Imagine being told you are going to die in a month. Then it's a few hours. Then another month. You may be set free or you may be killed, and it all depends on events that are completely out of your control. How long could you stand it?
Regardless of the legality or morality of the death penalty, the process of sitting on death row, waiting to be executed, is incredibly painful. Some now argue that the protracted uncertainty, the rapidly changing execution dates, and the terrible isolation of death row, induces a form of insanity. People lose their minds, they commit suicide, and most importantly, they stop using the legal system to appeal their executions. It's called death row syndrome.
Death row syndrome is not just the result of the appeals process, but the life that people lead while they appeal. Though conditions vary widely, most death row cells are small. Many of them are roughly the size of parking spaces, and depending on the country, they can have multiple people inside them. Although some death rows are rows of open cells, allowing inmates to see and hear each other, others are a series of steel containers, so the inmates see no one.
Inmates rarely leave their cells. Most inmates are in their cells 22 to 23 hours a day. If they leave, they don't go outside. They have no contact with anyone except, occasionally, their legal representatives. Guards slide food to them through a slot.
It's not surprising that these conditions take a toll on people's minds. Death row prisoners, and prisoners who have been exonerated, often describe the way that their fellow death row inmates deteriorate over time. They describe some prisoners smearing feces on the wall and having psychotic delusions. Other prisoners hold long conversations with themselves. Many attempt suicide. Others simply sleep twenty hours a day.
Still others attempt suicide through legal means. It's not unusual for prisoners on death row to give up making appeals, and cooperate as much as they can with the execution process.
Source:
io9.com, Esther Inglis-Arkell, October 27, 2014
