Georgia Department of Corrections - Death Row

Death Row

The state's death row for men is in the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison (GDCP). The death row for women is located in the Arrendale State Prison.

From 1735 until 1924 persons condemned to death were hanged by the sheriff of the county or judicial circuit where the crime occurred. Over 500 of such hangings had occurred. The Georgia General Assembly passed a law on August 16, 1924 that abolished hanging for all capital crimes. Instead the condemned were to be electrocuted at the Georgia State Prison at Milledgeville. During that year an electric chair was installed in the prison, and the first execution in that method occurred on September 13, 1924. On January 1, 1938 the site of the execution chamber relocated to the new Georgia State Prison at Reidsville. From 1964 until 1976 the U.S. Supreme Court had suspended executions. In 1974 the Supreme Court had outlawed executions and nullified original death penalty laws. The State of Georgia passed a rewritten death penalty law in 1973. In 1976 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Georgia death penalty was constitutional. The site of execution was moved to GDCP in June 1980, and a new electric chair was installed in place of the previous one, which was moved to a display at the Georgia State Prison. On December 15, 1983 the first execution at GDCP occurred. In 2000 the Georgia government signed HB 1284 into law, which changed the method of execution to lethal injection, effective on May 1, 2000. The first lethal injection execution occurred in October 2001.

The Georgia Department of Corrections stated in its 1999 annual report that "Typically, all Georgia death row inmates are males" and are housed at the GDCP. In November 1998 Kelly Gissendaner, a woman, was given a death sentence and was housed in the Metro State Prison. She was the first woman to reside on death row since 1992, when Janice Buttram had her sentence commuted to a life sentence. Buttram had been housed at the Middle Georgia Correctional Institution Women's Unit. The death row for women remained at the Metro State Prison, until it was closed in 2011. GDCP houses the state's execution chamber.