The Unbearable Impact of Death Row

I think a lot about the Death Sentence - after all, it’s pretty clear I think a lot about death. I am watching the brilliant tv series right now, ‘Rectify’ and it’s lessons around grief and loss and the toll they take are profound. After twenty years on death row, the main character is exonerated. He goes ‘home’ to a landscape that feels much like the moon would feel to the rest of us.
The demands a death sentence makes on the criminal, the jurors, the loved ones of those folks, and the community at large, are peerless. I don’t pretend to be an authority on the criminal justice system, but from where I sit as a Thanatologist, my bones know the ask of a death sentence is too much to bear. I believe it is an act that leaks more toxins into the present and future than any justice it could ever deliver in carnage’s name. I will be most curious to hear your thoughts.

medium.com/@rdieter/the-unseen-anguish-of-a-death-sentence-2dbbf04b6287 

​(Originally posted- 7/17/18)