The repeal of Nebraska's death penalty means the 10 men on the state's death row are now effectively serving life sentences.
There were 11 prisoners there until Sunday, when murderous cult leader Michael Ryan, convicted of killing two people, died while in prison.
Here are the other inmates who were on death row at Tecumseh State Prison when lawmakers voted Wednesday to abolish capital punishment over the governor's wishes:
Carey Dean Moore, 56, has been on death row since 1980. He was convicted of murdering Omaha cab drivers Reuel Van Ness Jr. and Maynard Helgeland five days apart. He says he has become a born-again Christian since being sentenced to death. "When I killed the two men, that was my responsibility, my fault," he told the Lincoln Journal Star in 2011. "The devil didn't make me do it. That was just me."
John Lotter, 43, was convicted of murdering transgender victim Brandon Teena and two other people in 1993 — a crime that was the basis for the award-winning movie "Boys Don't Cry." His accomplice, who got life, testified that Lotter pulled the trigger but later recanted and said he was the gunman. " I'm going to fight for every last breath that I have to prove my innocence and get out of here," Lotter said in 2013.
Raymond Mata Jr., 42, was sentenced to die twice — first by a panel of judges and then by a jury after the U.S. Supreme Court said jurists couldn't make the call. He was convicted of murdering and dismembering his ex-girlfriend's 3-year-old son, Adam Gomez, in 1999; parts of the boy's body were found in the killer's dog bowl and in the animal's stomach.
Arthur Gales, 50, was convicted of murdering two children, 13-year-old Latara Chandler, who was raped and strangled, and her 7-year-old brother Tramar, who was strangled and drowned in the bathtub. He allegedly killed the kids so they could not tell police he had been with their mother, who was beaten and left for dead but survived.
Jorge Galindo, 34, Erick Vela, 34, and Jose Sandoval, 36, were put on death row for the murders of four workers and one customer during a Norfolk bank robbery. They suspects marched in and shot the victims — Lisa Bryant, 29; Lola Elwood, 43; Jo Mausbach, 42; Evonne Tuttle, 37; and Samuel Sun, 50 — in the head in under a minute. "It went to hell," Vela later told police. A state trooper committed suicide the day after the slayings in despair that he botched a stolen-weapon check on one of the suspects a week earlier.
Jeffrey Hessler, 36, was found guilty of kidnapping, raping and murdering a 15-year-old newspaper carrier, Heather Guerrero, in 2003. Hessler, who had pleaded guilty to the earlier rape of another teenage paper girl, represented himself at trial and later lost a number of appeals arguing he was mentally ill and should not have been allowed to serve as his own attorney.
Roy Ellis, 61, was convicted of abducting a 12-year-old girl, Amber Harris, after she got off a school bus, killing her and tossing her partially clothed body in a park ravine in 2005. Ellis, a convicted sex offender, was the first person sentenced to death in Nebraska after the state banned the electric chair. His victim's mother said after the sentencing that she had no hope it would be carried out. "Either he'll die before then, or me," she old the Journal Star.
Marco Torres, 42, was the most recent arrival to death row, after being convicted in the 2007 double murder of Timothy Donohue, 48, and Edward, Hall, 60, possibly to cover up a robbery. In his appeals, Torres cited methamphetamine use as an excuse for the slaying.
