Capital punishment in Mississippi

If the jury recommends death, it is required to record what it considers the "aggravating circumstances" about the crime that led it to that decision.

[1] In case of a hung jury during the penalty phase of the trial, the judge issues a life sentence, even if only one juror opposed death (there is no retrial).

[citation needed] Men on death row are held at Unit 29 in The Mississippi State Penitentiary, while women on death row are held at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) in Rankin County.

At the same time, the witnesses enter the designated observation areas and the execution by lethal injection is then carried out.

In September 1954, Governor Hugh L. White called for a special session of the Mississippi Legislature to discuss the application of the death penalty.

The final execution in a portable electric chair was that of Luther Carlyle Wheeler, a white man convicted of murdering a Hattiesburg police officer.

He was executed on February 5, 1954, in the Humphreys County courthouse, where, as was customary in Mississippi at the time, the executioner placed the chair in the same courtroom where the jury had convicted the condemned man.

[14] The $41 million Unit 32, the state's designated location for male death row inmates, opened in August 1990.

[9] Since 1976, Mississippi has executed fewer prisoners than six other southern states despite comparable homicide rates.

[17] One critic claims that this stems from the inability of poorer counties to afford legal fees for defendants accused of capital crimes.

[20] While firing squad remains an alternative for the death penalty, it is the last on the list of choices, after lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia and electrocution.