From The Houston Chronicle:
As he stepped out of his prison cell, Rudy Medrano couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands. Cross them in front of his chest? Dangle them awkwardly by his side? During the nearly two decades he’d lived on Texas death row, he had never walked outside his prison cell without his hands cuffed behind his back.
“I guess I’ll grab the railing,” he thought. “But where do I put my hands until I get to the stairs?”
Like the other roughly 150 condemned prisoners at Polunsky Unit, for years Medrano had lived in isolation at least 22 hours a day — often 24. That has been the norm in Texas ever since a daring, Hollywood-style death row escape in 1998 prompted prison officials to move death row to a newer prison in Livingston, tossing the men in solitary, taking away their prison jobs and eliminating their access to rehabilitative programs. Contine reading >>>
|
|
|
|
