Article Tools
- Text Size
- Add a comment (0)
- Print-Friendly
- Email this article
Grinding. Reverberating. Numbing. Metal against metal punctuates my twenty-minute sojourn into the depths of the prison. Ten massive steel-barred doors now separate me from the prison entrance. One more security door stands between death row and me. The officer with the key swings it open. He nods. I step through.
This is the overflow death row wing. Most of Florida’s death row inmates are across the New River in a separate building. The heavy steel bolts clang shut, locking me in on the beige corridor of death row cells. Like a stray cosmic noise from another world, the spongy soles of my shoes announce my arrival with muffled squeaks against the hot, damp concrete.
Fifteen individual cells stretch to my right. The men know the fall of my step and the noise of my shoes. Except for four hours per week of yard exercise, this short narrow hall with its six-foot-by-nine-foot cages is the whole world. There is nothing to see. All the cells face a wall of steel bars backed by concrete and brick. They can’t even see each other. It is a world of sounds. Nothing—not even…
The full article is available to subscribers only
Access all articles, daily meditations and readings, as well as special resources, by becoming a subscriber. View subscription options.
Special Offer: Two week free web-only trial subscription. Sign up now.
Existing Print & Web-Only Subscribers: Login for full access.
