The oldest of the state's 340 death row inmates (337 men, 3 women), 80-year-old Serrano, got there by gunning down four people in December 1997 at a Bartow manufacturing plant where he'd been a business partner. The killings remain the worst mass murder in the county's history.

Serrano, inmate No. 129232, came to Union Correctional Institution on June 28, 2007, two days after Circuit Judge Susan Roberts sentenced him to die for each of the four execution-style slayings. He was 69 years old.

At 26, Smiley is the youngest of the state's condemned inmates, arriving on death row last March for fatally shooting Clifford Drake of Lakeland during a 2013 home-invasion robbery. Smiley was 20 then.

Johnson has spent nearly 40 years on death row — more than half his life and longer than any of Polk County's death row inmates. On an icy January night in 1981, Johnson, then 32, launched a killing rampage that left three people dead, including Polk County Sheriff's Deputy T.A. Burnham.

His December 1981 conviction for the murders was overturned because the judge had failed to sequester the jury during deliberations, but a second jury in 1988 reached the same verdict as the first, as did the judge in imposing death sentences for the killings. Another appeal led to a third sentencing in 2013, but the outcome again was the same. Johnson, 69, came back to death row.

And there's Trepal, the highly intelligent chemist convicted of planting poison-laced Coca-Cola in his Alturas neighbors' carport out of anger because their dogs wouldn't stop chasing his cats. In the 28 years since his March 1991 sentencing for Peggy Carr's death, he has yet to win an appeal or face a death warrant. But he has outlasted the odds. The average stay on death row among the last 10 inmates to be executed in Florida is 24.4 years, according to state Department of Corrections records.

Trepal, like the others on death row, spends his days in a 6-by-9 cell at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, though some are housed at Florida State Prison in Starke. He gets a sink, a toilet and a cot, and if he wants it, a radio and a 13-inch television without a cable connection. He eats his meals in his cell, alone, and can shower every other day. What he doesn't have is air conditioning.

Twice a week, guards escort him, and any others seeking some fresh air, outside for three hours in the exercise yard. Their orange shirts give notice to their death row status.

Trepal's mail is inspected after he pens it and before he receives anything sent to him, and he's restricted to making only collect phone calls to the 10 numbers he's identified to prison officials and they have confirmed. The fee for those collect calls: 14 cents a minute.

He can have only four books at a time — no hard covers — and no more than two magazines. He's also allowed materials for correspondence courses, but metal fasteners, such as paper clips, and spiral bindings are forbidden.

It's a routine Trepal and the others know well. So do Harold Blake and Robert McCloud, and others like them.

Blake, 39, spent 11 years on death row before his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2016. He'd been convicted and condemned to death for the shooting death of 37-year-old Maheshkumar Patel, a Winter Haven convenience store clerk, during a 2002 robbery. McCloud, too, remains in prison for his role in the double murder of a Poinciana couple during a 2009 home-invasion robbery, but he no longer lives under the threat of execution. He came off death row in 2016, four years after he got there, when the Florida Supreme Court overturned his death sentence.

In the 45 years since Florida reinstated the death penalty, McCloud and Blake have been among a litany of Polk County inmates to escape death row through legal decisions.

In the coming months, six more condemned prisoners from Polk County could join their ranks.

NEW SENTENCING HEARINGS FOR SOME.

In January 2016, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling triggered a series of decisions resulting in new sentencing hearings for six of Polk's condemned — Johnson, Serrano, Woodel, Rigterink, Poole and Nelson.

In that ruling, the nation's high court struck down Florida's death penalty process, but not the death penalty itself. By a 5-4 vote, the justices ruled that Florida's law allowing judges, not juries, to decide whether prosecutors and defense lawyers had proven the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, respectively, in a death penalty case was unconstitutional.

The ruling compelled the state Legislature to revise the process in 2017. Now, juries alone make that determination and recommend by unanimous vote whether the death penalty is an appropriate punishment. Prior to that, jurors needed only a majority vote to recommend the death penalty.

But it was the Florida Supreme Court that decided the mandated changes should be retroactive to June 2002, when the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in an Arizona case spelled out the changes that states needed to adopt. The Florida Legislature didn't adopt them at that time, and as a result, nearly 160 of Florida's condemned inmates became eligible for new sentencing hearings in 2017 under the state's newly adopted standard. Only those inmates who had waived a jury recommendation or had received a 12-0 jury vote for death didn't qualify for a new hearing.

Nothing precludes a jury from recommending the death penalty again for the six when they are resentenced, provided the vote is unanimous, and judges again can condemn them to death if it's warranted, according to the court rulings.

In the meantime, the six remain on death row.

Here's what got the other four there:

• Poole, 56, was convicted of storming into the Lakeland home of Noah Scott and his fiancée in 2001, fatally bludgeoning Scott, 24, with a tire iron and holding a pillow over his pregnant fiancée's face as he raped her. Before leaving, Poole tapped the 18-year-old woman's vagina and whispered “Thank you,” according to trial testimony. DNA evidence linked Poole with the crime. His initial trial in 2005 resulted in a unanimous jury recommendation and a death sentence, but it was overturned three years later. In 2011, the jury's 11-1 vote led to Poole's second death sentence.

• Woodel, 49, was sent to death row in 2005 for fatally stabbing 74-year-old Bernice Moody, whose nude body was discovered in a rental mobile home she and her husband, Clifford, owned in Davenport. Clifford Moody, 79, had been fatally stabbed eight times, but his wife was found with 56 stab wounds, including a slice through her jugular vein, and defensive cuts she received while fighting her attacker.

• Rigterink, 47, who'd been a professional model before turning to drugs, fatally stabbed his drug dealer, Jeremy Jarvis, 24, during a September 2003 robbery, and Allison Sousa, 23, as she called for help when Jarvis ran into her neighboring office to escape Rigterink's attack. He was sentenced to death in October 2005.

• Nelson, 43, was convicted in March 2000 for the home-invasion rape and murder of 78-year-old Virginia Brace. After sexually assaulting Brace, he forced her into the trunk of her car and drove to a remote orange grove near Frostproof. When his strangulation attempt failed, he emptied a fire extinguisher into her mouth and rammed a tire iron into her mouth through the back of her head. His death sentence wasn't affirmed by the state Supreme Court until October 2002 — four months after the U.S. Supreme Court put the Florida Legislature on notice to change its death penalty process.

FOR THE REST, THE WAIT CONTINUES.

For the eight other inmates who weren't eligible for new sentencing hearings, the waiting goes on. Alcegaire, like Smiley, is just beginning his time among the state's condemned murderers, having been sentenced in March. A jury decided that Alcegaire, 30, was among three Miami men who forced their way into a Lakeland drug dealer's home in January 2016, gunning down David Washington, 24, along with Stacy Branch, 31, and Angelica Castro, 23. A fourth man, Felix Campos, was shot but survived, and testified against Alcegaire.

The jury recommended death, and Alcegaire barred his lawyers from mounting a defense on his behalf. The remaining defendants haven't stood trial yet.

The remaining six, including Trepal, average 20 years on death row.

• Pittman, 57, is facing execution for the May 1990 killings of his estranged wife's mother, father and sister, who were stabbed in their Mulberry home and their house set on fire. Clarence and Barbara Knowles had been stabbed multiple times, and their daughter Bonnie's throat was slit. Pittman was sentenced 28 years ago, in April 1991.

• Seven years after Pittman was sent to death row, a jury convicted Beasley, 70, for fatally bludgeoning Carolyn Monfort with a hammer in August 1995. Her body was found in the laundry room of her Lakeland home, where Beasley, a family acquaintance, also had been staying while making some repairs at an apartment complex Monfort managed. He was sentenced in May 1998.

• Morris, 56, was arrested in 1994 after his DNA was discovered in the bedroom where 88-year-old Violet Livingston's body was found in her apartment. She'd been strangled and beaten with her own walking cane during the home-invasion robbery. Later, authorities found rare coins that had belonged to Livingston among Norris' possessions. He was sentenced in April 1999.

• Wright, 38, came to death row in October 2005 for the execution-style shootings of David Green and James Felker in a remote Polk City orange grove in April 2000. Wright and his co-defendant, Samuel Pitts, had abducted the two men in an armed robbery, driving the victims' car to the grove where they were shot. Pitts was sentenced to life imprisonment.

• Davis, 41, is facing four death sentences for two unrelated crimes. He was convicted of gunning down two convenience store clerks — Prakashkumar Patel, 33, and Dashrath Patel, 52 — as they changed the marquee at a BP gas station on County Road 557, just south of Interstate 4. A week later, he attempted to rob the Headley Nationwide Insurance office in Lake Wales, and when the clerks had little more than $150, he strapped them to a chair, doused them in gasoline and set them on fire. After he left, Yvonne Bustamante, 27, and a pregnant Juanita Luciano, 23, freed themselves and ran outside for help, their clothes still burning. They died within days of the attack, as did Luciano's newborn son, who was delivered prematurely the night of the attack.

Wright waived his right to a jury recommendation on sentencing, as did Davis in the convenience store trial. In the insurance office case, the jury voted unanimously that he should be executed for the deaths of the two women. Circuit Judge Michael Hunter imposed a life sentence for the baby's death. Davis was sentenced to death April 2011 and December 2012.  ⬛