Death-row

Death row is a special section of a prison in the United States, that houses inmates who are awaiting execution after being sentenced to death for the conviction of a capital crime. The US is the only Western country that still applies the death penalty for capital crimes. Thirty-one of its 50 states and the federal government authorize this penalty.

"Death row" is a term also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution ("being on death row"), even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists.

Louisiana and several other states hold people on death row in solitary confinement and extreme isolation, in windowless cells 23 hours a day, with virtually no human contact except with guards. Such prisoners are not allowed to take part in any educational or work programs. Opponents of capital punishment claim that a prisoner's extreme social isolation on death row and uncertainty over his or her fate constitute a form of mental cruelty. Long-time death row inmates are liable to become mentally ill, if they are not already. This is referred to as the death row phenomenon. In extreme cases some inmates may attempt to commit suicide.

In March 2017, three men on death row at Angola Prison in Louisiana filed a federal class-action suit against the state Department of Corrections and prison for its policy of placing prisoners sentenced to death in solitary confinement. Each man had been held in solitary more than 25 years. Angola has 71 prisoners on death row, but the state has executed a small proportion of such prisoners, "fewer than 12 percent over the last 30 years." So inmates sentenced to death may serve nearly life in solitary.

In the United States, prisoners may wait many years as they appeal their convictions or sentences. The time between sentencing and execution has increased relatively steadily from 1977, when some states reinstated their death penalties through new legislation, to 2010. The time to execution increased between 2008 and 2009, as the Supreme Court had suspended all executions from 2007 to 2008, when it was studying the constitutionality of lethal injection as a method of execution.

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