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The stakeholders include the prisoners condemned to death, the executioners, the inmate's family, the prison itself, the victim's family, the government, the financial team dealing with the execution

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This video does a great job going into detail and showing how the death penalty is viewed by citizens around the world. It is interesting to see how people that are brought up react to the death penalty.

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Should There Be A Death Penalty? - The People Speak

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Nuances with the death penalty include the fact that it is irreversible, the fact that it can be inhumane, biases against the condemned or with the jury.

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This article does a great job going through the nuances of the death penalty. Going back to the fact that the death penalty can be labeled as inhumane is highlighted in here as well as many of the other listed nuances.

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We know that, together, we can end the death penalty everywhere.

Every day, people are executed and sentenced to death by the state as punishment for a variety of crimes - sometimes for acts that should not be criminalized. In some countries, it can be for drug-related offences, in others it is reserved for terrorism-related acts and murder.

Some countries execute people who were under the age of 18 when the crime for which they have been convicted was committed, others use the death penalty against people with mental and intellectual disabilities and several others apply the death penalty after unfair trials - in clear violation of international law and standards. People can spend years on death row, not knowing when their time is up, or whether they will see their families one last time.

The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception - regardless of who is accused, the nature or circumstances of the crime, guilt or innocence or method of execution.

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About the death penalty

Amnesty International holds that the death penalty breaches human rights, in particular the right to life and the right to live free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Both rights are protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1948.

Over time, the international community has adopted several instruments that ban the use of the death penalty, including the following:

The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty.

Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, concerning the abolition of the death penalty, and Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights, concerning the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances.

The Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Although international law says that the use of the death penalty must be restricted to the most serious crimes, meaning intentional killing, Amnesty International believes that the death penalty is never the answer.

Amnesty International has never felt more hopeful that this abhorrent punishment can and will be relegated to the annals of history
Agnès Callamard, Secretary General, Amnesty International

Juvenile Executions

The use of the death penalty for crimes committed by people younger than 18 is prohibited under international human rights law, yet some countries still resort to the death penalty in these situations. Such executions are few compared to the total number of executions recorded by Amnesty International each year.

However, their significance goes beyond their number and calls into question the commitment of the executing states to respect international law.

Since 1990 Amnesty International has documented at least 163 executions of people who were below the age of 18, in 10 countries: China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Sudan, the USA and Yemen.

Several of these countries have changed their laws to exclude the practice. Iran has executed more than twice as many people who were below the age of 18 at the time of the crime as the other nine countries combined. At the time of writing Iran has executed at least 113 of them since 1990.

Execution Methods used in 2022

Beheading

Hanging

Lethal injection

Shooting

Where do most executions take place?

In 2022, most known executions took place in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the USA - in that order.

China remained the world's leading executioner - but the true extent of its use of the death penalty is unknown as this data is classified as a state secret; the global figure of at least 883 excludes the thousands of executions believed to have been carried out there.

Excluding China, 90% of all reported executions took place in just three countries - Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The global view: death sentences and executions 2008-2022

*This map indicates the general locations of boundaries and jurisdictions and should not be interpreted as Amnesty International's view on disputed territories.

**Country names listed reflect nomenclature in May 2023

How many death sentences and executions take place each year?

Death sentences

Amnesty International recorded at least 2,016 death sentences in 52 countries in 2022, a slight decrease from the total of 2,052 reported in 2021. At least 28,282 people were known to be under sentence of death globally at the end of 2022.

Executions

Amnesty International recorded at least 883 executions in 20 countries in 2022, up by 53% from 2021 (at least 579 executions).

Reasons to abolish the death penalty

It is irreversible and mistakes happen

Execution is the ultimate, irrevocable punishment: the risk of executing an innocent person can never be eliminated. Since 1973, for example, more than 191 prisoners sent to death row in the USA have later been exonerated or released from death row on grounds of innocence. Others have been executed despite serious doubts about their guilt.

It does not deter crime

Countries who execute commonly cite the death penalty as a way to deter people from committing crime. This claim has been repeatedly discredited, and there is no evidence that the death penalty is any more effective in reducing crime than life imprisonment.

It is often used within skewed justice systems

In many cases recorded by Amnesty International, people were executed after being convicted in grossly unfair trials, on the basis of torture-tainted evidence and with inadequate legal representation. In some countries death sentences are imposed as the mandatory punishment for certain offences, meaning that judges are not able to consider the circumstances of the crime or of the defendant before sentencing.

It is discriminatory

The weight of the death penalty is disproportionally carried by those with less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds or belonging to a racial, ethnic or religious minority. This includes having limited access to legal representation, for example, or being at greater disadvantage in their experience of the criminal justice system.

It is used as a political tool

The authorities in some countries, for example Iran and Sudan, use the death penalty to punish political opponents.

What is Amnesty International doing to abolish the death penalty?

For over 45 years, Amnesty International has been campaigning to abolish the death penalty around the world.

Amnesty International monitors its use by all states to expose and hold to account governments that continue to use the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. We publish a report annually, reporting figures and analysing trends for each country. Amnesty International's latest report, Death Sentences and Executions 2022, was released in May 2023.

The organization's work to oppose the death penalty takes many forms, including targeted, advocacy and campaign based projects in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia-Pacific, Americas and Europe and Central Asia , and Middle East and North Africa regions; strengthening national and international standards against its use, including by supporting the successful adoption of resolutions by the UN General Assembly on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty; and applying pressure on cases that face imminent execution. We also support actions and work by the abolitionist movement, at national, regional and global level.

When Amnesty International started its work in 1977, only 16 countries had totally abolished the death penalty. Today, that number has risen to 112 - more than half the world's countries. More than two-thirds are abolitionist in law or practice.

Case Studies

Saved from death row: Hafez Ibrahim

Thanks to Amnesty's campaigning efforts, the execution of Hafez Ibrahim, from Yemen, was stopped not once, but twice. Hafez, who was accused of a crime he insists he didn't commit, first faced a firing squad in 2005. He was taken to a small yard in a Yemeni prison and brought before a row of officers with rifles in hand. He thought that moment would be his last.

Just before he was about to be shot, he was taken back to his cell, with no explanation. "I was lost, I did not understand what was happening. I later learned that Amnesty International had called on the Yemeni President to stop my execution and the message was heard," Hafez said.

In 2007, Hafez was about to be executed again when he sent a mobile text message to Amnesty International. "They are about to execute us." Hafez said.

It was a message that saved his life. The message sparked an international campaign, persuading the President to stop the execution for a second time.

Now Hafez is a lawyer helping juveniles who languish on death row corridors across Yemen.

Activists on a mission: Souleymane Sow

Amnesty International's work to abolish the death penalty is also bolstered by its incredible activists, who take it upon themselves to campaign against this abhorrent practice.

Souleymane Sow, has been volunteering with Amnesty International since he was a student in France. Inspired to make a difference, he returned to Guinea, set up a local group of Amnesty International volunteers and got to work. Their aim? To promote the importance of human rights, educate people on these issues and abolish the death penalty in Guinea. Along with 34 NGOs, they finally achieved their goal in 2017.

"My colleagues and I lobbied against the death penalty every day for five months. In 2016, Guinea's National Assembly voted in favour of a new criminal code which removed the death sentence from the list of applicable penalties. Last year [2017], they did the same in the military court, too," said Souleymane.

"It was the first time so many NGOs had come together to campaign on an issue. People said they were happy with our work and they could see that change is possible. Most of all, it inspired us to continue campaigning."

It was such an incredible achievement - and it showed the importance of people power.
Souleymane Sow

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The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

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Amnesty opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception. Here's why.

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Another perspective from the people showing a lot of support for the death penalty. 60% of US adults actually favor the death penalty, while 27% of those who favor, strongly favor it. This article just gives some background information on the topic and exposes how much disagreement there really is about the death penalty. There are infamous nuances and concerns with how it is physically executed, the risk of killing an innocent person who was wrongfully put into death row, and tons more listed in here.

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Pew Research Center - U.S. Politics & Policy

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78% say there is some risk of innocent people being put to death

The use of the death penalty is gradually disappearing in the United States. Last year, in part because of the coronavirus outbreak, fewer people were executed than in any year in nearly three decades.

Yet the death penalty for people convicted of murder continues to draw support from a majority of Americans despite widespread doubts about its administration, fairness and whether it deters serious crimes.

More Americans favor than oppose the death penalty: 60% of U.S. adults favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, including 27% who strongly favor it. About four-in-ten (39%) oppose the death penalty, with 15% strongly opposed, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

The survey, conducted April 5-11 among 5,109 U.S. adults on the Center's American Trends Panel, finds that support for the death penalty is 5 percentage points lower than it was in August 2020, when 65% said they favored the death penalty for people convicted of murder.

While public support for the death penalty has changed only modestly in recent years, support for the death penalty declined substantially between the late 1990s and the 2010s. (See "Death penalty draws more Americans' support online than in telephone surveys" for more on long-term measures and the challenge of comparing views across different survey modes.)

Large shares of Americans express concerns over how the death penalty is administered and are skeptical about whether it deters people from committing serious crimes.

Nearly eight-in-ten (78%) say there is some risk that an innocent person will be put to death, while only 21% think there are adequate safeguards in place to prevent that from happening. Only 30% of death penalty supporters - and just 6% of opponents - say adequate safeguards exist to prevent innocent people from being executed.

A majority of Americans (56%) say Black people are more likely than White people to be sentenced to the death penalty for being convicted of serious crimes. This view is particularly widespread among Black adults: 85% of Black adults say Black people are more likely than Whites to receive the death penalty for being convicted of similar crimes (61% of Hispanic adults and 49% of White adults say this).

Moreover, more than six-in-ten Americans (63%), including about half of death penalty supporters (48%), say the death penalty does not deter people from committing serious crimes.

Yet support for the death penalty is strongly associated with a belief that when someone commits murder, the death penalty is morally justified. Among the public overall, 64% say the death penalty is morally justified in cases of murder, while 33% say it is not justified. An overwhelming share of death penalty supporters (90%) say it is morally justified under such circumstances, compared with 25% of death penalty opponents.

Partisanship continues to be a major factor in support for the death penalty and opinions about its administration. Just over three-quarters of Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party (77%) say they favor the death penalty for persons convicted of murder, including 40% who strongly favor it.

Democrats and Democratic leaners are more divided on this issue: 46% favor the death penalty, while 53% are opposed. About a quarter of Democrats (23%) strongly oppose the death penalty, compared with 17% who strongly favor it.

Over the past two years, the share of Republicans who say they favor the death penalty for persons convicted of murder has decreased slightly - by 7 percentage points - while the share of Democrats who say this is essentially unchanged (46% today vs. 49% in 2019).

Republicans and Democrats also differ over whether the death penalty is morally justified, whether it acts as a deterrent to serious crime and whether adequate safeguards exist to ensure that no innocent person is put to death. Republicans are 29 percentage points more likely than Democrats to say the death penalty is morally justified, 28 points more likely to say it deters serious crimes, and 19 points more likely to say that adequate safeguards exist.

But the widest partisan divide - wider than differences in opinions about the death penalty itself - is over whether White people and Black people are equally likely to be sentenced to the death penalty for committing similar crimes.

About seven-in-ten Republicans (72%) say that White people and Black people are equally likely to be sentenced to death for the same types of crimes. Only 15% of Democrats say this. More than eight-in-ten Democrats (83%) instead say that Black people are more likely than White people to be sentenced to the death penalty for committing similar crimes.

Differing views of death penalty by race and ethnicity, education, ideology

There are wide ideological differences within both parties on this issue. Among Democrats, a 55% majority of conservatives and moderates favor the death penalty, a position held by just 36% of liberal Democrats (64% of liberal Democrats oppose the death penalty). A third of liberal Democrats strongly oppose the death penalty, compared with just 14% of conservatives and moderates.

While conservative Republicans are more likely to express support for the death penalty than moderate and liberal Republicans, clear majorities of both groups favor the death penalty (82% of conservative Republicans and 68% of moderate and liberal Republicans).

As in the past, support for the death penalty differs across racial and ethnic groups. Majorities of White (63%), Asian (63%) and Hispanic adults (56%) favor the death penalty for persons convicted of murder. Black adults are evenly divided: 49% favor the death penalty, while an identical share oppose it.

Support for the death penalty also varies across age groups. About half of those ages 18 to 29 (51%) favor the death penalty, compared with about six-in-ten adults ages 30 to 49 (58%) and those 65 and older (60%). Adults ages 50 to 64 are most supportive of the death penalty, with 69% in favor.

There are differences in attitudes by education, as well. Nearly seven-in-ten adults (68%) who have not attended college favor the death penalty, as do 63% of those who have some college experience but no degree.

About half of those with four-year undergraduate degrees but no postgraduate experience (49%) support the death penalty. Among those with postgraduate degrees, a larger share say they oppose (55%) than favor (44%) the death penalty.

The divide in support for the death penalty between those with and without college degrees is seen across racial and ethnic groups, though the size of this gap varies. A large majority of White adults without college degrees (72%) favor the death penalty, compared with about half (47%) of White adults who have degrees. Among Black adults, 53% of those without college degrees favor the death penalty, compared with 34% of those with college degrees. And while a majority of Hispanic adults without college degrees (58%) say they favor the death penalty, a smaller share (47%) of those with college degrees say this.

Intraparty differences in support for the death penalty

Republicans are consistently more likely than Democrats to favor the death penalty, though there are divisions within each party by age as well as by race and ethnicity.

Republicans ages 18 to 34 are less likely than other Republicans to say they favor the death penalty. Just over six-in-ten Republicans in this age group (64%) say this, compared with about eight-in-ten Republicans ages 35 and older.

Among Democrats, adults ages 50 to 64 are much more likely than adults in other age groups to favor the death penalty. A 58% majority of 50- to 64-year-old Democrats favor the death penalty, compared with 47% of those ages 35 to 49 and about four-in-ten Democrats who are 18 to 34 or 65 and older.

Overall, White adults are more likely to favor the death penalty than Black or Hispanic adults, while White and Asian American adults are equally likely to favor the death penalty. However, White Democrats are less likely to favor the death penalty than Black, Hispanic or Asian Democrats. About half of Hispanic (53%), Asian (53%) and Black (48%) Democrats favor the death penalty, compared with 42% of White Democrats.

About eight-in-ten White Republicans favor the death penalty, as do about seven-in-ten Hispanic Republicans (69%).

Differences by race and ethnicity, education over whether there are racial disparities in death penalty sentencing

There are substantial demographic differences in views of whether death sentencing is applied fairly across racial groups. While 85% of Black adults say Black people are more likely than White people to be sentenced to death for committing similar crimes, a narrower majority of Hispanic adults (61%) and about half of White adults (49%) say the same. People with four-year college degrees (68%) also are more likely than those who have not completed college (50%) to say that Black people and White people are treated differently when it comes to the death penalty.

About eight-in-ten Democrats (83%), including fully 94% of liberal Democrats and three-quarters of conservative and moderate Democrats, say Black people are more likely than White people to be sentenced to death for committing the same type of crime - a view shared by just 25% of Republicans (18% of conservative Republicans and 38% of moderate and liberal Republicans).

Across educational and racial or ethnic groups, majorities say that the death penalty does not deter serious crimes, although there are differences in how widely this view is held. About seven-in-ten (69%) of those with college degrees say this, as do about six-in-ten (59%) of those without college degrees. About seven-in-ten Black adults (72%) and narrower majorities of White (62%) and Hispanic (63%) adults say the same. Asian American adults are more divided, with half saying the death penalty deters serious crimes and a similar share (49%) saying it does not.

Among Republicans, a narrow majority of conservative Republicans (56%) say the death penalty does deter serious crimes, while a similar share of moderate and liberal Republicans (57%) say it does not.

A large majority of liberal Democrats (82%) and a smaller, though still substantial, majority of conservative and moderate Democrats (70%) say the death penalty does not deter serious crimes. But Democrats are divided over whether the death penalty is morally justified. A majority of conservative and moderate Democrats (57%) say that a death sentence is morally justified when someone commits a crime like murder, compared with fewer than half of liberal Democrats (44%).

There is widespread agreement on one topic related to the death penalty: Nearly eight-in-ten (78%) say that there is some risk an innocent person will be put to death, including large majorities among various racial or ethnic, educational, and even ideological groups. For example, about two-thirds of conservative Republicans (65%) say this - compared with 34% who say there are adequate safeguards to ensure that no innocent person will be executed - despite conservative Republicans expressing quite favorable attitudes toward the death penalty on other questions.

Those who favor the death penalty consistently express more favorable attitudes regarding specific aspects of the death penalty than those who oppose it.

For instance, nine-in-ten of those who favor the death penalty also say that the death penalty is morally justified when someone commits a crime like murder. Just 25% of those who oppose the death penalty say it is morally justified.

This relationship holds among members of each party. Among Republicans and Republican leaners who favor the death penalty, 94% say it is morally justified; 86% of Democrats and Democratic leaners who favor the death penalty also say this.

By comparison, just 35% of Republicans and 21% of Democrats who oppose the death penalty say it is morally justified.

Similarly, those who favor the death penalty are more likely to say it deters people from committing serious crimes. Half of those who favor the death penalty say this, compared with 13% of those who oppose it. And even though large majorities of both groups say there is some risk an innocent person will be put to death, members of the public who favor the death penalty are 24 percentage points more likely to say that there are adequate safeguards to prevent this than Americans who oppose the death penalty.

On the question of whether Black people and White people are equally likely to be sentenced to death for committing similar crimes, partisanship is more strongly associated with these views than one's overall support for the death penalty: Republicans who oppose the death penalty are more likely than Democrats who favor it to say White people and Black people are equally likely to be sentenced to death.

Among Republicans who favor the death penalty, 78% say that Black and White people are equally likely to receive this sentence. Among Republicans who oppose the death penalty, about half (53%) say this. However, just 26% of Democrats who favor the death penalty say that Black and White people are equally likely to receive this sentence, and only 6% of Democrats who oppose the death penalty say this.
CORRECTION (July 13, 2021): The following sentence was updated to reflect the correct timespan: "Last year, in part because of the coronavirus outbreak, fewer people were executed than in any year in nearly three decades." The changes did not affect the report's substantive findings.

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Most Americans Favor the Death Penalty Despite Concerns About Its Administration

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Nearly eight-in-ten U.S. adults (78%) say there is some risk an innocent person will be put to death, and 63% say the death penalty does not deter people from committing serious crimes.

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The finances behind the death penalty affect more people than just the person being executed and their family. Taxpayers are usually paying a huge chunk of money to fund these executions of people convicted of capital punishment. Louisiana alone has spent 7.7 million dollars on the death penalty in one single calendar year, and they haven't even executed anyone in 13 years.

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This article goes in depth about the history of the death penalty. Just having some background information on the topic can be a great piece of knowledge when learning about the stakeholders and nuances of the death penalty.

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The death penalty takes a great toll on the prisons themselves. Prisoners on death row often stay there for years, sometimes decades awaiting execution, and the prison is responsible for them the entire time they are stuck on death row. So some prisons could very possibly be against the death penalty due to all of the time and stress it takes and causes.

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Death Row

Death-sentenced prisoners in the U.S. typically spend more than a decade on death row prior to exoneration or execution. Some prisoners have been on death row for well over 20 years.

Introduction

There is no accurate measure of the length of time prisoners spend on death row. Some prisoners are on death row for only a short period of time before their convictions or death sentences are overturned in the courts. Other have spent more than four decades on death row before being exonerated or being non-capitally resentenced.

Half of all death-row exonerations have taken more than a decade, and the length of time between conviction and exoneration has continued to grow. More than half of the exonerations since 2013 have taken 25 years or more.

The length of time prisoners spend on death row in the United States before being executed began to emerge as a topic of interest in the debate about the death penalty in the early 2000s. The discussion increased around the 2005 execution of Michael Ross, a Connecticut inmate who had been on death row for 17 years, and has been spurred by the writings of several Supreme Court Justices - most recently Justice Stephen Breyer - who have unsuccessfully urged the Court to consider this issue.

Death-row prisoners in the U.S. typically spend more than a decade awaiting execution or court rulings overturning their death sentences. More than half of all prisoners currently sentenced to death in the U.S. have been on death row for more than 18 years.

While on death row, those serving capital sentences are generally isolated from other prisoners, excluded from prison educational and employment programs, and sharply restricted in terms of visitation and exercise, spending as many as 23 hours a day alone in their cells.

This raises the question of whether death-row prisoners are being subject to two distinct punishments: the death sentence itself and the years of living in conditions tantamount to solitary confinement - a severe form of punishment that may be used only for very limited periods for general-population prisoners.

Moreover, unlike general-population prisoners, even in solitary confinement, prisoners on death-row live in a state of constant uncertainty over when they will be executed. For some death-row prisoners, this isolation and anxiety results in a sharp deterioration in their health and mental status.

Background

When the constitution was written, the time between sentencing and execution could be measured in days or weeks. A century later, the Supreme Court noted that long delays between sentencing and execution, compounded by a prisoner's uncertainty over time of execution, could be agonizing, resulting in "horrible feelings" and "immense mental anxiety amounting to a great increase in the offender's punishment." ( In re Medley, 1890, as cited in Foster v. Florida, 2002). The time frame at issue in In re Medley: four weeks.

But in the wake of the Supreme Court-mandated suspension of the death penalty in 1972 and its declaration in 1976 that meaningful appellate review was a prerequisite to any constitutionally acceptable scheme of capital punishment, numerous reforms have been introduced in an attempt to create a less arbitrary system. This has resulted in lengthier appeals, as mandatory sentencing reviews have become the norm, and continual changes in laws and technology have necessitated reexamination of individual sentences.

Death penalty proponents and opponents alike say such careful review is imperative when the stakes are life and death. "People are adamant ... that every avenue should be exhausted to make sure there is no chance (the condemned) are not guilty," former Georgia Attorney General Mike Bowers said in 2001. "The surer you are, the slower you move." (Atlanta Constitution, October 27, 2001).

The years it takes to carry out a death sentence exact a huge toll - on taxpayers, victims' families, and the prisoners themselves. Yet without thorough appeals, mistakes or misconduct in death penalty cases would be missed or remain concealed. As of June 2021, 33 of the men and women wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death since states resumed capital punishment in the 1970s had waited 20 or more years to be exonerated. Seventeen who were exonerated between 2010 and June 2021 had waited 25 years or more for their exonerations and, for twelve, exoneration took 30 years or more.

Characteristics of Death-Row Prisoners

The following information is taken from the Bureau of Justice Statistics: Capital Punishment and is the statistical data of the death-row population for 12/31/2019.

56.1% of the death-row population is White, 41.4% is Black, 1.6% is Asian/Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander, and .8% is American Indian/Alaska Native. BJS records Hispanic/Latino origin as ethnicity, not race, however, and many Latinx prisoners (who comprise 15.1% of death row) are listed by BJS as White.

Men make up 98% of those on death row; women make up 2%

The median education level of death-row prisoners is 12th grade.

55.5% of death-row prisoners have never married; 19.6% are divorced or separated; 21.3% are currently married; and 3.6% are widowed.

28.2% of death-row prisoners are age 25 to 44. and 54.8% are 50 or older.

9.5% of death-row prisoners had a prior homicide conviction.

67.8% had prior felony convictions.

The following information is taken from the Bureau of Justice Statistics: Capital Punishment and is the statistical data of the death-row population for 12/31/2008 (the last year that this data was publicly reported.)

Among all prisoners under sentence of death, half were age 20 to 29 at the time of arrest; 10.5% were age 19 or younger; and 1% were age 55 or older.

The average age at time of arrest was 29 years.

The Aging of the Death Row Population

America's death row population is aging significantly: Five hundred and seventy-four prisoners were 60 years old or older as of 2019. That figure represents a growing senior death row population, which numbered just 39 in 1996. Some death row seniors committed crimes late in life, but many are there at such advanced age because of the inevitable slowness of the capital appeals process. Unlike elderly prisoners in the general population, death row seniors typically are not housed in prison geriatric facilities or placed in "end of life" programs, but rather are often segregated in individual cells within special facilities.

Legal scholars have argued that executing people who have become so old is inconsistent with humanitarian values. "Dead man walking is one thing," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who has worked with older prisoners. "Dead man being pushed along to the execution chamber in a wheelchair is another thing." (USA Today, February 10, 2005).

On December 9, 2021, Oklahoma executed 79-year-old Bigler Stouffer, its oldest death-row-prisoner and the oldest person to be executed in that state. James Frazier, Ohio's oldest death-row prisoner, was scheduled to be executed October 20, 2021, before dying of COVID on November 19, 2020. He suffered from dementia following a series of strokes, could not walk, and required the assistance of aides to complete daily tasks. His lawyers had filed a petition to bar his execution on grounds of mental incompetency.

In 2018, one year after executing 75-year-old Thomas Arthur, Alabama executed 83-year-old Walter Moody, the oldest person and only octogenarian put to death in the United States since executions resumed in 1977. A DPIC analysis of U.S. execution data found that only three of the 944 prisoners executed in the United States between 1977 and 2004 had been aged 65 or older. That total was matched in the first six months of 2019, with the executions of Billie Coble (70), Donnie Johnson (68), and Robert Long (65). In 23 years of executions between 1977 and the close of the 20th century, only ten prisoners aged 60 or older were executed. Forty-five prisoners aged 60 or older were executed between January 2010 and June 2019, 23 since 2015 alone.

With the aging of death row, states and courts are grappling with how issues of age-related physical and mental decline affect executions. In 2004, a 74-year-old man was put to death in Alabama for a murder he committed in 1977. Before his execution, J.B. Hubbard forgot who he was at times because of dementia. He suffered from colon and prostate cancer, and he was so weak that other inmates sometimes walked him to the shower and combed his hair. (Washington Post, August 6, 2004).

Ohio tried and failed to execute terminally ill 69-year-old Alva Campbell (pictured) in November 2017. Campbell was afflicted with lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, respiratory failure, prostate cancer, and severe pneumonia; he relied on a colostomy bag, needed oxygen treatments four times a day, and required a walker for even limited mobility. After failing four times to find a suitable vein in which to set an intravenous execution line, Ohio called off the execution. Governor John Kasich granted Campbell a temporary reprieve and rescheduled his execution for June 2019. Campbell died of his terminal illness less than six months later.

The U.S. Supreme Court stayed the execution of 67-year old Alabama prisoner Vernon Madison in 2018 based on concerns that he was incompetent to be executed. Madison suffered multiple severe strokes that caused him brain damage, vascular dementia, and retrograde amnesia. The strokes also left him with slurred speech, legally blind, incontinent, and unable to walk independently. In addition to having no memory of the offense, he can no longer recite the alphabet past the letter G, soils himself because he does not know there is a toilet in his cell, asks that his mother-who is dead-be informed of his strokes, and plans to move to Florida when he is out of jail. The State of Alabama had argued that Madison's dementia was not a bar to execution, but in a 2019 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cognitive issues associated with dementia could render a prisoner incompetent to be executed.

International Perspectives

Numerous international human rights treaties explicitly prohibit governments from subjecting individuals to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." The prohibition is among the core principles included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 shortly after the formation of the United Nations (Article 5), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 7), the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Preamble and Article 16), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Article 17), among other human rights instruments. A growing body of international case law suggests that extended confinement on death row under threat of execution constitutes cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment.

In his dissenting statement in Elledge v. Florida in 1998, Justice Stephen Breyer noted that British jurists have suggested that the Bill of Rights of 1689 - a key part of English common law that Breyer described as "relevant to the interpretation of our own Constitution" - may prohibit some delays as cruel and unusual. In a landmark 1993 ruling, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council - the British court that serves as the highest appeals court for Caribbean Commonwealth countries - ruled that executing prisoners after they had already spent more than five years on death row was "inhumane and degrading," amounting to unconstitutional double punishment. Such prisoners, the court held, must have their death sentences commuted to life in prison. (The Independent, Nov. 3, 1993).

The committee's seven Law Lords did not rule that the death penalty itself was unconstitutional. But "there is an instinctive revulsion against the prospect of hanging a man after he has been held under sentence of death for many years," they wrote. "What gives rise to this instinctive revulsion? The answer can only be our humanity. We regard it as an inhuman act to keep a man facing the agony of execution over a long extended period of time." ( Ibid). The decision, known as the Pratt and Morgan ruling, resulted in the commutation of scores of death sentences in Jamaica, Bermuda, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago, cutting the death row population of English-speaking Caribbean nations by more than half. (The Miami Herald, September 8, 1998).

The Supreme Court of Canada, which does not have the death penalty, ruled in 2001 that two Canadian citizens charged with murder in Washington state could be extradited to the United States only with the guarantee that they would not receive the death penalty. The Canadian court found that the potential for long incarcerations before execution was a "relevant consideration" in determining whether extradition violates principles of "fundamental justice." ( United States v. Burns, S.C.R. 283, 353, 123, cited in Foster v. Florida, 2002).

In 2009, the President of Kenya commuted the death sentences of all of the country's more than 4,000 death row prisoners to life, citing the wait to face execution as "undue mental anguish and suffering."

Death Row Syndrome/Death Row Phenomenon

Psychologists and lawyers in the United States and elsewhere have argued that protracted periods in the confines of death row can make prisoners suicidal, delusional and insane. Some have referred to the living conditions on death row - the bleak isolation and years of uncertainty as to time of execution - as the "death row phenomenon" and the psychological effects that can result as "death row syndrome." The origins of these concepts are often traced to the 1989 extradition hearings of Jens Soering, a German citizen who was charged with murders in Virginia in 1985 and who fled to the United Kingdom.

Soering argued to the European Court of Human Rights that the conditions he would face during the lengthy period between sentencing and execution would be as psychologically damaging as torture.

The court agreed. In its ruling that he could not be sent to a place that would sentence him to death, the court cited not the death penalty itself, but rather the "Death Row phenomenon" in which prisoners spent years awaiting execution while their cases were appealed. (Associated Press, July 27, 1989). Soering was extradited in 1990, but only with the prosecutors' promise not to seek the death penalty.

The Soering case has been cited as precedent in international extradition cases, though today courts in countries without the death penalty often will not extradite to the United States because of the possibility of execution itself, regardless of how long the wait on death row, since the death penalty itself is seen as a violation of human rights.

Conclusion

The time that U.S. prisoners spend on death row has gotten increasingly longer in recent years and raises questions about the constitutionality of this added punishment. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has not addressed this issue, it has been repeatedly cited as a serious concern by death penalty experts in the U.S. and by courts outside the U.S. Shortening the time on death row would be difficult without either a significant allocation of new resources or a risky curtailment of necessary reviews.

The Michael Ross Case and​"Death Row Syndrome"

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The Death Penalty Information Center is a non-profit organization serving the media and the public with analysis and information about capital punishment. Founded in 1990, the Center promotes informed discussion of the death penalty by preparing in-depth reports, conducting briefings for...

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Not only does the execution affect the convicted, it also takes an immense toll on the people carrying out the executions. Some of the former executioners reveal their spiritual health took a great impact from doing these things to people. They have revealed mental and physical health struggles due to the executions. So these stakeholders seem to be very much against the death penalty as it affects their mental health very much.

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Carrying out executions took a secret toll on workers — then changed their politics

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NPR spoke with 26 people who were involved with more than 200 executions across the country. Most said their health suffered and they had little support to help them cope with their unusual jobs.

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The families of the condemned are obviously very distraught after an execution of a loved one. But what's never talked about is how that sorrow stays with them for the rest of their lives. They physically watch their family member either be electrocuted or fatally injected in real time and in front of their eyes. That sight will never leave their minds, so these people as well, would be against the death penalty.

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On July 8, Danielle Allen watched as her fiancée, Billy Joe Wardlow, was put to death in Texas. Stan Allridge witnessed the execution of two of his brothers: Ronnie, in 1995; and Vernon, in 2004.

In death penalty cases, the media usually focuses on the victim's family and the condemned prisoner's crime. Yet, the agony of the families of the condemned is real, and it never disappears.

The impulse to be there for their loved ones at the end was powerful. Stan watched both executions, with two of his other brothers, holding hands on the other side of the witness box at the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Tx.

They didn't want Ronnie and Vernon to die alone, as people filled with hatred stared at them. Their father's heart was too weak to watch his sons put to death. Their mother stayed with him, to comfort him.

When the U.S. Supreme Court denied Billy Joe Wardlow's final appeal on that Wednesday evening, Dani, accompanied by Billy Joe's attorney and a friend, were escorted through the prison to the execution chamber in Huntsville.

The friend held on to her all the way to keep her from stumbling. Dani says she was in shock, concentrating on what Billy Joe was thinking, knowing he was about to die after 25 years on death row.

"Why Are They Doing This?"

When his brother Ronnie was executed, Stan was 18. He had just graduated high school, where he was captain of the football team, and a member of the honor society. He was on his way to the University of North Texas in Denton.

He remembers standing as close as he could to the big window in the witness box, his two brothers beside him, looking at Ronnie, strapped down on a gurney with a needle in one arm.

A wall separated him from the victim's family on the other side of the witness box. He says he could see their partial reflections.

"Why," he remembers thinking, "Why are they doing this? What will it fix? What sense does it make?

Ronnie Allridge was sent to Death Row in 1986 after shooting and killing a customer during the robbery of a fast food restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas. James Vernon Allridge III, known to his family as Vernon, was sent to death row in 1987 after he shot and killed a convenience store clerk during another robbery in Fort Worth.

Thirty-three years after Vernon was put to death, his last statement still brings tears to Stan's eyes. Strapped down on the gurney with IV needles in both his arms, Vernon apologized for his crime, thanked his family for sticking by him and his victim's sister for forgiving him.

He ended his short goodbye with nine words Stan will never forget:

"To the moon and back - I love you all."

During his 17 years on death row, The Austin Chronicle reported in 2004, Vernon had become an acclaimed artist and poet, and his paintings were "featured in art shows across the country and in Europe."

Former death row guards said he was "a calming force on the row" who "taught other inmates to read and write" and "made it a safer place."

The newspaper reported Vernon's rehabilitation was supported by "four of his original jurors, his family, attorneys, two former death row prison guards, a retired prison administrator, a Fort Worth city councilman...and a handful of others."

Sister Helen Prejean, the noted opponent of capital punishment, was his spiritual adviser. Actor Susan Sarandon corresponded with him for eight years and visited him before he was put to death.

At Vernon's murder trial in the mid-1980s, jurors only had to answer two questions in a murder trial to impose the death penalty - was the crime deliberate? And did the defendant post a "future threat?"

An affirmative answer to both mandated a death sentence. The possibility of rehabilitation didn't matter.

In 1989, the "future dangerousness" theory was debunked by extensive research that spanned 47 years. It showed that death row inmates who received clemency rarely committed crimes when they were released.

The research, published in the Loyola University of Los Angeles Law Review, tracked 85 Texas death row inmates, from 1924 to 1964, whose sentences were commuted to life. They posed no threat to fellow inmates or the public.

Out of 84 inmates who were paroled, only seven committed new, non-violent offenses.

Five Allridge Children

The Allridges had five boys. Ronnie Allridge was the oldest; Vernon was next in line; Stan was the youngest. Their father was a strict by-the-book military man. Their mother was a devout Christian who believed in forgiveness.

When Stan was seven, his parents told him his 17-year old brother Ronnie shot a schoolyard bully. Ronnie was convicted and sent to Texas' Ellis Unit, a prison that housed death row and the state's most dangerous criminals. He spent seven years there.

Stan says the experience "shaped Ronnie's mind," schooling him at a vulnerable age to become a hardened criminal.

Vernon Allridge was working at convenience stores and fast food restaurants when his older brother Ronnie got out of prison. Ronnie convinced Vernon there was an easier way to make money.

Stan believes Ronnie might not have become a criminal if he had been sent to a juvenile institution with rehabilitation programs when he was 17.

Today, Stan has a successful career in financial services. He has a four-year old son and a devoted wife. When he learned Vernon was about to be executed in 2004, he began having nightmares in which he envisioned being sentenced to death, strapped down on a gurney with needles in both arms waiting to die, after ordering his last meal and walking to the execution chamber shackled and in handcuffs.

Stan says his brothers looked like they had fallen asleep when they were executed. But he believes they were in searing pain, unable to move or call out, as the three drug protocol paralyzed them too soon before it killed them, leaving them in agony.

"You watch somebody die and it stays with you forever," he says.

A Love Story on Death Row

In 2003, when Dani Wardlow and her then-husband moved to the Houston area, she says the death penalty in Texas began "slapping her in the face."

A new friend told her about a high school classmate on death row in Texas and how different he was compared to the boy she knew in school. Dani also noticed how often inmates in Texas were put to death.

She also knows how much their victims suffered. Her cousin was murdered in the 1990s.

To satisfy her curiosity, no doubt due to her journalism degree, she began corresponding with death row inmates and paying them visits. She first met Billy Joe Wardlow in 2007, but didn't start visiting him until 2015.

She says he was "unlike anyone she had ever met."

Dani describes him today as a kind, gentle man with a big smile who got along with everyone on the row, from fellow inmates to corrections officers. He was fascinated by Quantum Physics and String Theory.

He learned to repair the typewriters that death row inmates were allowed to have, and he comforted inmates in emotional distress.

But his chance to "win mercy" was cut off, according to The Houston Chronicle in December 2019, by "false testimony at his trial, mistaken assumptions" and "a kind of miscarriage of justice that happens far too often..."

Predictions of his future dangerousness were "called categorically false" by a former administrator with the Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees the state's correctional institutions. But Texas officials ignored Billy Joe's rehabilitation and relied on the debunked "future dangerousness" theory, just as they had in Vernon Allridge's case in 2004.

The Austin Chronicle reported in June 2020, "in the years following Wardlow's sentence, scientists began using a new invention, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the brain. Today, after 20 years of MRI research, there is universal agreement that 18-years old are not full-fledged adults."

Billy Joe Wardlow had no criminal record.

He was 18 when he shot and killed an 82-year old East Texas man in 1993 during a struggle as he tried to steal the man's car. He and his girlfriend were running away from their abusive homes in East Texas, hoping to change their names and start new lives in Montana.

If Billy Joe had been 17 when he shot his victim, he would still be alive. Under Texas law, defendants 17 and younger can't be sentenced to death.

He was on Texas' death row for 25 years before he was executed in 2020. It was a day he and Dani thought would never come. During visits, she says, they would put their palms on the glass that separated them, one palm against the other, and dream of the day they would be together.

During their last visit, just hours before he was executed, he told her that he "loved her so" and asked her "to hold his hand."

After his execution, she patted his \face and stared at her dead fiancée for long minutes at the church where his body had been taken. It was the first time she'd ever been allowed to touch him. But her final moments with his body were destroyed when a church worker sent to console her yelled at her not to reach for his hand.

Nine days before Billy Joe was executed, The Austin Chronicle published a lengthy article outlining the defects in his trial and the state's inexplicable response to his appeal in 1998.

After two years on death row, Billy Joe had decided not to appeal his case. He sent a letter to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stating his intention. But the then-20-year-old quickly changed his mind and told his lawyer to proceed with an appeal. A signed affidavit stating he wanted to make an appeal was stapled to the document.

It arrived before the filing deadline in 1998.

Six years later, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled it had accepted his waiver, so it threw the appeal away when it arrived. Wardlow's lawyer told The Austin Chronicle that the ruling was not based on "any actual Texas law and no similar ruling had ever been made" in a death penalty case.

Other appeals were filed in federal court for the next 15 years, but none was granted.

The month before Billy Joe's execution, 58 state legislators informed the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole they planned to take up the issue of age and the death penalty in the 2021 legislative session, urging a stay.

On the day of Billy Joe's execution, The Texas Tribune reported that two jurors at his trial wanted his death sentence commuted to life, based on the new scientific evidence.

The Tribune reported that just hours before his execution, a Republican state representative from Plano, Texas, urged Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to issue a stay.

"When there are questions left to be answered - as a result of new science or new evidence - we should always err on the side of life," State Rep. Jeff Leach, chair of the House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee, tweeted.

But the governor and the courts ignored the legislators.

Dani remembers that when she walked into the witness box in the execution chamber, Billy Joe looked at her with "that big smile" she loved. She says he looked away and then looked back, smiling at her again, seemingly more worried about her, than his own impending death.

She sat there staring at him as he died.

"They murdered someone they did not know," she says. "They murdered a peacemaker."

Billy Joe Wardlow was pronounced dead at 6:28 p.m., 24 minutes after he was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital. In July 2019, Time Magazine reported "a bad batch of the drug" or its improper use, could "lead to botched executions that cause pain before death."

Texas has been using the compounded drug from unregulated pharmacies since October 2013. It keeps the source of the drug a secret.

For Stan and Dani, doubts about the legitimacy of the executions will never die.

They are as much victims of the death penalty as the men they loved.
Jodie Sinclair is a former TV news reporter with a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. She is the co-author of two nationally published books about the criminal justice system, written with her husband, a former Louisiana inmate, and the author of a recently released memoir.

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Death Row's Other Victims: Families of the Condemned

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In death penalty cases, the media usually focuses on the victim's family and the condemned prisoner's crime. Yet the pain of the families of those put to death is also real, and long-lasting, as journalist Jodie Sinclair discovered when she interviewed relatives of two men executed in Texas.

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This article goes into detail about how the families of the victim feel about the death penalty. Surprisingly, lost of families do not feel the need for the prisoner to be executed as it creates more loss and sorrow then there already is.

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One of the greatest nuances with the death penalty is prejudice against the condemned. Whether it's racial, economical, or whatever, prejudice has always been a topic of discussion when it comes to the death penalty.

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The history of the death penalty goes back nearly 4,000 years, and it is only relatively recently that its use has been curtailed. Changes in the law, research on sentencing patterns, monitoring by civil rights groups, and U.S. Supreme Court decisions have produced a system whose goal is justice tempered by mercy. In 1967, all executions were suspended by Federal courts until constitutional issues relating to capital punishment could be resolved. By 1976, most states had revised their statutes to conform to Supreme Court guidelines, and capital punishment was reinstated in 37 States. Despite reforms, ensuring impartiality in the imposition of the death penalty remains difficult, and the costs of capital trial and appeal procedures are great. Major arguments against the death penalty focus on its inhumaneness, lack of deterrent effect, continuing racial and economic biases, and irreversibility. Proponents argue that it represents a just retribution for certain crimes, deters crime, protects society, and preserves the moral order.

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The history of the death penalty goes back nearly 4,000 years, and it is only relatively recently that its use has been curtailed. Changes in the law, research on sentencing patterns, monitoring by civil rights groups, and U.S. Supreme Court decisions have produced a system whose goal is justice tempered by mercy.