These are America's condemned, who bear a stigma far worse than "prisoner." These are America's death row residents: men and women who walk the razor's edge between halflife and certain death in thirty-four states or under the jurisdiction of the United States. "They must be afraid that if we do get electrocuted by lightnin', they won't have no jobs and won't get paid!"Ī few guffaws, and the trail from cage to cell thickens.Īlthough usually two hours long, today's yard barely lasts ten minutes, for fear that those condemned to death by the state may perish, instead, by fate.įor approximately twenty-four hundred people locked in state and federal prisons, life is unlike that in any other institution. "Oh, why not? Y'all 'fraid we gonna get our-self electrocuted?" a prisoner asks. Ya know we can't leave y'uns out here when it gits to thunderin' an' lightnin'." The guards adopt a cajoling, rather than threatening, attitude. "Yard in?! Shit, man, we just got out here!" "Yard in!" the white-shirt yells, sparking murmurs of resentment among the men. The rumbles grow louder as drops of rain sail earthward, splattering steel, brick, and human. A bespectacled white-shirt turns his pale face skyward, examining nature's quickening portent. Once the inmates are encaged, the midsummer sky rumbles, its dark clouds swell, pregnant with power and water. Each man is pat-searched by guards armed with batons and then scanned by a metal detector. One by one, cells are unlocked for the daily trek from cell to cage. "Capitals! Fourth, fifth, and sixth tier-YARD UP!" the corpulent correctional officer bellows, his rural accent alien to the urban ear. The last yard of the day is finally called. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.
Teetering on the brink between life and deathįor there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months.
0 kommentar(er)
