Last month, Illinois lawmakers voted to ban the death penalty, leaving the state one step away from becoming the 16th in the country to repeal capital punishment. The same day, convicted murderer Jeffrey Matthews was executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma. Such is the state of capital punishment in America, an issue that engenders a widely divergent political, socio-economic and moral debate. Here are a few things you should know.

Everything’s Bigger in Texas

The American states are anything but united about capital punishment. “You’ve got a handful of states carrying out almost all of the executions in this country,” said Billy Wayne Sinclair, who spent 40 years behind bars -five on death row – and is the author of two books on prison and capital punishment reform. U.S. capital punishment is largely a southern phenomenon: More than 80 percent of executions since 1976 have occurred in the south, including 464 in Texas, the granddaddy of the death penalty.

Death Sentence ≠ Death

Just because a convict is sentenced to death does not mean he – or she (2 percent of death row inmates are females) – will be executed. At least not any time soon. Exhaustive appeals processes, designed to give the convicted every last chance to prove innocence, lead to decades-long stays on death row. Inmates executed in 2009 served an average 14 years under death sentence before execution.

A Cocktail that Must be Served Carefully

While effective, lethal injection is not foolproof. “The firing squad and electric chair are much more effective and efficient means of extinguishing human life,” says Sinclair, citing a number of botched lethal injections over the last decade. Problems sometimes arise when administers struggle to find a suitable vein for injection. These executions are typically carried out after delays of an hour or more, but in the case of Ohio convict Romell Broom, his 2009 execution was indefinitely suspended after officials were unable to find a useable vein during two hours of attempts.

The Price of Death is High

The death penalty is expensive. In Maryland, a case resulting in a death sentence costs approximately $3 million. State taxpayers will pay an expected $186 million for death penalty cases pursued from 1978 to 1999 while only five defendants in these cases have been executed.

“There are crimes that are so horrific that the natural response is to want to see revenge enacted, but the costs associated with capital punishment make it an exorbitant social luxury for the victims to have their revenge,” said Sinclair.