X-Row: Where Common Sense Goes to Die

Conversations with death row inmates are never really as casual or pedestrian as they would appear to be on a simple written transcript. In fact, it's when the topic is the most common or mundane that it always hits me that the person I'm talking to has committed a horrible crime; a crime horrible enough that the state has sent them to death row to await execution.

My latest visit left me --as these visits usually do-- with so many more questions than answers: What does it feel like to wake up in a prison cell? What is it like to wake up missing a part of your family because they've been murdered? How can these two different sides of the equation be reconciled? What is this system of capital punishment supposed to achieve in all this?

For some clarity, I turn to these simple facts:

My friend on death row killed people.

He is sorry for this every day; at times agonizing over his crimes.

He wants to learn and ultimately to educate others about his mistakes and the dangers of drug use. He wants to give back to society somehow in an effort to try and repay his debt to society.

The state, on the other hand, is going to spend more taxpayer money and judicial resources to fight his every appeal until they've killed him.

Does this make any sense? Does it make any sense whatsoever that this guy who has done something terrible and wants to attempt to make up for it is being obstructed from doing so? Does it make any sense that the state is pouring tons of money into trying to kill this guy that they have safely locked up and that gives me a handshake and hug each time I visit?

He has a debt to pay. Killing him would be the easy way out. Let's make him write an autobiography about how drugs destroyed his life and pitched him into prison. Let's make him tell his story about how he wakes up each day with the guilt and pain that only a repentant murderer can know. Let's force him to invent a constructive means of reducing recidivism; a program built from the perspective of a repeat offender.

Make him pay with his life, not with his death.