Death Row Inmates Wage Hunger Strike Over Conditions

[Rose Siding]

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Five death-row inmates waged a hunger strike Thursday, asking to be allowed to interact with one another and calling their years of solitary confinement "inhumane and tantamount to psychological torture."
...
They called the segregation "inhumane and tantamount to psychological torture." Medication and temporary suicide watches were not helpful solutions, they said, because inmates had to return to the same segregation and often spent decades there as their appeals wound their way through the courts.
...
State Rep. Stephen Dargan, co-chairman of the legislature's Public Safety Committee, said he is willing to discuss conditions on death row. But he said he has little sympathy for the inmates.

"I'm more concerned about the loved ones of the victims and the psychological effect it's had on their life," the Democrat said.

http://www.nbc30.com/news/4159982/detail.html

[Verve]

1. Hmmm! If you're on death row and you threaten to kill yourself what are

officials to do.:shrug:

[Kagemusha]

2. That's determined by laws & regulations

and what they must do isn't particularly hard to find out...

[rooboy]

3. I find it curious that the inhumanity of a convicted killer...

seems to be an excuse for the inhumanity of the jailer.

[thecai]

4. Deplorable Prison Conditions

The jail and prison conditions throughout The United States is appalling and deplorable. Visit Links on my webpages for horrifying pictures and reports, ("The Rock", "Texas prisoner Abuse", and more).

[mitchum]

8. While I'm not anti--death penalty, prison conditions ARE deplorable...

in this country and reforms are needed. It does not serve society well to imprison men under bestial conditions and then expect them to return to society. Such a formula is brutal and insane.

[Sivafae]

5. I don't know about you,

but if I was sitting a room all by myself for 23 hours day after day,for years at a time, knowing that I was going to eventually die, I would have a bit of the depression too.
One guy has been waiting like this since, what, 1960? Jeez Louise! That is worse than death!
Can't we just end this execution thing? It's so last century!

edit:
V yep read it wrong, but still...I'd want to die too.

[mitchum]

7. I don't think that anyone has been waiting since 1960...

since the 70s Supreme Court ruling resulted in pending death sentences commuted to life sentences.

[mitchum]

6. I imagine anti-death penalty advocates will have no problem with this...

since their refrain is always, "Don't kill them. Lock them up for the rest of their lives so that they can never hurt anyone else"