 The jury recommended the death penalty, and he was sentenced to death.He was received on death row at the Florida State Prison on January 29, 1974.During Darden's time on death row, hundreds of people worldwide protested his death sentence, including Pope John Paul II, Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, the human rights organization Amnesty International (who started a petition that gathered 10,000 signatures from people in the Netherlands who were opposed to Darden's execution), and the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who called Darden's death sentence "another example that injustice is still alive and well and that equal opportunity is still denied black Americans even in death."