I have been writing to a man who is on death row. He committed a murder, which he confessed to. He had no trial and requested the death penalty, which he received. I won’t give his name or the state. But I want to share something he wrote in one of his letters. I had asked what death row was like for him emotionally. For those of you who aren’t aware, being on death row is total isolation, total confinement in a small cell all day, every day. This is part of his reply:
“It doesn’t feel real to me…. I mean, I know where I’m at but the feelings or actual realization of it just don’t seem real when I’m sober. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t think about it much. I block it out. But I think I deserved my punishment. Why should I enjoy the blessings of this life when I took that from someone else? A lot of people cry out the death penalty is wrong but those same people don’t consider the isolation of a person from the world and other inmates. This, right here where I’m at, caged in the cell 24/7 with no physical contact with anyone is worse than death.”
If we are going to put someone to death, why do we first torture them for years or sometimes decades?
Something to think about.
Tags: death penalty, murder, prison
