New Analysis: Death-Sentenced Prisoners ​“Volunteer” for Execution at Ten Times Civilian Suicide Rate

Derrick Dearman first told his moth­er that he want­ed to die when he was four years old. On October 17, he was exe­cut­ed by the state of Alabama, becom­ing the 20^th per­son exe­cut­ed in the United States this year and the 165^th in the mod­ern era to ​“vol­un­teer” for death. A new analy­sis by the Death Penalty Information Center shows that despite falling rates of death sen­tences, exe­cu­tions, and pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty, the num­ber of death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers waiv­ing their appeals and choos­ing exe­cu­tion remains high — ten times high­er than sui­cide rates among the gen­er­al pub­lic. An esti­mat­ed one in ten mod­ern exe­cu­tions are the result of the pris­on­er’s choice. Given that the legal bar for ​“com­pe­tence” to waive cap­i­tal appeals is extreme­ly low, scores of peo­ple have been exe­cut­ed on their own request despite evi­dence of severe men­tal ill­ness and oth­er seri­ous con­sti­tu­tion­al con­cerns about their con­vic­tions and death sentences.

Mr. Dearman is a case in point. He strug­gled with severe depres­sion and sui­ci­dal ideation since he was a small child and was diag­nosed with numer­ous men­tal health con­di­tions includ­ing bipo­lar dis­or­der with psy­chot­ic fea­tures, PTSD, and neu­rocog­ni­tive dis­or­der. On the day he killed five mem­bers of his girlfriend’s fam­i­ly, he had not slept for six days and was high on metham­phet­a­mines, hear­ing voic­es that told him peo­ple were ​“after” him. Earlier this year, he sent a hand­writ­ten let­ter to state offi­cials request­ing an exe­cu­tion date. The United States Supreme Court has held that it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to exe­cute a per­son who can­not ratio­nal­ly com­pre­hend their pun­ish­ment and the rea­sons for it, adding that the prac­tice ​“sim­ply offends human­i­ty.” However, with­out con­duct­ing a com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing, an Alabama court per­mit­ted Mr. Dearman to waive his appeals. He asked the state to be exe­cut­ed, and the state obliged. 

In 2005, Cornell Law School Professor John Blume pub­lished a sem­i­nal study on vol­un­teers titled ​“Killing the Willing: ​‘Volunteers,’ Suicide, and Competency.” In an analy­sis of vol­un­teers from 1977 – 2003, he found that 88% had strug­gled with men­tal ill­ness and/​or sub­stance abuse. Volunteers did not split even­ly along race or gen­der lines: 85% were white males, despite that group rep­re­sent­ing only 45% of those on death row. Black men rep­re­sent­ed 43% of death row but only 3% of volunteers.

DPI ana­lyzed vol­un­teers in the twen­ty years since the study and con­clud­ed that Professor Blume’s find­ings hold true today. Of the 165 peo­ple exe­cut­ed at their own request since 1977, 87% bat­tled men­tal ill­ness, sub­stance abuse, or both. About 46% of peo­ple sen­tenced to death in the mod­ern era have been white men — but they make up 84% of vol­un­teers. The last ten vol­un­teers, going back to 2016, have all been white men. Meanwhile, 41% of mod­ern death sen­tences have been imposed on Black men, but they rep­re­sent only 5% of vol­un­teers (eight total). The dif­fer­ence in vol­un­teer rates for white and Black men, com­pared to their death sen­tence rates, is strong­ly sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. Statistics for women are some­what more con­sis­tent: about 2% of peo­ple sen­tenced to death have been women of any race, and 2% of vol­un­teers have been women (only three total, all white). 

These sta­tis­tics match the demo­graph­ics of sui­cide in the United States. Studies con­sis­tent­ly show that over 90% of sui­cide vic­tims suf­fered from men­tal ill­ness and/​or sub­stance abuse. Serious men­tal ill­ness­es like bipo­lar dis­or­der, schiz­o­phre­nia, and depres­sion increase the risk of addic­tion to drugs and alco­hol, and togeth­er the con­di­tions com­pound to cre­ate fur­ther insta­bil­i­ty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to sui­ci­dal ideation. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, white men account­ed for 68.5% of sui­cides in 2022, despite being only 30% of the pop­u­la­tion, and had a sui­cide rate of 23.8 per 100,000 — the high­est of any indi­vid­ual race-gen­der group. Black men, despite fac­ing high­er social and eco­nom­ic adver­si­ty, had low­er sui­cide rates. Researchers are ​“puz­zled” by the racial dis­par­i­ties but have iden­ti­fied increas­ing social iso­la­tion, high­er gun own­er­ship rates, and a per­ceived ​“loss of sta­tus” as pos­si­ble expla­na­tions for the sui­cide rate among white men in the gen­er­al pub­lic. It is not clear which fac­tors con­tribute to the over­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of white male vol­un­teers on death row. 

Assisted sui­cide is legal in only a hand­ful of states, and typ­i­cal­ly avail­able only for ter­mi­nal­ly ill patients who must meet strict pro­ce­dur­al require­ments. Death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers, though, may request exe­cu­tion dates even when they are phys­i­cal­ly healthy and open­ly sui­ci­dal. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who vehe­ment­ly opposed the death penal­ty, wrote in 1979 that ​“the Court has per­mit­ted the State’s mech­a­nism of exe­cu­tion to be trig­gered by an entire­ly arbi­trary fac­tor: the defendant’s deci­sion to acqui­esce in his own death.” He deemed this process ​“noth­ing less than state-administered suicide.” 

Measurements of the ​“vol­un­teer rate” on death row, com­pared to sui­cide rates on death row and amongst the gen­er­al pub­lic, lend sup­port to this cri­tique. Professor Blume cal­cu­lat­ed that the vol­un­teer rate on death row was approx­i­mate­ly 150 per 100,000 peo­ple for the peri­od 1977 – 2002.¹ Using his method, we found that the vol­un­teer rate through 2024 has seen only a mod­est decrease, to approx­i­mate­ly 137 per 100,000. This rate is about ten times high­er than the rate of civil­ian sui­cide, which stands at 14.2 per 100,000 peo­ple as of 2022. However, it match­es the rate of sui­cide on death row — 129.7 per 100,000 — near­ly per­fect­ly. Research also shows that when exe­cu­tions increase, sui­cides on death row decrease — sug­gest­ing that some sui­ci­dal pris­on­ers may vol­un­teer for exe­cu­tion instead of attempt­ing to take their own lives. 

The data show ​“dis­turb­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties between per­sons who com­mit sui­cide and those who vol­un­teer for exe­cu­tion,” Professor Blume argued. ​“Volunteers resem­ble those who com­mit sui­cide in ways that are extreme­ly unlike­ly to be attrib­ut­able to chance.”

For Scott Dozier, the choice was clear: whether by exe­cu­tion or sui­cide, he want­ed to die. ​“I just would rather be dead than do this,” he told The Marshall Project. Mr. Dozier had spent ten years on Nevada’s death row before he sent a let­ter to a Nevada judge on Halloween 2016, say­ing he was ​“of sound mind” and ask­ing to be ​“put to death.” Like most oth­er vol­un­teers, he was a white man with a his­to­ry of men­tal health con­di­tions and sub­stance abuse. But the state hadn’t exe­cut­ed any­one in a decade and could not find exe­cu­tion drugs. Officials pro­posed a new cock­tail of fen­tanyl, Valium, and the par­a­lyt­ic drug cisatracuri­um, prompt­ing law­suits from advo­ca­cy groups as well as Mr. Dozier’s attor­neys, who wor­ried about its use on their oth­er clients. Several phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies also accused Nevada of fraud­u­lent­ly obtain­ing their drugs for use in exe­cu­tions. Against his wish­es, Mr. Dozier received sev­er­al stays of exe­cu­tion while courts debat­ed the new pro­to­col. On January 5, 2019, he died by suicide.

Similarly, Aubrey Trail is seek­ing exe­cu­tion in Nebraska despite the state claim­ing not to have lethal injec­tion drugs. ​“My mes­sage to who­ev­er is lis­ten­ing is sim­ple: ​‘You gave me the death penal­ty so now use it,’” he wrote in a let­ter to a news­pa­per. Mr. Trail had attempt­ed sui­cide in front of the jury at his tri­al by cut­ting his throat with a razor blade. 

Several fac­tors may con­tribute to the high­er rate of sui­cide and vol­un­teerism on death row, includ­ing harsh con­di­tions, iso­la­tion, the psy­cho­log­i­cal weight of a death sen­tence, and the fact that peo­ple sen­tenced to death are more like­ly to suf­fer from addic­tion and men­tal ill­ness. Researchers use the term ​“Death Row Syndrome” to describe the hope­less­ness and sit­u­a­tion­al depres­sion expe­ri­enced by peo­ple fac­ing exe­cu­tion. In many states, the his­to­ry of the death penal­ty is a his­to­ry of vol­un­teers: in four states, the only pris­on­ers exe­cut­ed have been vol­un­teers, and vol­un­teers were the first to be exe­cut­ed in 15 states and by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.² The first man exe­cut­ed in the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty, after the Supreme Court autho­rized new death penal­ty statutes in 1976, was vol­un­teer Gary Gilmore. He had tried to kill him­self at least twice while await­ing exe­cu­tion, and was shot to death by fir­ing squad just two months after his death sentence.

The ​“vol­un­teer­ing” phe­nom­e­non also cre­ates seri­ous eth­i­cal issues for defense attor­neys, who have pro­fes­sion­al and eth­i­cal oblig­a­tions to fight to save their client’s life. Defense attor­neys note that near­ly all death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers at some point express hope­less­ness about their appeals and con­sid­er vol­un­teer­ing for exe­cu­tion. However, most change their minds, in part due to the advice and encour­age­ment of their attor­neys. In this study, DPI has defined a vol­un­teer as a pris­on­er who takes affir­ma­tive steps to has­ten their exe­cu­tion, includ­ing waiv­ing appeals, ask­ing for an exe­cu­tion date, or instruct­ing their attor­neys not to file end-stage litigation. 

One of the largest con­cerns about vol­un­teer­ing is that it allows exe­cu­tions to occur despite lin­ger­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tions about the volunteer’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. Because the courts only require a min­i­mal find­ing of legal ​“com­pe­tence” to waive appeals in a cap­i­tal case, many vol­un­teers have gone to their deaths with unre­solved con­sti­tu­tion­al claims such as intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, severe men­tal ill­ness, pow­er­ful mit­i­ga­tion evi­dence that a jury has nev­er heard, and even inno­cence. Some of these claims could have result­ed in the prisoner’s inel­i­gi­bil­i­ty for the death penal­ty, but the law per­mits the volunteer’s desire for exe­cu­tion to take prece­dence. ​“Society’s inde­pen­dent stake in enforce­ment of the Eighth Amendment’s pro­hi­bi­tion against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment can­not be over­rid­den by a defendant’s pur­port­ed waiv­er,” wrote Justice Marshall in dis­sent in Lehnard v. Wolff (1979). But the court asks only whether a per­son has a ratio­nal and fac­tu­al under­stand­ing of the con­se­quences of waiv­ing his appeals.

Stephen Vrabel was found incom­pe­tent to stand tri­al and treat­ed in men­tal hos­pi­tals for five years before he was sen­tenced to death. He suf­fered from schiz­o­phre­nia and believed his attor­neys were spies work­ing against him. Yet a court found him com­pe­tent to waive his appeals, and he was exe­cut­ed on July 14, 2004. That same year, courts approved exe­cu­tion for vol­un­teer David Hocker, who was diag­nosed with bipo­lar dis­or­der and had cut off his tes­ti­cles on death row. On September 24 this year, just a few weeks before Mr. Dearman was exe­cut­ed, Travis Mullis was put to death after vol­un­teer­ing in Texas. He had been found com­pe­tent to waive his appeals after a life­time of sui­cide attempts and severe men­tal ill­ness, includ­ing bipo­lar dis­or­der. In his final state­ment, he explained that he ​“took the legal steps to expe­dite to include assisted suicide.”

While there is evi­dence of a grow­ing nation­al con­sen­sus against exe­cut­ing peo­ple with seri­ous men­tal ill­ness, there have been few suc­cess­ful legal or leg­isla­tive reforms to pro­tect them. In recent years, Ohio and Kentucky passed bills pro­hibit­ing the exe­cu­tion of peo­ple who suf­fered from a seri­ous men­tal ill­ness at the time of their crimes, regard­less of whether a court deems them ​“com­pe­tent” for exe­cu­tion. Similar bills have been intro­duced in a dozen oth­er states but none have passed. 

If the exe­cu­tion of Joseph Corcoran pro­ceeds on December 18, 2024 will have the high­est num­ber of vol­un­teers exe­cut­ed in six years. Sentenced to death in Indiana for the mur­ders of four peo­ple, includ­ing his broth­er, Mr. Corcoran has a long his­to­ry of seri­ous men­tal ill­ness. He has been diag­nosed with schiz­o­phre­nia, with symp­toms of hal­lu­ci­na­tions and delu­sions, and mul­ti­ple experts have tes­ti­fied that he is incom­pe­tent. He believes that the prison guards are tor­tur­ing him with an ultra­sound machine. However, the Indiana Supreme Court held that his ​“past evi­dence of men­tal ill­ness” is not enough to block his execution.

For more infor­ma­tion, see DPI’s Execution Volunteers list or search for vol­un­teers in DPI’s Execution Database.