It's been exactly a decade since California last executed a murderer. But since then more than 180 California criminals have been sentenced to death.
The sentences have not been uniformly distributed. Some counties have stopped or almost stopped sending murderers to Death Row. Others continue to condemn prisoners with relatively high frequency.
It's unclear whether these criminals will ever be executed. California halted executions in 2006 following a court order related to whether the state's drug protocol constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. State officials have worked to resolve that question. Late last year, they unveiled a new lethal injection method that for the first time in state history calls for the use of only one drug to execute inmates.
Proponents for competing ballot initiatives - one that would speed up the process for executions and one that would abolish the death penalty -- are collecting signatures for the November 2016 ballot.
Among large communities, Riverside County is the outlier, condemning murderers to death row at more than five times the statewide rate during the last 10 years.
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