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NEWS & LETTERS, May 2002
Death Row prisoners 'volunteer' to die
Late in 1997, Arizona began
moving Death Row prisoners to a super-maximum security facility. There,
prisoners are held in small, separate cells for 23 hours a day with almost no
interaction with other human beings. In Florida, prison officials
recently added a heavy mesh to the outside of Death Row cells so prisoners can
no longer see out. In November 1999, prisoners were given a memo which read:
"Effective Monday, Nov. 29, 1999, standard ink pens and pencils are now
considered contraband." In Oklahoma, which led the U.S.
with 18 executions in 2001 (due, in large part, to laboratory evidence
manufactured by now-disgraced police chemist Joyce Gilchrist), Death Row
prisoners are housed in an underground facility where they never see direct
sunlight. In Texas, condemned men were
previously held at the O. B. Ellis State Prison in Huntsville where they could
work, four hours a day, see out of their cells, and enjoy recreation together.
In 1999, a few months after an unsuccessful escape by seven Death Row prisoners,
the condemned men were moved 70 miles east to Allan B. Polunsky State Prison at
Livingston. There, they are locked up virtually all the time, have no view out
of their cells, and make only brief, solitary visits to the recreation yard.
(Texas' condemned women are held in a separate prison near Gatesville.) As conditions on the nation's
Death Rows become less humane, more and more prisoners are asking to be executed
early. Death penalty opponents believe that the tough conditions and the virtual
isolation from human contact are pushing prisoners so far into depression and
mental illness that death becomes an attractive option. Late in 2001, there were
approximately 3,700 men and women on Death Rows in 38 states and in the federal
prison system. According to Amnesty
International, 90 people had "volunteered" for execution since the
U.S. Supreme Court removed the barriers to capital punishment in 1976.
Two-thirds of these "voluntary" executions were carried out since
1994. Many lawyers working on death penalty cases point to the increasingly
harsh environment on Death Row as the primary reason for the jump in voluntary
executions. An Arizona lawyer who asked not
to be named commented on the situation in his state: "At some point,
prisoners can no longer live like that and still be human or feel human
emotions. An inner deadness sets in. The environment on Death Row not only makes
you want to die but gives you the feeling you have no choice." A former guard on Texas' Death
Row said he understood why prisoners wanted to die. "Quite a few of them
feel that way and I don't blame them. They are treated inhumanely,'' said the
guard, who resigned late last year because he found the work distasteful. Yolanda Torres, a Texas death
penalty defense lawyer, said: "With inadequate medical and psychiatric
attention, I have seen rapid deterioration and personality changes in these men
which is what's leading to volunteerism." "It's distressing that the
only time you can get what amounts to a state-assisted suicide in the U.S. is on
Death Row," noted Abrabam Bonowitz, director of Floridians for Alternatives
to the Death Penalty. At last count, four voluntary executions were in the
Florida pipeline. —Roger Hummel |
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