county." Therefore, the State of Mississippi originally performed executions of condemned criminals in their counties of conviction. When, in 1940, Mississippi's state legislature decided to change the state's method of execution to electrocution, while continuing to conduct executions in the county of conviction, a portable electric chair was developed and fabricated for the state's use. On October 11, 1940, the state's first execution of a condemned prisoner by electrocution occurred; Willie Mae Bragg, a black man convicted of murdering his wife, was electrocuted in his county of conviction, Jefferson Davis County. Interestingly, on the same day, Mississippi also carried out their final hanging in a different county when Hilton Fortenberry, another murderer, was put to death in Sharkey County. The state moved the electric chair from county to county, using it to kill condemned prisoners in their counties of conviction. One such example was Houston Roberts, a white man convicted of poisoning his granddaughter in Jackson. Mississippi and Louisiana were the only U.S. states to use a portable electric chair. Around the 1950s residents of Sunflower County were still opposed to the concept of housing the execution chamber at MSP. In September 1954, Governor Hugh L. White called for a special session of the Mississippi Legislature to discuss the application of the death penalty. During that year, a gas chamber serving as an execution chamber was installed at MSP. The gas chamber replaced the portable electric chair which, between 1940 and November 10, 1954, had been moved from county to county to execute condemned prisoners. The final execution in a portable electric chair was that of James Johnson, a white man convicted of murder, was executed in the Simpson County courthouse, where, as was customary in Mississippi at the time, the executioner placed the chair in the same courtroom where the jury had convicted the condemned man. The first person to die in the gas chamber was Gerald A. Gallego, who was executed on March 3, 1955. Since 1976 resumption of capital punishment nationwide On July 1, 1984 the Legislature of Mississippi amended §§ 99-19-51 of the Mississippi Code; the new amendment stated that prisoners who committed capital crimes after July 1, 1984 would be executed by lethal injection. When the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) opened in January 1986, all women who were incarcerated at MSP were moved to CMCF. The $41 million Unit 32, the state's designated location