Federal Judge Rules California's Death Penalty System Unconstitutional.
Source: nyt/reuters
California's system for imposing and carrying out the death penalty is so long and drawn-out that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
Ruling in the case of Ernest Dewayne Jones, who was condemned to death in 1995 and has yet to be executed, Judge Cormac J. Carney of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California said that to take "nearly a generation" to decide on Jones' appeals is unconstitutional.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2014/07/16/us/16reuters-usa-deathpenalty-california.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=WireFeed&module=pocket-region®ion=pocket-region&WT.nav=pocket-region
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because OK has the death penalty and NY did not at the time. (Yes, they reinstated it. 
)
There's a reason why the suicide rate for LwP inmates is so high. It's nothing but a long tunnel of despair with nothing to look forward to except dying. I want to tell you about the life of a LwP inmate.
The first few years, it probably doesn't seem so bad. You're alive, you can make friends, occupy your time. Then you get bored, there aren't that many ways to occupy yourself in prison and they all get tedious after a while. Other inmates get training, education, activities to prepare them for the day they may be released...you're never going to be released, you don't get those. Sometimes your family, friends will come visit...for the first few years. Then they come less and less often as they move on with their lives, grow up, get married, have kids, move away, have lives on the outside that you are no longer part of, will never be part of. Then fewer and fewer come until nobody ever comes to see you and you're alone to deal with the monotony of incarcerated life. After a while, your friends on the inside become friends on the outside; they get paroled and you never will. They don't come back to visit, it's too traumatic. Your friends on the inside die, they get moved away; you don't make new friends as easily because you're divorced from the outside world, the new inmates have cultural touchstones you will never understand. If you're lucky, you might get a penpal on the outside...some of those people are nice, but the majority are honestly f**ked in the head so that's no relief. At that point, it's never going to get better, it's really never going to be different even. Just marking days until the day you don't get up because you've died in your sleep. A lifetime wasted, locked away in a cage like an animal with the other animals.
That's so much more appealing than being euthanized. 
It's really a question if you prefer to the long road or the short road to the same destination.
I can't speak for other states or other countries besides Oregon, but I can tell you that in Oregon there are inmates that are sentenced to life without parole who don't sit in a cell for 23 hours a day. The worst of the worst who are in a maximum facility probably do, but those at medium facilities they are able to do quite a bit. It depends on their security classification when they go into the prison system.
Ok, I'm done nitpicking. 
