Executions by state in 2017. Graphic / Reddit/MapChart. Source / Supplied
Justin Steinberg was just 20 years old in 2001 when he was convicted of organising a murder.
His accuser later confessed he had only blamed Justin to save himself from death row in Virginia.
"He was youngest person on death row for some years," his mother Terri told news.com.au.
"We had three execution dates and twice he was supposed to be released."
Christmas was often the hardest time of all. With the journey to the prison taking hours, Justin's relatives usually just spoke to Justin over the phone.
"I think the way he survived was he focused on what the others around him needed, trying to keep them distracted," said Terri.
"I think that was the way he was able to stay sane."
On Boxing Day 2012, the family learnt that Justin was getting out.
"It was just an amazing, amazing gift we that we were going to be able to bring him home," she said.
"On January 3rd, 2013, we piled kids into car. I have four children so I had to borrow my neighbour's car so we could all be together.
"My son got a phone call 45 minutes before — they had stayed the order.
"There was nothing more horrible. I looked my children's faces in car that day. It was the true description of cruel and unusual punishment.
"Justin had been in solitary confinement. I can't imagine how it was for him. We were able to go home and be together and hold each other up. For him, the door was almost open and then slammed in his face."
Justin was taken off death row, but remains in jail 17 years later, and is still battling to prove his innocence. It has been a long road for his mother.
"We had three execution dates and twice he was supposed to be released," she said.
Now, every Christmas, she receives letters from his former fellow inmates on death row, who say Justin was "a bright spot in a dark room".
If she can help anyone else, Terri says, her "pain will not have been wasted".
'HE FOUND HER BODY IN A POOL OF BLOOD'
Bill Pelke has dedicated his life to helping inmates on death row — after one of them brutally murdered his grandmother.
In May 1985, a group of four teenage girls knocked on the door of Ruth Pelke in Gary, Indiana.
The girls asked about taking part in the 78-year-old's Bible classes, and she invited them in. Inside, they turned on her.
"One of the girls hit her over the head, another began to stab her," Bill told news.com.au.
"The others went to look for money, ransacking the bedrooms and living room. They came up with $10 and the keys to her car."
Bill's father found Pelke's dead body the next day.
"You can imagine what a terrible thing it was to find her body in a pool of blood," he said.
Three of the four girls were handed down prison terms ranging from 25 to 60 years for the vicious crime.
The other teen, Paula Cooper, was seen as the ringleader and confessed to stabbing Pelke 33 times. She was sentenced to death in 1986, aged just 15.
Bill initially felt "no compassion or love" for the teenager who had so violently killed his grandmother.
But gradually, something shifted. He could sense his religious "nana" would forgive the girl for what she had done.
At first, he tried to ignore the feeling. Then, he embraced it. He remembered how his grandmother had lived, how she had invited in those girls for a Bible class, because she believed in helping people.
Bill started writing to Paula. He learnt she had struggled with depression as she grew up, beaten daily by her mother, with her father thrashing her with an electric cord after she ran away.
"She had a lot of hate in her," he said.
While his father could not understand it, Bill kept supporting Paula until her death sentence was finally commuted and she was released, aged 45, in 2013.
By then, Bill had started anti-death penalty organisation Journey of Hope, and was looking forward to introducing her to group members once her parole condition of not meeting the victim's family were lifted.
He never got the chance. Paula killed herself in 2015, convinced society would never accept her after her mother warned her not to return to her local church.
'DEPRESSION AND SADNESS' AS THE WORLD REJOICES
Paula spent almost 30 years on death row, in solitary confinement for her safety as the only woman. It's a singularly lonely existence, particularly at this time of year.
Almost 3000 people will spend December 25 in tiny cells on death row in the US, awaiting execution. Many will not see their families, who are too poor to travel to their prison, but are permitted to send out Christmas photos of themselves.
"It is Christmas time on the row," recalled former inmate Ron Keine in a blog on National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
"At night I can hear the muffled sounds of a grown man crying in his pillow … his only safe confidant as emotions are seen as weakness in prison and can even get you killed.
"While the children are opening presents on Christmas morning, revelling in bliss, miles away in some forgotten dungeon cell, a tear runs down my cheek. As the family sits down, heads bowed for the meal's prayer, I sit alone on my steel bunk and try to picture the lone bare table setting that my mother arranged in my honour."
He recalled the "sickening" prison-issued dinner, and the knowledge that "everywhere in the world it is a time for happiness, a time to rejoice", except on death row, where "depression and sadness" entered the inmates' very souls.
Ron, who was exonerated after two years following a newspaper investigation, spoke of his fury at the prosecutor who manufactured a case against him, and the need to fight the "hopelessness" that led many to suicide.
'THE ABSOLUTE WORST TIME OF YEAR'
"Christmas is, aside from your birthday, the absolute worst time of year in prison," wrongfully convicted Sonia "Sunny" Jacobs told Broadly.
Jacobs spent five years in solitary confinement on Florida's death row after she and her boyfriend Jesse Tafero were convicted of shooting a highway patrol officer and his friend in 1976.
"When I was by myself in isolation, in some ways it was easier and in others, harder," she said. "I didn't have to contend with anyone else's sh*t; it's just me with mine."
The driver of the car negotiated a plea bargain with the state in exchange for a life sentence and alleged Tafero and Jacobs had pulled the triggers. In 1990, the state of Florida executed Tafero.
At Christmas, Jacobs was typically pulled out of solitary and others were placed in it.
"Every Christmas, people would have to be locked up because they just couldn't handle it. Some people couldn't be in touch with family or children, others would have a visit and their heart would be broken when they came back," she said.
"It felt like you sort of had to help cheer up the people who just couldn't really deal with the season."
There was often a spate of thefts, as inmates stole gifts from the few who had received small tokens.
"Christmas would be about finding ritual: making origami, tinsel out of the silver foil in cigarette packages … I would send my spirit out to my children, to Jesse, who was still on death row. You always learn to make the best of it. You hold out for the holiday spirit."
After Tafero's execution, Rhodes confessed to the shootings. While Jacobs wasn't exonerated, her death sentence was overturned and she was released on time served in 1992.
She had spent 17 years behind bars.
'FOR MANY, IT'S THEIR LAST'
How these inmates spend Christmas depends on the state and the prison.
In Texas, the state with by far the most executions, there are 232 death-row inmates.
They are not allowed televisions, cannot work or make phone calls and only get two or three hours a week outdoor recreation time. But they are allowed daily showers, compared with the three showers a week permitted on death row in other states.
Texas inmate Mark Stroman killed two convenience store workers and injured a third in a 2001 shooting spree he claimed was retaliation for 9/11.
He later said he had made a "terrible mistake" and had destroyed his victims' families "out of pure anger and stupidity".
Stroman spent Christmas morning 2009 listening to the radio after a "loud and somewhat cheerful" Christmas Eve, which began with rain pouring down his cell walls and soaking his sheet and blanket.
"No one can get angry if someone is loud on a holiday," he wrote from his cell at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston. "Hell, for many it's their last."
The food was a step up from the usual meal, however. A slice of brisket, a pork sausage and stuffing with a slice of chocolate cake and peach cobbler for dessert.
Stroman was "impressed and grateful", he said. "They did good and have fed us like humans."
The sole survivor of the shooting, Rais Bhuiyanm, tried unsuccessfully to stop the execution because he said Islam taught him to forgive. He said death was "not the solution" and Stroman was "learning from his mistake" and could "reach out to others".
The court denied his request and Stroman was executed in July 2011.
DEATH PENALTY PERSISTS
The US is the only Western country where the death penalty is legal and was the world's seventh largest executioner in 2017.
Since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated after a 10-year moratorium, 1490 people have been executed across eight states, 558 of them in Texas.
The Death Penalty Information Centre reported executions are near generational lows and the death row population had declined for the 18th straight year.
Still, 25 people have died in 2018, 13 in Texas, and Donald Trump has appointed senior officials who support the death penalty.
Campaigners are concerned about issues such as race. In 2014, jurors in Washington state were three times more likely to recommend a death sentence for a black defendant than for a white defendant in a similar case, according to research by DPIC.
More than 75 per cent of victims in cases resulting in an execution were white, even though only 50 per cent of murder victims nationally are white.
The Supreme Court has limited the crimes for which you can face the death penalty.
Everyone who has been executed since 1976 participated in a crime in which someone was killed. In most cases, the person executed directly killed the victim. In a minority of cases, the person executed ordered or contracted with another person to carry out the murder.
Campaigners say even the guilty deserve to live, but 164 death-row inmates have been exonerated since 1973. The most recent was Clemente Aguirre on November 5.
Since 1976, 1313 US prisoners have died by lethal injection, 160 by electrocution, 11 by gas chamber, three by hanging and three by firing squad.
Some executions have been stalled because the Supreme Court does not allow "cruel and unusual" punishment.
All states and the federal government now use lethal injection as their primary method of execution, with one or more drugs administered to stop the condemned inmate's heart.
Some argue that the drugs cause unnecessary suffering, particularly for inmates with pre-existing conditions.
Around three per cent of US executions between 1890 and 2010 are thought to have been botched.
Activists also argue that the death penalty is expensive and ineffective as a deterrent.
A 2012 report by the National Research Council, "Deterrence And The Death Penalty", stated that studies claiming the death penalty lowered murder rates were "fundamentally flawed" and should not be used when making policy decisions.
A 2011 California study found the cost of the death penalty in the state — including trials, appeals and incarceration — was more than $4 billion since 1978.
INMATES ON DEATH ROW
• California 740
• Florida 353
• Texas 232
• Alabama 185
• Pennsylvania 160
• North Carolina 144
• Ohio 144
• Arizona 121
• Nevada 75
• Louisiana 71
• US Government 63
• Tennessee 62
• Georgia 56
• Oklahoma 49
• Mississippi 47
• South Carolina 39
• Oregon 33
• Kentucky 32
• Arkansas 31
• Missouri 25
• Indiana 12
• Nebraska 12
• Kansas 10
• Idaho 9
• Utah 9
• Washington 8
• US military 5
• Colorado 3
• South Dakota 3
• Virginia 3
• Montana 2
• New Mexico 2
• New Hampshire 1
• Wyoming 1
TOTAL: 2738
Source: NAACP Legal Defence Fund, "Death Row USA" (July 1, 2018).
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