Aging of Death Row Raises Humanitarian and Practical Concerns, As Alabama Executes 83-Year Old Prisoner

Death row is aging and increas­ing­ly infirm and, as a series of recent death war­rants sug­gest, that phe­nom­e­non is rais­ing legal, prac­ti­cal, and humanitarian concerns. 

One year after exe­cut­ing 75-year-old Thomas Arthur, Alabama on April 19 exe­cut­ed 83-year-old Walter Moody (pic­tured, left), the old­est per­son and only octo­ge­nar­i­an put to death in the United States since exe­cu­tions resumed in 1977. Attempts to exe­cute pris­on­ers debil­i­tat­ed by phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive impair­ments exac­er­bat­ed by aging have proven prob­lem­at­ic and inhumane. 

After can­cel­ing his pre­vi­ous­ly sched­uled can­cer surgery to issue a death war­rant, Alabama failed for 2 1/​2 hours to set an intra­venous line to exe­cute grave­ly ill 61-year-old Doyle Hamm on February 22. His lawyer moved to bar the state from try­ing a sec­ond time, describ­ing the failed attempt as ​“tor­ture.” Ohio tried and failed to exe­cute ter­mi­nal­ly ill 69-year-old Alva Campbell (pic­tured, cen­ter) in November 2017. He then died of his ter­mi­nal ill­ness on March 3. And in late January 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court halt­ed Alabama’s sched­uled exe­cu­tion of 67-year-old Vernon Madison (pic­tured, right), who is legal­ly blind, incon­ti­nent, and unable to walk inde­pen­dent­ly, and suf­fers from vas­cu­lar demen­tia caused by strokes that have left him with no mem­o­ry of the offense for which he was sen­tenced to death. The Court on February 26 agreed to review his claim that his ill­ness leaves him men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent to be executed. 

A Washington Post review of Department of Justice data report­ed that the per­cent­age of death-row pris­on­ers aged six­ty or old­er has more than dou­bled this cen­tu­ry, up from 5.8 per­cent of U.S. death rows in 2007 to 12.2 per­cent in 2013. The aging of the row has also affect­ed exe­cu­tions. An Associated Press review of the Death Penalty Information Center exe­cu­tion data­base found that the medi­an age of an exe­cut­ed pris­on­er in the U.S. rose from 34 to 46 between 1983 and 2017. 

A DPIC analy­sis of U.S. exe­cu­tion data found that only two of the 933 pris­on­ers exe­cut­ed in the United States between 1977 and 2004 were aged 67 or old­er. That total was matched in a sin­gle 35-day peri­od this year between March 15 and April 19, when Georgia exe­cut­ed 67-year-old Carlton Gary and Alabama exe­cut­ed Mr. Moody. 

In 23 years of exe­cu­tions between 1977 and the close of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, ten pris­on­ers aged 60 or old­er were exe­cut­ed. Thirty-five have already been exe­cut­ed this decade, 13 since 2015 alone. 

The aging of death row rais­es human­i­tar­i­an issues, sep­a­rate and apart from the risk of botched exe­cu­tions. Speaking to Associated Press, DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham not­ed that, while many of the pris­on­ers fac­ing exe­cu­tion have been con­vict­ed of ter­ri­ble crimes, the pub­lic is ​“torn between want­i­ng to pun­ish [them] severe­ly and the belief it is beneath us as a nation to kill a frail per­son who is already dying. It’s a chal­lenge to our moral­i­ty and our sense of human­i­ty,” Dunham said. 

The attempts to exe­cute the infirm also have attract­ed inter­na­tion­al atten­tion and appro­ba­tion. When Alabama sought to exe­cute Madison, David O’Sullivan, the European Union’s Ambassador to the United States, wrote ​“an urgent human­i­tar­i­an appeal” to Alabama Governor Kay Ivey not to exe­cute him. The Ambassador’s let­ter remind­ed Alabama that “[t]he exe­cu­tion of per­sons suf­fer­ing from any men­tal ill­ness or hav­ing an intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty is in con­tra­dic­tion to the min­i­mum stan­dards of human rights, as set forth in sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al human rights instruments.” 

When Ohio sought to exe­cute Campbell, his lawyer, assis­tant fed­er­al defend­er David Stebbins, pre­dict­ed that the exe­cu­tion could become a ​“spec­ta­cle” if prison staff were unable to find a suit­able vein. ​“All of this in an attempt to exe­cute an old and frail man who is no longer a threat to any­one,” Stebbins said. In a state­ment that applies to more and more pris­on­ers fac­ing death war­rants, Madison’s lawyer, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, summed up the issue: ​“Killing a frag­ile man suf­fer­ing from demen­tia,” he said, ​“is unnec­es­sary and cruel.”