Voices from Death Row

Bruce Jackson, Diane Christian

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781438489308, 9781438489292
• eBook ISBN: 9781438489315
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

A searing, personal look at conditions on Texas's Death Row—told in the words of the prisoners themselves.

Voices from Death Row is considered a classic work on the strange "living limbo" inhabited by condemned men in Texas, who await resolution of their sentence in execution, death by other causes, commutation to a term of life sentence, or exoneration. This book offers first-person accounts of life on death row that still holds for condemned men and women today. The accessibility the authors had to Texas Death Row in 1979-to sit in the cells and listen-is unimaginable in today's closed prison environment. Today, however, conditions on Texas's Death Row are far more punishing and brutal; and, while the number of death sentences has declined, the number of sentences of life without parole has increased hugely. This second edition updates and expands on the original stories that these men told, revealing the names of those men whose stories have ended with either exoneration or death. New photographs enhance the text to give it a full picture of the brutal conditions that these prisoners experienced.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Note
• Preface to the Original Edition
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Glossary of the Row
• I. Death by Texas
• II. Death Row
• 1. Arriving
• 2. Surviving
• 3. Dying and Killing
• Postscript: Our Point of View
• Coda: “Blood on the concrete, on the walls, all the murders …”
• Back Cover