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| Typical death row cell, Polunsky Unit, Texas |
"I'm convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal second base than an automobile." -Tom Clark
Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas is accurately dubbed the state's "death row," and given the percentage of American executions that take place in the Lone Star State, it might be better described as America's Death Row. Polunsky is spartan and remote. It's located just more than an hour north of Houston, near the state's Piney Woods region, and across a large lake from Huntsville, where death row prisoners meet their match in the similarly notorious Walls Unit. In building 12 of Polunsky, death row inmates "enjoy" sixty-foot cells adorned with a bean slot just large enough for a daily transfer of meal-time slop. Each cell has a small window, a menacing reminder of the outside world that these prisoners, barring some miracle, will never enjoy again. According to Wikipedia, prisoners "receive individual recreation in a caged area." In reality, the prisoners are afforded one hour per day to walk around.
Polunsky has around 290 death row inmates, a figure that makes up almost the entirety of the state's condemned population. The vast majority of those are men, and while their individual markings might look different, these offenders quite often have something in common. Mental health issues abound on death row, of course, with some landing on death row because of them and others developing their issues after years of awaiting death in solitary confinement. Some are black, while many are white. All are there for murder of some kind or another, even though Texas's death penalty often fails to discriminate between those who were attendant to a murder and those who pulled the trigger multiple times. The tragic middle portion of a death penalty story is always the same. It revolves around the death of an innocent. Quite often, the first chapter of that death penalty story is the same for each man housed in Polunsky.
Texas death penalty lawyer David R. Dow has written in his books and argued in his talks that he could write the life story of every death row inmate without ever meeting that person, and he'd be right roughly nine times out of ten.
Click here to read the full article
Source: Daily Kos, July 14, 2014
Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas is accurately dubbed the state's "death row," and given the percentage of American executions that take place in the Lone Star State, it might be better described as America's Death Row. Polunsky is spartan and remote. It's located just more than an hour north of Houston, near the state's Piney Woods region, and across a large lake from Huntsville, where death row prisoners meet their match in the similarly notorious Walls Unit. In building 12 of Polunsky, death row inmates "enjoy" sixty-foot cells adorned with a bean slot just large enough for a daily transfer of meal-time slop. Each cell has a small window, a menacing reminder of the outside world that these prisoners, barring some miracle, will never enjoy again. According to Wikipedia, prisoners "receive individual recreation in a caged area." In reality, the prisoners are afforded one hour per day to walk around.
Polunsky has around 290 death row inmates, a figure that makes up almost the entirety of the state's condemned population. The vast majority of those are men, and while their individual markings might look different, these offenders quite often have something in common. Mental health issues abound on death row, of course, with some landing on death row because of them and others developing their issues after years of awaiting death in solitary confinement. Some are black, while many are white. All are there for murder of some kind or another, even though Texas's death penalty often fails to discriminate between those who were attendant to a murder and those who pulled the trigger multiple times. The tragic middle portion of a death penalty story is always the same. It revolves around the death of an innocent. Quite often, the first chapter of that death penalty story is the same for each man housed in Polunsky.
Texas death penalty lawyer David R. Dow has written in his books and argued in his talks that he could write the life story of every death row inmate without ever meeting that person, and he'd be right roughly nine times out of ten.
Click here to read the full article
Source: Daily Kos, July 14, 2014
Related: Click HERE to view 50 recent annotated pictures of the "living conditions" on Texas death row at Polunsky Unit. These photos were provided by the State of Texas
in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by attorney
Yolanda Torres. They were then posted on Thomas Whitaker's blog,
"Minutes Before Six".