Condemned To Die

Condemned to Die is a book about life under sentence of death in American prisons. The great majority of condemned prisoners are confined on death rows before they are executed. Death rows typically feature solitary confinement, a harsh regimen that is closely examined in this book. Death rows that feature solitary confinement are most common in states that execute prisoners with regularity, which is to say, where there is a realistic threat that condemned prisoners will be put to death. Less restrictive confinement conditions for condemned prisoners can be found in states where executions are rare. Confinement conditions matter, especially to prisoners, but a central contention of this book is that no regimen of confinement under sentence of death offers its inmates a round of activity that might in any way prepare them for the ordeal they must face in the execution chamber, when they are put to death. In a basic and profound sense, all condemned prisoners are warehoused for death in the shadow of the executioner. Human warehousing, seen most clearly on solitary confinement death rows, violates every tenet of just punishment; no legal or philosophical justification for capital punishment demands or even permits warehousing of prisoners under sentence of death. The punishment is death. There is neither a mandate nor a justification for harsh and dehumanizing confinement before the prisoner is put to death. Yet warehousing for death, of an empty and sometimes brutal nature, is the universal fate of condemned prisoners. The enormous suffering and justice caused by this human warehousing, rendered in the words of the prisoners themselves, is the subject of this book.

"Condemned to Die is Brenna's valiant journey to recover from her sudden, medically unexplained anoxic brain injury. After sixteen months, she joined hands with Jesus and was restored to health in his kingdom. She passed along the baton to her mother, to give voice to the deficiencies in our health care system for all patients who suffer anoxic brain injuries. In her honor, this is her story. To God be the glory."--Back cover.

The Last Day of a Condemned Man (1829) is a short novel by Victor Hugo. Having witnessed several executions by guillotine as a young man, Hugo devoted himself in his art and political life to opposing the death penalty in France. Praised by Dostoevsky as “absolutely the most real and truthful of everything that Hugo wrote,” The Last Day of a Condemned Man is a powerful story from an author who defined nineteenth century French literature. If you knew when and where you would die, how would you spend your final moments? For Hugo’s unnamed narrator, such an existential question is made reality. Sentenced to death for an unspecified crime, he reflects on his life as its last seconds wane in the shadows of a cramped prison cell. Recording his emotional state, observations, and conversations with a priest and fellow prisoner, the condemned man forces us to not only recognize his humanity, but question our own. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Victor Hugo’s The Last Day of a Condemned Man is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.

Prison life in the state penitentiary at San Quentin, California.

An inside look into one of the most mythologized prisons in modern America--the Sing Sing death house In the annals of American criminal justice, two prisons stand out as icons of institutionalized brutality and deprivation: Alcatraz and Sing Sing. In the 70 odd years before 1963, when the death sentence was declared unconstitutional in New York, Sing Sing was the site of almost one-half of the 1,353 executions carried out in the state. More people were executed at Sing Sing than at any other American prison, yet Sing Sing's death house was, to a remarkable extent, one of the most closed, secret and mythologized places in modern America. In this remarkable book, based on recently revealed archival materials, Scott Christianson takes us on a disturbing and poignant tour of Sing Sing's legendary death house, and introduces us to those whose lives Sing Sing claimed. Within the dusty files were mug shots of each newly arrived prisoner, most still wearing the out-to-court clothes they had on earlier that day when they learned their verdict and were sentenced to death. It is these sometimes bewildered, sometimes defiant, faces that fill the pages of Condemned, along with the documents of their last months at Sing Sing. The reader follows prisoners from their introduction to the rules of Sing Sing, through their contact with guards and psychiatrists, their pleas for clemency, escape attempts, resistance, and their final letters and messages before being put to death. We meet the mother of five accused of killing her husband, the two young Chinese men accused of a murder during a robbery and the drifter who doesn't remember killing at all. While the majority of inmates are everyday people, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were also executed here, as were the major figures in the infamous Murder Inc., forerunner of the American mafia. Page upon page, Condemned leaves an indelible impression of humanity and suffering.

This is a new release of the original 1935 edition.