Some of the prisoners sitting on death row in California.

It all began in the small town of San Jacinto, in the Riverside County of California. A then 34-year-old mother of three, Mrs Buenrostro stewed what she thought would be the perfect cover on her estranged husband.

Mrs Buenrostro ran into the police station in the early hours of Thursday morning, saying her estranged husband had appeared at her apartment and she was afraid.

Fifteen minutes after her panicked arrival, the police found her 9-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son in the family’s apartment. Her other daughter, four-year-old Deidra, was later found in an abandoned post office. All three had suffered fatal stab wounds.

The police originally took her husband in for questioning, but after producing a credible alibi — he was released. Mrs Buenrostro was arrested a few days later, and has sat on death row for the past 18 years awaiting her execution.

Dora Buenrostro when she was sentenced in 1998.Source:Supplied

Dora Buenrostro today at 56-years-old.Source:Supplied

Sandi Dawn Nieves told police she killed her four daughters to get even with the men in her life.

In 1998, the then 34-year-old was fighting with her ex-husband to hang on to her four daughters in what was an ugly custody battle. Ms Nieves claimed her ex-husband’s older son was a threat to her four daughters.

But in June of that same year, Nieves allegedly encouraged her four girls — aged 5, 7, 11 and 12 at the time of their death — to hold a slumber party in the kitchen of the family’s Santa Clarita home.

It was there that Mrs Nieves asphyxiated them with natural gas from the oven, then allegedly used gasoline to ignite a fire that blackened the inside of the home but did little damage to its exterior, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and coroner’s sources said.

The four girls were found tucked into sleeping bags on the floor of the kitchen, while Mrs Nieves and her other child were taken to a hospital for treatment.

As soon as she recovered, Mrs Nieves was taken to jail — where she has spent the past 16 years.

Sandi Nieves in 2001.Source:Supplied

Sandi Nieves now, at age 52.Source:Supplied

Both Buenrostro and Nieves sit alongside 747 other murderers, rapists and abusers waiting on death row in California for their name to be called.

In the state of California, the death penalty is still a legal form of punishment, along with 29 other states across the country. But it has been 10 years since the last lethal injection was carried out in the state.

On election day, Californian voters will have the choice between two ballot decisions. Vote for Proposition 62, which would abolish the death penalty in the state, or Proposition 66 — which would speed up the execution of those waiting on death row.

While only 13 executions have been carried out since the penalty was reinstated in 1978, all could change for the 749 men and women currently sitting on death row if the votes swing to Prop. 62.

Some of the men currently sitting on death row in California.Source:Supplied

According to a poll conducted by Sacramento State’s Institute for Social Research, there are more voters in favour of ending the death penalty across the state over the proposition to speed up executions.

But the poll also revealed that not enough voters had made up their mind that would be required for a new law to pass.

According to the Los Angeles Times, this is because a large pool of voters are confused about what each measure promises, and because people remain strongly divided on the issue of capital punishment.

“The death penalty is much more controversial, in a sense,” pollster Anna Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research said.

“People have strong religious or moral opposition on both sides of the issue. They have core values.”

749 prisoners are currently sitting on death row in the state of California alone.Source:istock

Further to this, the latest Pew Research survey, which was released in September, found 49 per cent of Americans favoured the death penalty, the lowest in more than four decades.

“Only about half of Americans now favour the death penalty for people convicted of murder, while 42 per cent oppose it,” the paper read.

“Support has dropped 7 percentage points since March 2015, from 56 per cent.

“Public support for capital punishment peaked in the mid-1990s, when eight-in-ten Americans favoured the death penalty and fewer than two-in-ten were opposed.

“Opposition to the death penalty is now the highest it has been since 1972.”

Red states still have the death penalty, blue have abolished execution and purple states have Governor-Imposed moratorium. Picture: Death Penalty.orgSource:Supplied

But according to a poll conducted by Chicago-based organisation, the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, a survey to all 749 death row inmates in California revealed that they opposed the abolishment of the death penalty because “people feel that it [Prop. 62] was just a death sentence with a different name.”

Lilly Hughes, director of the organisation, told Mother Jones that for a prisoner — abolishing the death penalty, and letting them live out their life in jail — would fundamentally be “another method of execution.”

“You die in prison. It just takes a longer, slower time to do it.”

Many prisoners also feel that abolishing the death penalty will also eliminate the state-sponsored resources guaranteed to them as they fight their convictions while facing execution — such as above average psychiatric care and support from international anti-death penalty communities.

The last time the state of California went to the polls to cast their vote on capital punishment, a widely petitioned ballot initiative to replace capital punishment with life without parole lost by a narrow margin. The whole population of prisoners waiting to be executed went on suicide watch.

State prison spokesman Terry Thornton, told the Los Angeles Times that “death row is complicated” and that 24-hour vigils were likely to be implemented again next week during the election, to “address the mental health needs” of the condemned.

American citizens will head to the polls on Tuesday 8th November, US time.

Check out the full interactive article, which allows users to click on the photos of the 749 prisoners on death row here.