The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area lethal drugs, which removed a requirement that the public be allowed to review and comment on proposed execution protocols.101 On 29 June 2015, the United States Supreme Court decided, in Glossip v. Gross, that the use of the sedative midazolam did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.102 In this case, the prisoners failed to identify a known and available method of execution that entails a lesser risk of pain, in line with earlier Supreme Court rulings.103 There continued to be controversies over botched executions. The execution of Joseph Wood in Arizona on 23 July 2014 took almost two hours, during which he was injected with 15 times the amount of drugs required by the state protocol.104 Statistics on Death Sentences No official statistical data on death sentences and executions were provided by the United States Mission to the OSCE as of 1 September 2015. According to publicly available information, in 2014, 73 people were sentenced to death, a drop from 83 in 2013, and the lowest number recorded since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.105 The most death sentences were imposed in California (14), followed by Florida and Texas (11 each).106 According to the latest published NAACP107 Legal Defense and Educational Fund report, as of 1 April 2015 there were a total of 3,002 people on death row, among them 54 women.108 California had the highest number of death row inmates (746), followed by Florida (401), Texas (271), Alabama (201) and Pennsylvania (184).109 There are currently 62 federal death row inmates, with the latest sentenced being 101  “N.C. legislators working to restart capital punishment”, Rachel Sereix, Duke Chronicle, 9 September 2015, <http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2015/09/n-c-legislators-working-to-restart-capital-punishment>. 102  Glossip et al. v. Gross et al. 576 U.S. (2015), <http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-7955_aplc.pdf>. 103  Ibid. 104  “Arizona inmate Joseph Wood was injected 15 times with execution drugs”, The Guardian, 2 August 2014, <http:// www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/02/arizona-inmate-injected-15-times-execution-drugs-joseph-wood>. 105  “Facts about the death penalty”, Death Penalty Information Center website, <http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/ documents/FactSheet.pdf>. In 1976, the US Supreme Court in the case Gregg vs. Georgia ruled that the death penalty did not represent the violation of the 8th Amendment of the US Constitution, which automatically led to the reinstatement of the death penalty. See more at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/part-i-history-death-penalty 106  “2014 Sentencing”, Death Penalty Information Center website, <http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/2014sentencing>. 107  “National Association for the advancement of Colored people” is an organization dedicated to fighting racial discrimination, including in the criminal justice system. To learn more about NAACP visit <https://www.naacp.org/>. 108  “Death Row U.S.A. Spring 2015”, the Criminal Justice Project of NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., Spring 2015, <http://www.naacpldf.org/files/publications/DRUSA_Spring_2015.pdf>. 109  Ibid. 25