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…
