Death row
Death row is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution, even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists. In the United States, after a person is found guilty of a capital offense in death penalty states, the judge will give the jury the option of imposing a death sentence or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. It is then up to a jury to decide whether to give the death sentence; this usually has to be a unanimous decision. If the jury agrees on death, the defendant will remain on death row during appeal and habeas corpus procedures, which may continue for several years.
Opponents of capital punishment claim that a prisoner's isolation and uncertainty over his or her fate constitute a form of psychological abuse and that especially long-time death row inmates are prone to develop a mental disorder, if they do not already suffer such a condition. This is referred to as the death row phenomenon. Some inmates may attempt to commit suicide.
Etymology
sentence required prison officials to expand their waiting area, and the "death cell" became "Death Row".United States
In the United States, prisoners may wait many years before execution can be carried out due to the complex and time-consuming appeals procedures mandated in the jurisdiction. The time between sentencing and execution has increased relatively steadily between 1977 and 2010, including a 22% jump between 1989 and 1990 and a similar jump between 2008 and 2009. In 2010, a death row inmate waited an average of 178 months between sentencing and execution. Nearly a quarter of inmates on death row in the U.S. die of natural causes while awaiting execution.There were 2,721 people on death row in the United States on October 1, 2018. Since 1977, the states of Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma have executed the most death row inmates., California, Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania housed more than half of all inmates pending on death row., the longest-serving prisoner on death row in the US who has been executed was Thomas Knight who served over 39 years. He was executed in Florida in 2014. While Knight was the longest-serving executed inmate, Gary Alvord arrived on Florida's death row in 1974 and died 39 years later on May 19, 2013 from a brain tumor, having spent more time on death row than any American. Brandon Astor Jones spent 36 years on death row before being executed for felony murder by the state of Georgia in 2016, at the age of 72. The oldest prisoner on death row in the United States was Leroy Nash, age 94, in Arizona. He died of natural causes on February 12, 2010.
Death row locations
| Men's death row | Women's death row | |
| Civilian Federal | United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Terre Haute, Indiana; ADX Florence, Fremont County, Colorado; and USMCFP Springfield, Springfield, Missouri | Federal Medical Center, Carswell, Fort Worth, Texas |
| Military | United States Disciplinary Barracks, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas | Naval Consolidated Brig, Miramar, San Diego, California |
Notes:
Other countries
When the United Kingdom had capital punishment, there were no 'death rows'. The condemned were however separated from the general prison population in a 'condemned cell' located relatively near the gallows. Sentenced inmates were given one appeal. If that appeal was found to involve an important point of law it was taken up to the House of Lords, and if the appeal was successful, at that point the sentence was changed to life in prison. The Home Secretary had the power to exercise the Sovereign's royal prerogative of mercy to grant a reprieve on execution and change the sentence to life imprisonment. Essentially the speedy process from conviction to execution, re-sentencing or reprieve meant that there were low numbers, prisoners under sentence of death at any one time and so there was no need for a 'death row'.In some Caribbean countries that still authorize execution, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is the ultimate court of appeals. It has upheld appeals by prisoners who have spent several years under sentence of death, stating that it does not desire to see the death row phenomenon emerge in countries under its jurisdiction.