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What it's like to live a life condemned to death
Capital punishment is one of the oldest forms of justice in history, and has fluctuated drastically in popularity over the centuries. While many parts of the world have decided to leave it forever in the past, other countries have kept the practice in place. In some areas, the rate of annual executions has even been rising steadily throughout the 21st century.
Everyone knows what lies at the end of death row, but what is life like for prisoners who are awaiting their fate? Read on to find out.
In countries and states where capital punishment, or execution, is legal, those condemned to death are usually kept in their own prison wing, commonly known as death row.
Many countries around the world have either abolished or indefinitely suspended the death penalty, including all of Western Europe, Russia, most of South America, and about two thirds of Africa. However, other major world powers such as the United States, India, China, and much of the Middle East still make use of the death penalty in varying degrees of frequency.
Various methods of execution are employed around the world, and the debate over which is the most humane is ongoing. While lethal injection was once considered to be the safest and least painful, this method has become notorious for its wide margin of error, causing numerous botched executions and unimaginable pain for the condemned.
Other methods used in the United States include death by gas chamber, and sometimes by hanging. In India, capital punishment is legal and practiced but still exceedingly rare, and is carried out exclusively via hanging. In China, executions are carried out via lethal injection or firing squad.
According to Amnesty International, there were at least 28,670 people on death row worldwide at the end of 2021. As of April 2022, there were 2,414 people on death row in the United States alone.
It's understandable to assume death sentences are carried out swiftly, but that is rarely the case. Most condemned individuals live on death row for at least 15 years before facing execution, with some inmates waiting as long as 40 years in unbearable apprehension.
Death row cells are known to be of lower quality than those of normal prisoners. Prisoners are kept in their own cells, which can be as small as walk-in closets.
In the United States, death row prisoners received, on average, only one hour outside of their cell each day. The other 23 hours are spent in the isolation of their cells.
The stigma surrounding death row inmates usually breeds animosity amongst other prison residents, and the condemned meet early, violent deaths at disproportionately higher levels than other prisoners. Some studies show a staggering 25% of death row inmates will be murdered before their day of execution arrives.
Living so many years fully aware of your death sentence, stuck in tiny cells with extremely limited compassionate contact, is enough to drive anyone mad. Extreme depression, psychosis, and other signs of mental deterioration are common in death row inmates.
There is also a unique condition known as death row syndrome that only effects those condemned to death. Psychotic delusion, suicidal tendencies, and violent mood swings are common symptoms of this syndrome, brought on by the very uniquely damaging and maddening environment of death row.
Head counts are common practice on most death rows around the world, although they do vary in frequency. In some countries they only occur three or four times a day, but in others, like the United States, head counts can take place as often as 48 times a day, or every half hour around the clock.
This torturous system of accountability leads to widespread sleep deprivation throughout death row, as do the pitiful sleeping conditions in many prisons, some of which don't even provide mattresses for their prisoners.
Mattress or no mattress, the sleeping conditions on death row leave much to be desired. The lack of natural light makes keeping a regular sleep schedule exceedingly hard, as does the constant disturbances from guards doing head counts.
In the United States, inmates sentenced to death are punished with much more than that fact. They are also subjected to longer period of solitary confinement than anyone else in the prison system. While solitary confinement is usually used as a punishment in short increments of just a few days or weeks, condemned prisoners are kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day until the day of their execution, which usually involves a wait of over 15 years.
Besides basic human contact, death row inmates are also deprived of other simple rights such as access to proper hygiene. In many places, death row inmates are only allowed to bathe once every two days.
Time in the prison yards and gyms are also severely limited, with the average death row inmate receiving about four hours of exercise time a week. Many cells on death row also make it impossible to exercise outside of the scarcely available exercise hours.
While most countries that still employ the death sentence today do so 'humanely,' the United States has a notorious history of botched executions. From improperly installed electric chairs that scald, burn, fry, and even catch prisoners on fire without burning them, to the many, many lethal injections that have gone wrong due to missed veins or untested drug cocktails, there have been close to 300 botched executions in the United States in the past 100 years.
There have also been numerous incidents around the world of condemned individuals who were found innocent or expected to be innocent after their execution. New investigative technologies have been used to revisit past shaky cases, and there are dozens of convictions from the past that experts now believe sent innocent people to unjust deaths. It is thought that around 4.1% of inmates on death row today are innocent.
Very little is done in these cases, even when police misconduct and coercion has been proven. In 1944, 14-year-old George Stinney (pictured) was sentenced to death after only 10 minutes of deliberation for the alleged murder of two young girls in South Carolina. Stinney was executed via the electric chair only months after his conviction. It was later determined that Stinney hadn't received a fair trial and should not have been executed. Stinney was exonerated, and no further action was taken.
Sometimes, for a lucky few, innocence is proven before execution. Since 1973, over 190 people in the United States have been proven innocent and exonerated of all convictions, sometimes just days before their scheduled execution.
Access to religious practices and materials is also severely limited on death row. As is stipulated in the conditions of their solitary confinement, most inmates are prohibited from attending any worship services and reading materials of any kind, religious included, are hard to come by.
Prison food is notoriously awful, and this is no different for death row inmates who are rarely even let in the cafeteria.
When most people imagine death row, a common thought is the famous "last meal" the inmates can choose before facing death. While this is still practiced in some places, other places, like Texas, have gotten rid of this tradition entirely.
Most death row cell blocks around the world are entirely devoid of air conditioning or heating units, leaving those in particularly hot or cold climates to withstand the worst of the weather.
Some places allow luxuries to be earned or bought, such as reading materials, TVs, or extra outdoors time. However, all of these things can be taken away in the blink of an eye as punishment for even the most nominal violation.
As the years crawl onwards, one might wonder if it would be better or worse to know when exactly death is coming. For most, it's a moot point, seeing as the date of execution is withheld from prisoners and can be moved backwards or forwards by any number of bureaucratic factors.
Many people who spend decades on death row awaiting execution find old age before they find death. The oldest man in modern history to be executed was 83-year-old Walter Moody, who was put to death in Alabama in 2018.
Numerous organizations around the world fight for the abolition of the death penalty, claiming that it is not only ethically unsound but that it infringes on prisoners' constitutional rights. Anti-capital punishment movements have gained momentum in the 21st century, and the question has begun to be revisited in a number of countries.
Sources: (Ranker) (Death Penalty Information Center) (CNN)
See also: The most barbaric prisoner-of-war camps in history
Life on death row
What it's like to live a life condemned to death
LIFESTYLE Prison
Capital punishment is one of the oldest forms of justice in history, and has fluctuated drastically in popularity over the centuries. While many parts of the world have decided to leave it forever in the past, other countries have kept the practice in place. In some areas, the rate of annual executions has even been rising steadily throughout the 21st century.
Everyone knows what lies at the end of death row, but what is life like for prisoners who are awaiting their fate? Read on to find out.