Editorial: Death Row life, part 2

North Carolina Death Row inmate Danny Hembree ignited a firestorm with a taunting letter that talked of living a life of leisure behind bars, watching television, taking naps and getting free health care while awaiting an execution that may never arrive.

The letter, initially published in the Gaston Gazette before making national headlines, was a calculated move to jerk some chains, and it succeeded. For some, it appeared to confirm a soft-on-crime approach that coddles inmates and adds to the distress of crime victims and their families. The responses included an email from state Rep. Larry Pittman, who suggested Hembree’s letter was evidence that we need to return to the days of public hangings. (Pittman has since said he “got carried away” in the email, intended as a personal note to a colleague.)

Hembree’s letter was a cruel and cynical ploy that manipulated the media at the expense of the families of his victims. (He was sentenced to death for the 2009 murder of 17-year-old Heather Catterton and is accused of killing two other women.) But was it really an accurate depiction of life on Death Row?

Another letter sent to his sister, Kathy Hembree Ledbetter, presents a bleaker image of Hembree’s existence at Central Prison in Raleigh.

In the letter dated Jan. 8, Hembree refers to the ceaseless tedium of imprisonment. “I’m bored to death,” he says. “No pun intended. Every day is exactly the same. I’ve got to where I sleep as much as I can.”

This letter suggests that Hembree’s “kill me if you can” remark in his published letter was more a plea for relief than a killer’s smirking dare.

“I want this stuff to be over for good, once and for all,” he wrote to his sister. “... It is overwhelming and depressing to look at these walls and electric doors and bright lights 24-7 and digest the fact that I’m never going to leave here until they murder me or I just die ... either way I’m never leaving here alive.”

North Carolina’s death penalty has come under relentless pressure from opponents who want to abolish it. With seemingly endless appeals and procedural delays, there’s nothing swift nor sure about it, as was shown most recently by the debate over the Racial Justice Act and the legislature’s unsuccessful attempt to dismantle it. Along with cynical ploys to avoid just punishment, we also have cases of inmates exonerated through DNA evidence.

The fact that Death Row inmates languish for decades behind bars points to flaws in the system, yet it doesn’t mean they’re enjoying a life of a leisure. There’s a reason they call it doing “hard time,” and Hembree’s less calculated comments reveal just how deadening those slow-ticking hours of confinement really are.