death row

death row, the part of a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after they have been sentenced to death for a capital crime. The term also applies to the status of prisoners who are awaiting execution in regions where a separate facility for housing them does not exist; nevertheless, they are referred to as “being on death row.”

History of death row in the U.S.

The term death row may have first appeared in print in 1894, in the Denver newspaper Rocky Mountain News, which referred to an inmate occupying a cell on death row at Colorado’s Canon City Penitentiary. But it came into popular consciousness from the trial and sentencing of Giuseppe Zangara, a 32-year-old unemployed bricklayer from New Jersey, who on February 15, 1933, had attempted to assassinate U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami. While Roosevelt was not injured in the attempt, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who was accompanying the president, was shot and killed. Zangara pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to death. According to Florida law, prisoners awaiting execution were not permitted to share cell space with other prisoners. When Zangara was sentenced, the prison where he was to be held had a “death cell,” but this was already occupied by another man convicted of murder. Consequently, prison officials expanded the waiting area from the single death cell to a death row.

In the U.S. 24 of the 50 states have banned the death penalty. Another 6—Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee—allow capital punishment but have formally or informally suspended all executions, granting death row inmates a reprieve. The federal government also has a provision for capital punishment, for relevant federal crimes. In 2023 more than 2,300 inmates were on death row across the United States.(See capital punishment in the United States.)

The use of the death penalty, and subsequently the number of inmates on death row, has declined sharply in the 21st century, and opposition to the death penalty has grown. Since 1973 more than 190 people on death row have been released after their convictions were overturned, which has added to the call for the end of the death penalty in the United States. In 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court held, in the case of Atkins v. Virginia, that it is unconstitutional to execute individuals who are deemed to have an intellectual disability. However, as of 2022, over 2,400 prisoners were still on death row, more than half of whom were in California, Florida, and Texas.

Execution around the world

China executes the most people per year, and Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and Egypt also execute a significant number of prisoners per year. As of 2021, 55 countries were using the death penalty for ordinary crimes. Belarus remains the only country in Europe to continue to use the death penalty. In India the Prisons Act of 1894 stipulates that prisoners sentenced to death shall be confined in a cell apart from all other prisoners and shall be placed under the charge of a guard at all times. In the Cellular Jail, a British colonial prison located in India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands, inmates sentenced to death used to be housed in a special row of cells facing the gallows.

Life on death row

Death row inmates typically stay confined in solitary isolation for many years, sometimes decades, while their cases are appealed through the judicial system. Viva Leroy Nash, who was sentenced to death in 1983 for first-degree murder in the state of Arizona, died of natural causes in 2010 while appeals against his execution continued to be heard.

Opponents of capital punishment have argued that prisoners’ isolation, coupled with uncertainty over their fate, creates a high likelihood that they will develop mental disorders. The term death row phenomenon has been used to describe the psychological effects of living on death row, notably in legal arguments on prisoners’ behalf that prolonged solitary confinement could affect their judgment as well as their will to live.

Death row in popular culture

Death row has figured prominently in several works of fiction. Stephen King’s novel The Green Mile, which was adapted into a successful movie of the same name, features a death row supervisor’s interaction with a convict who has supernatural abilities. John Grisham’s The Chamber delves deeply into the legal aspects of the death penalty and the related appeals process. In the television series Prison Break, the protagonist enters a prison to help his wrongfully convicted brother escape from death row. Works featuring death row or death row inmates typically focus on innocent inmates who attempt to secure release or on the psychological profile of inmates during the lead-up to their execution.