some men literally lose their minds. They become mentally ill on death row, and might start having visual and auditory hallucinations. Some men just waiver their appeals and plead for the end to come sooner. 16 years on death row in those conditions can be hard. In fact, because of such brutal conditions, other countries such as the UK and Canada have refused to extradite people to the U.S. They say no human should be kept in those conditions since it breaches standards of human rights. It’s not about the death penalty, but what comes before it. You’ve all lived in self-isolation at home for a while. Now imagine your house was one small cell and four cement walls. Imagine no one could talk to you except when someone handed you food or took you to another cement room for an hour a day. Now imagine this went on for years and at the end you will die. Do you think you’d get death row syndrome? 20. It seems not all death rows are the same, though, because we found a recent story that told us at San Quentin one death row inmate killed another death row inmate while the two were out in the yard. This was actually very unusual, and San Quentin officials said it was the first time that had happened since 1996. Death Row inmates are separated from the rest of the prison, but they do get to go out in the yard together. Deaths rows all over the US don’t usually see much violence. They are for the most eerily quiet places. 19. Scientists in the U.S. and almost anywhere in the world say the death penalty does not deter killers. In fact, there are lower murder rates in U.S. states that don’t have the death penalty. There are some experts that think the death penalty does deter serious crimes, but they are in the minority. The split is around 90 percent that don’t think it works and 10 percent that think it works. 18. The USA lies in around 7th place in regards to most executions per year. China leads, although it doesn’t report its executions. North Korea could also be a very high number, but again, the country won’t report the numbers. Other big fans of executions are Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Somalia, so the U.S. is in pretty bad company when it comes to human rights records. 17. The first prison escape from death row was in 1934 and the man who got away was the gangster Raymond Hamilton. The infamous Bonnie and Clyde helped him get out. The next death row escape wouldn’t be until 1984 when the infamous Briley Brothers did something even more over the top than a Hollywood movie. They basically took over the death row unit, stole the guards’ uniforms, put on riot gear, put a TV on a stretcher and walked it out of the prison while saying it was a bomb. They then drove off into the night, laughing like hyenas while smoking their stash of weed. 16. A man named Martin Gurule also escaped, and he basically scaled fences and ran for his life while guards were shooting at him. He didn’t get that far, though, since his body was found in a river not long after. One of those shots had hit him in the back. The year was 1998. 15. Hangings used to be public events and they were very popular with some people who treated them like a family day out. The father would read the newspaper and look up gleefully, “Wow honey, grab your jacket, there’s a hanging on today.” 1936 was the year of the last public hanging in the U.S. and up to 20,000 people turned up to the event in Kentucky. Did that criminal spend 20 years on death row? Nope…he committed the crime in June and was hanged in August. Things were a bit different back then. 14. The records show that death row and the death penalty is way more expensive for the taxpayer. One study in Maryland revealed that the average cost for each case was $3 million. Another study showed Louisiana spent $15.6 million per year on its capital punishment system. Yet another study in 2018 showed that in all states with the death penalty the additional cost per year was almost $3 billion, compared to if death row criminals had just been given a life sentence without parole. That’s why some people argue for the abolition of the death penalty... not because of moral concerns, but because it costs so much. 13. A Gallup poll in 2019 revealed that 60 percent of Americans supported life imprisonment without the possibility of parole over the death penalty. In 1986, it was just 34 percent of Americans that held this view. 12. There was once a woman named Kelly Gissendaner and in 2015 when she became the last woman in the United States to be executed, for now at least, she was the only woman on Death Row in Georgia. Her crime was killing her husband and she didn’t deny doing it. On death row she converted to Christianity and created the group “Struggle Sisters” as a way to help women get through their time. Gissendaner may have had more freedom than some people on death row. She sang the song “Amazing Grace” before she was given her cocktail of drugs. 11. That cocktail of drugs costs only around $100. The killing part is not the most expensive part. That is the imprisonment part and the mind-boggling legal costs. 10. Sometimes prisoners order rather strange meals for the meal they have before they get executed, but in terms of statistics, a cheeseburger and fries is the most popular meal. 9. In 2012, when a man named Gary Simmons was asked for his last meal he might have been trying to die by way of heart attack. That’s because his last meal contained 29,000 calories. We are not going to mention all the items because there are just too many. Let’s just say it included a lot of junk food, a ton of dips, chips, fries and cheeses, and a bucket of Coke. 8. A man named David Matthew spent 17 years on death row in Oklahoma and tried a few times to prove his innocence. Before he was given the lethal injection he joked, “I think that the governor’s phone is broke. He hasn’t called yet.” 7. Around 90 percent of people on death row could not afford their own lawyer and so had to be given a free one by the state. 6. Legal experts and statisticians who did some investigating believe that from 1976 to 2004, 4.1 percent of those who were given the death penalty were actually innocent. That was 340 prisoners who they believed were innocent, or are innocent. The writers of the report said there is little doubt that innocent men have been executed. If you watch true crime shows you will know why so many people might have died innocent men. It’s usually shoddy police work and lack of evidence. That, and the fact some evidence that supports the innocent is sometimes purposely suppressed, or forensic evidence has been tampered with. 5. In 2019, two men named Clifford Williams Jr. and Nathan Myers were released from prison after they’d both been given death sentences. They had served 43 years behind bars. One of the guys went in aged 18 and came out aged 61. The other went in aged 33 and came out aged 76. These guys were not released because of DNA evidence. It was discovered that there was very little evidence to prove they did the crime and they actually had witnesses saying they were with the guys when the murder was committed. This is why money matters. This wouldn’t have happened if they had had a good lawyer. 4. There have been 167 exonerations of prisoners on death row in the U.S. since 1973. DNA testing helped get some men off death row when that started being used, while people convicted from hair tests have been given new trials since hair comparisons used back before DNA testing were not reliable. 3. In 2019, there were another two death row exonerations. One was Paul Browning, and he had served 33 years on death row in Nevada’s Ely State Prison. His case went back to court, and that court said there had been “disturbing prosecutorial misconduct and woefully inadequate assistance of counsel” during that guy’s first trial for murder. After 33 years he walked free, and he told the press, “I just want to find a little bit of peace after coming through all this madness.” Hmm, 33 years of madness, that’s a lot to take in. Charles Ray Finch was also exonerated from death that year and was pushed out of prison in a wheelchair at the age of 81. He’d spent 43 years on death row as an innocent man. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said the evidence against him was woeful, and police had apparently pressured people to testify against him. They also created a very sketchy lineup not remotely related to anything you could call justice. Official misconduct and getting people to tell lies in court, or people lying on their own behalf, is a reason for a lot of exonerations. 2. Ok, so what about an innocent man who did get executed. This story is nothing short of insane. In 1976, two police officers were shot when checking on a parked car. Inside was a driver and a man named Jesse Tafero. His wife and children were sleeping in the back seat. Tafero was sentenced to death as was his wife. The kids went to live with the wife’s parents, but both were placed into care when those grandparents died in a plane crash. Tafero was executed in the electric chair in 1990. “Old Sparkey” didn’t work well, though, and it took seven minutes for the man to die. Prior to that, his head set on fire and it wasn't a good scene. It later turned out that the driver did the shooting and he even admitted it. The evidence pointed to the driver doing it, too. Tefero’s wife was at least later released, but only after she’d served 16 years as an innocent woman. She actually ended up marrying a guy who had also been exonerated after being convicted of murder. 1. Most states have compensation measures when people are wrongly convicted and later exonerated, but not all states. 33 states right now have compensation laws for exonerees, from normal prison or death row. How much a person gets can vastly differ. In Louisiana, a person can get $250,000, but that must be paid out over the period of ten years. In California, the maximum is $140 per day for every day wrongfully served. So, for 43 years you’d get over $2 million. Wisconsin only gives $5,000 per year wrongly imprisoned, and that is about as good as a kick in the face. It also caps the amount at $25,000. Texas is pretty good. It gives $80,000 per wrongly imprisoned year and also helps with other matters, such as child support and legal fees and getting back on your feet and fitting into society. A civil rights violation lawsuit can also be filed, especially if there was official misconduct by the state, and that might add up millions if the exoneree wins the case. Then you have states such as Iowa and Oklahoma, where if you pleaded guilty you’ll get nothing. Yep, some innocent men on death row have pleaded guilty before. In normal prison lots of innocent men take plea deals. In Florida, you won’t get compensated one dime if you had any other crime on your record. It can also take years to get any compensation. One guy who did 20 years as an innocent man got a check for $25,000, but that was 4 and half years after his release. Some guys in some states end up with nothing but a “goodbye, sorry we messed up.” It all depends on the case and the state, a man in California spent 39 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit and he sued the authorities. He got $21 million. He also got $1.95 million for the $140 a day the state awards those who have been wrongfully incarcerated. Now you have to watch, “50 Insane Cold War Facts That Will Shock You!” Or you could also watch this…
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Channel: The Infographics Show
Views: 750,868
Rating: 4.8382654 out of 5
Keywords: death row, facts, death row facts, the infographics show, prison, inside prison, prison break, 50 facts
Id: KXy6uzxWb4s
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Length: 25min 22sec (1522 seconds)
Published: Sat Sep 05 2020
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