Conditions on Death Row

In July 2023, the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) released its report and posi­tion state­ment on men­tal health and the death penal­ty. The issues addressed in the report include: the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty on pris­on­ers with men­tal ill­ness or devel­op­men­tal and intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, the over­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers who have been socioe­co­nom­i­cal­ly mar­gin­al­ized, and the role of psy­chi­a­trists in death penal­ty cases. 

Attorneys for Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, filed a motion on August 30 to re-open her appeals based on a recent deci­sion from the Tennessee Supreme Court. In 2022, the Court ruled in State v. Booker that manda­to­ry life sen­tences in homi­cide cas­es are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al when imposed on juve­niles, draw­ing on U.S. Supreme Court prece­dent that held that juve­niles are less mature, more vul­ner­a­ble to peer pres­sure, and gen­er­al­ly less cul­pa­ble than adults. Ms. Pike’s attor­neys argue that Booker​’s rea­son­ing applies to all youth­ful defen­dants, not…

Idaho U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill has ruled in favor of death row pris­on­er Gerald Pizzuto, indef­i­nite­ly paus­ing his March 2023 exe­cu­tion date, and grant­i­ng him a hear­ing in his claim that the state of Idaho vio­lates his Constitutional right against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment by repeat­ed­ly sched­ul­ing exe­cu­tion dates while know­ing the state does not have the means to car­ry it out. ​“As Pizzuto describes it,” Judge Winmill wrote, ​“defen­dants’ repeat­ed resched­ul­ing of his exe­cu­tion is like dry fir­ing in a mock exe­cu­tion or a game of Russian…

In He Called Me Sister: A True Story of Finding Humanity on Death Row, author Suzanne Craig Robertson details her jour­ney from reluc­tance to true friend­ship dur­ing her chal­leng­ing fif­teen-year rela­tion­ship with Cecil Johnson, a Tennessee death-row pris­on­er, who was exe­cut­ed in December 2009. Using let­ters, poems, and a per­son­al mem­oir writ­ten by Johnson, Robertson tells their mutu­al sto­ry of per­se­ver­ance, recall­ing that ​“dif­fer­ences don’t have to be barriers.”

Death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers in California will be moved out of San Quentin State Prison (pic­tured) and placed in oth­er max­i­mum secu­ri­ty facil­i­ties, as part of a broad plan announced by Governor Gavin Newsom on March 17, 2023. The gov­er­nor seeks to ​“trans­form” the state’s old­est prison into ​“a one-of-a-kind facil­i­ty focused on improv­ing pub­lic safe­ty through reha­bil­i­ta­tion and edu­ca­tion.” The state launched a pilot pro­gram in 2020 allow­ing some death-row pris­on­ers to vol­un­tar­i­ly move to oth­er state pris­ons. Under that pro­gram, more than 100 death-row pris­on­ers have already been trans­ferred out…

A 2022 arti­cle in the Columbia Journal of Law & Social Problems presents both a his­tor­i­cal overview of the prac­tice of death-row con­fine­ment in the U.S. and the find­ings of a sur­vey of the con­di­tions on death rows in every juris­dic­tion with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in America. Regarding the use of high­ly restric­tive con­fine­ment, the author states that ​“the sys­tem of per­ma­nent soli­tary con­fine­ment on death row has nei­ther the weight of his­to­ry nor the sup­port of the major­i­ty in either con­tem­po­rary prac­tice or social values.”

A joint research project begun by two Texas uni­ver­si­ties illus­trates the con­fine­ment con­di­tions of death-row pris­on­ers, includ­ing areas such as vis­i­ta­tion, health care, attor­ney vis­its, recre­ation, food, and oppor­tu­ni­ties for work. The Capital Punishment & Social Rights Research Initiative has cre­at­ed an ini­tial info­graph­ic describ­ing the con­di­tions in Texas.

A Russian nation­al on the U.S. fed­er­al death row has filed a civ­il rights law­suit chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the fed­er­al government’s use of auto­mat­ic and pro­longed soli­tary con­fine­ment to house indi­vid­u­als sen­tenced to death.

Florida has joined the grow­ing num­ber of states that have end­ed auto­mat­ic per­ma­nent soli­tary con­fine­ment for pris­on­ers sen­tenced to death.

Lawyers for Texas death-row pris­on­er Melissa Lucio (pic­tured) have moved to vacate her April 27, 2022 exe­cu­tion date and remove the judge and dis­trict attor­ney in her case because of con­flicts of inter­est stem­ming from their employ­ment of key mem­bers of Lucio’s orig­i­nal defense team.