The state of California has not carried out an execution since 2006, and since then, four inmates on death row have died.

Ronald Harold Seaton was on death row for 26 years for murder when he recently died of natural causes at Marin General Hospital near San Francisco on Wednesday. Seaton, has been on death row at San Quentin State Prison since 1989, according to Reuters.

Even though the death penalty is technically legal in California, challenges, including political, have held off the death penalty for many cases, leading inmates to their death by natural causes.

The state has executed 13 people since 1978 when the death penalty was reinstated in California. Seaton was one of 69 that died of natural causes while on death row, another 24 committed suicide. That has left 747 more awaiting execution housed at San Quentin in Marin County near San Francisco.

In 2014 a federal judge said the long wait for execution was unconstitutional equaling cruel and unusual punishment in the case of Ernest Dewayne Jones who was sentenced to death in 1995, but is still on death row.

Arguments are taking place this week, as the judge overturned his death sentence, and now the case is under appeal.

California has seen as a drop in supporters of the death penalty as well as in other states as many are becoming more concerned that the drugs they use for lethal injection have led to many botched and painful deaths.

In 2014, a Field Poll revealed that support for capital punishment is at a 50-year low in the state of California with 54 percent of voters still supporting it, which is down from 68 percent only a few years ago.

This past week, San Quentin became the destination of a Legionnaires’ outbreak with six confirmed cases and another 95 inmates that were under observation for pneumonia.