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When the constitution was written, the time between sentencing and execution could be measured in days or weeks. For some death-row prisoners, this isolation and anxiety results in a sharp deterioration in their health and mental status. 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. 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. 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.

have been on death row for more than 18 years. More than half of all prisoners currently sentenced to death in the U.S. typically spend more than a decade awaiting execution or court rulings overturning their death sentences. 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.ĭeath-row prisoners in the U.S. 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. More than half of the exonerations since 2013 have taken 25 years or more. 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. Other have spent more than four decades on death row before being exonerated or being non-capitally resentenced. Some prisoners are on death row for only a short period of time before their convictions or death sentences are overturned in the courts. There is no accurate measure of the length of time prisoners spend on death row.