Examples of Prisoners With Extraordinarily Long Stays on Death Row

Long stays on death row have become increas­ing­ly com­mon: the Fair Punishment Project esti­mat­ed in March 2017 that about 40% of con­demned pris­on­ers have spent more than 20 years on death row.¹

Carey Dean Moore spent 38 years on death row by the time of his exe­cu­tion in 2018. He was sen­tenced to death in 1980 for the mur­ders of two cab dri­vers. In 1991, a fed­er­al appel­late court reversed his death sen­tence and sent his case back for resen­tenc­ing. He was again resen­tenced to death. After this sec­ond death sen­tence, a fed­er­al dis­trict court again over­turned his death sen­tence and that rul­ing was affirmed by a pan­el of the 8^th Circuit Court of Appeals. However, an en banc review by the entire 8^th Circuit in 2003 over­turned the pan­el deci­sion and rein­stat­ed Moore’s death sen­tence. The Nebraska Supreme Court, on its own motion, stayed Moore’s exe­cu­tion in 2007 because of con­cerns about the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of elec­tro­cu­tion, the sole method of exe­cu­tion autho­rized in Nebraska at the time. The Court ulti­mate­ly declared elec­tro­cu­tion uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, and the state then adopt­ed lethal injec­tion as its method of exe­cu­tion. Following Nebraska’s leg­isla­tive repeal of the death penal­ty and the ref­er­en­dum vote rescind­ing the repeal, con­tro­ver­sy over the source of Nebraska’s lethal injec­tion drugs and the state’s untried 4‑drug pro­to­col, and Moore’s waiv­er of fur­ther appeals, Moore was exe­cut­ed on August 14, 2018.

Brandon Jones was exe­cut­ed in Georgia on February 3, 2016, just short of his 73^rd birth­day. He was the old­est per­son exe­cut­ed in Georgia in the state’s his­to­ry. When he was exe­cut­ed, he was believed to have served the longest time between con­vic­tion and exe­cu­tion of any con­demned pris­on­er in U.S. his­to­ry. Jones was orig­i­nal­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in October 1979, mean­ing he served about 36 years and four months between first being sen­tenced to death and exe­cu­tion. His ini­tial con­vic­tion had been over­turned because jurors had con­sult­ed a Bible dur­ing delib­er­a­tions. He was retried in 1997 and again con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death.

Michael Selsor was first sen­tenced to death in Oklahoma on January 30, 1976, for mur­der and was impris­oned for about 36 years and 3 months pri­or to his exe­cu­tion on May 1, 2012. Although his sen­tence had been reduced to life when Oklahoma’s death penal­ty was over­turned in 1976, he was re-sen­tenced to death for the same crime in 1998. When asked in an inter­view about the dif­fer­ence between the death penal­ty and life with­out parole, Selsor said, ​“The only dif­fer­ence between death and life with­out parole is one you kill me now, the oth­er one you kill me lat­er. There’s not even a shred of hope. There’s no need to even try to muster up a seed of hope because you’re just gonna die of old age in here….With the death penal­ty sen­tence I’m enti­tled to more appeals — the government’s gonna pay for it. I don’t have to do it myself if I don’t have the mon­ey for a lawyer which I don’t have. Instead I’m rely­ing on pub­lic defend­ers to do my appeals.” See the video of the inter­view.²

Manuel Valle was exe­cut­ed in Florida on Sept. 28, 2011. The Supreme Court delayed his exe­cu­tion for sev­er­al hours, and Justice Breyer dis­sent­ed from the deci­sion allow­ing it to go for­ward. Breyer wrote that Valle’s 33 years on death row were a cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment: ​“I have lit­tle doubt about the cru­el­ty of so long a peri­od of incar­cer­a­tion under sen­tence of death.” Ultimately, he indi­cat­ed that the goals of due process and time­ly exe­cu­tions may be irrec­on­cil­able: ​“It might also be argued that it is not so much the State as it is the numer­ous pro­ce­dures that the law demands that pro­duce decades of delay. But this kind of an argu­ment does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly jus­ti­fy exe­cu­tion in this case. Rather, the argu­ment may point instead to a more basic dif­fi­cul­ty, name­ly the dif­fi­cul­ty of rec­on­cil­ing the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty as cur­rent­ly admin­is­tered with pro­ce­dures nec­es­sary to assure that the wrong per­son is not exe­cut­ed.” (Valle v. Florida, No. 11 – 6029, Sept. 28, 2011).

Texas exe­cut­ed Rolando Ruiz on March 7, 2017. Ruiz’s lawyers had urged the Court to con­sid­er the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of sub­ject­ing him to extend­ed soli­tary con­fine­ment on death row. They wrote, ​“At this point, a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry has elapsed since Mr. Ruiz com­mit­ted a con­tract mur­der in 1992, two days after he turned twen­ty years old. Mr. Ruiz has lived for over two decades under a death sen­tence, spent almost twen­ty years in soli­tary con­fine­ment, received two eleventh-hour stays of exe­cu­tion, and has received four dif­fer­ent exe­cu­tion dates.” As in Valle’s case, the exe­cu­tion was delayed for sev­er­al hours as the Supreme Court con­sid­ered whether to review the issue. Ultimately, the Court declined to con­sid­er the claim and per­mit­ted the exe­cu­tion to go for­ward. Justice Breyer dis­sent­ed, say­ing, ​“Mr. Ruiz argues that his exe­cu­tion ​‘vio­lates the Eighth Amendment’ because it ​‘follow[s] lengthy [death row] incar­cer­a­tion in trau­mat­ic con­di­tions,’ prin­ci­pal­ly his ​‘per­ma­nent soli­tary con­fine­ment.’ I believe his claim is a strong one, and we should con­sid­er it.” Justice Breyer not­ed that the Court has had ​“seri­ous objec­tions” to extend­ed soli­tary con­fine­ment dat­ing back to In re Medley in 1890, when the Court, ​“speak­ing of a peri­od of only four weeks of impris­on­ment pri­or to exe­cu­tion, said that a prisoner’s uncer­tain­ty before exe­cu­tion is ​‘one of the most hor­ri­ble feel­ings to which he can be sub­ject­ed.’” He also quot­ed fel­low Justice Anthony Kennedy, who in 2015 urged the court to con­sid­er the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of extend­ed solitary confinement.

Gary Alvord, a Florida pris­on­er who at the time of his death had spent more years on death row than any oth­er con­demned pris­on­er in the coun­try, died on May 19, 2013, of nat­ur­al caus­es. Alvord was 66 years old and had been sen­tenced to death for mur­der almost 40 years before, on April 9, 1974. He suf­fered from schiz­o­phre­nia and had no close fam­i­ly. In the time Alvord spent on death row, 75 oth­ers were exe­cut­ed in Florida, many of whom spent half as long on death row as Alvord did. Alvord faced exe­cu­tion at least twice, but his severe men­tal ill­ness pre­vent­ed the exe­cu­tion from being car­ried out. In 1984, he was sent to a state hos­pi­tal to receive treat­ment for his psy­chi­atric con­di­tion, but doc­tors refused to treat him, cit­ing the eth­i­cal dilem­ma of mak­ing a patient well enough so he can be killed. Alvord’s final appeal expired in 1998.³

Viva Leroy Nash, the old­est per­son on death row in the U.S., died of nat­ur­al caus­es on death row in Arizona on February 12, 2010 at the age of 83. He was deaf, near­ly blind, con­fined to a wheel­chair and suf­fer­ing from demen­tia and men­tal ill­ness. He had been impris­oned almost con­tin­u­al­ly since he was 15. He was sen­tenced to death in 1983.⁴

Alabama on April 19, 2018, exe­cut­ed 83-year-old Walter Moody, the old­est per­son and only octo­ge­nar­i­an put to death in the United States since exe­cu­tions resumed in 1977. Moody’s exe­cu­tion stemmed from his 1996 con­vic­tion for the mur­der of a fed­er­al judge. Moody’s exe­cu­tion came in the midst of a grow­ing num­ber of exe­cu­tions of senior cit­i­zens. In 23 years of exe­cu­tions between 1977 and the close of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, only ten pris­on­ers aged 60 or old­er were exe­cut­ed. Forty-five were exe­cut­ed between January 2010 and June 2019, 23 since 2015 alone.