Unsplashed background img 1
A WLRN Documentary

Cell 1 is the last cell Florida inmates stay in before they’re executed. It’s where they say their goodbyes, make peace with death or mount their final legal stands against death. It’s where many hope their sentence will be delayed or commuted. Some inmates get pulled out of Cell 1 to return to Death Row; others meet their end in the execution chamber a few feet away. It’s a place of uncertainty, the cell between life and death.

"That is the last cell. That is the cell in which every person who has been put to death in the state of Florida has been housed until they got moved to the execution chamber,” says Mike Lambrix, a 33-year resident of Florida’s Death Row.

On Jan. 12, 2016, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling threw Florida’s death penalty into a state of limbo - putting the death sentence on hold. Over the next year, legal challenges and court decisions created more confusion and changed how the sentence is handed down in the state.

WLRN News reporter Wilson Sayre spent almost two years researching the ins and outs of the death penalty in Florida. In this special report, she looks at the momentous changes that occurred in 2016, the consequences of the Supreme Court decision in Hurst v. Florida and what being in limbo means for the 384 people on Death Row in the state, their families and the victims’ families.

PART 1more_vert
PART 2more_vert
PART 3more_vert
PART 4more_vert
PART 5more_vert
PART 6more_vert
PART 7more_vert

Listen to the documentary