Keith LaMarAfrican-American from Cleveland (Ohio, USA), age 54, in prison since 1995. (I have a vague memory of what I was doing at the time). He was performing unsatisfactorily as a crack dealer. He killed his childhood friend who came home to hit him. He feels sorry for that, but not for the five other murders he denies committing during the prison riot. These led him to death row in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison, where he spent 22 hours a day in a 5.5 square meter, windowless cell. (I think, as an asthmatic, of a world without windows and ventilation). For the remaining 2 hours, she exercises in a larger room. Sometimes it leads to a courtyard with high concrete walls and a hole in the roof. (His freedom in the open air is restricted in prison).
They allowed him to talk on the phone 8 hours a day. (We don’t talk much on the phone anymore, but we write and pay attention to our mobile phones to maintain non-face-to-face relationships. The whole system is geared towards paid calls). When LaMar receives visitors, he has to undergo a body examination: I think they strip him and probe his holes. (One decided to generalize these duties into protocol for his safety as a guard).
LaMar is awaiting execution and the date is extended from time to time, making it a vital contract that the State is renewing. He admits that he is not ready to die. (Any form of life is life, if the person living it perceives it that way. This perception is as decisive as that of the suicidal, on the contrary).
He was offered execution by electric chair, hanging, firing squad, guillotine or gas chamber. Pharmaceutical ethics refuse to sell drugs that cause lethal injection, which removes it from the execution menu. (The state is responsible for his death and offers him a wide catalog of services, giving him freedom of choice regardless of energy and personnel expenditures. In dictatorships, they kill you without allowing you to choose).