Not “waiving” but Drowning: the Anatomy of Death Row Syndrome and Volunteering for Execution

Variously described as a “morgue” and “tomblike” by the men and women who call them home, this nation’s death rows are places rarely seen. Behind those tomblike walls, however, more than 3,000 individuals are currently awaiting their own deaths, their voices rarely heard. More than just a stopover on the way to death, the amount of time individuals spend living within those walls waiting for that death is significant—for executions in 2006, more than twelve years had expired on average between the time an individual was told he or she would die at our hands, and the execution itself. Some individuals have been awaiting that “certain” death for more than twenty years. And while our Constitution claims to protect us against “cruel and unusual punishment,” a complex combination of circumstances and ignorance have somehow lulled us into believing that those we have condemned to death either deserve this pain in exchange for the harms they have caused or that they don’t suffer much as they await their executions. Yet several facts belie this illusion. Within the international community, other countries have recognized the potential for harm caused by our current system, and as a result have refused to extradite back to the United States indi-