Richard Michael Rossi

Som mange veit er eg sterkt imot dødsstraff. For ei stund sidan las eg ei bok skriven om og av Richard Michael Rossi som heiter "Mens jes venter på å dø", og eg vart ikkje mindre engasjert for å sei det slik. Her kjem litt om korleis kvardangen til insatte som ventar på dødsstraff er. Eg skriv resten av innlegget på engelsk for eg hadde ein del fakta på englesk liggande på dataen, og på denne måten slepp eg å oversetta det.

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When the US wrote their constitution, the time that the convicted could wait for their execution was from a few days up to a few weeks. Today they can wait for several years . Richard M. Rossi wrote a book in the period 2001-2004. At this time he had been in the prison for 19 years. In his book he describes everything about his life in the prison.

“This book makes the arguments of innocence seem irrelevant, because Michael Rossi is guilty of murder, but the reader is forced to take a stand to Rossi as a human being. A human being that clams his life, but has gotten the right of life stolen from him. For 19 years have Rossi been sitting on the death row. That is a time of waiting that none of us can begin to understand.”
Svein Tore Bergestuen (Amnesty International)

Here are some facts about living in The Arizona Department of Corrections:

At half past 3 in the morning, some of the guards come with food. The people in prison get their first meal of the day at half past 4, and there's quite a lot of rules to consider when they are going to receive their food. Two men with bullet proof vests go to the door of the cell and unlocks a 15 x 30 cm hatch. The prisoner is supposed to sit as far away from the door as possible, if not then he or she don’t get any food that day.

There are, as I mentioned, a lot of rules, and here is what happens if a prisoner breaks any of the rules:

12 men with fighting equipment are called, and they send pepper-spray or a big dog in the cell to disturb the prisoner. Then they go in and beat him, drag him to an isolate and removes all of his cloths. Here he will be for a periode between 1 and 3 days. Everything on his cell will be taken to a storage room and searched through in case he have something he’s not supposed to have. The incident comes in the prisoners record, and when he comes back to the cell he came from, or maybe a worse, he can’t have any of the advantages that he usually has, like for instance electricity.
Bad food is the most common reason to fights in the prison.

3 times a week, the prisoners gets to move outside, and take a shower. The area outside is about 2.5 x 5 m, and they can be there for an hour. If it's raining, then that's too bad, because that's their only opportunity of fresh air.

When it’s time to take a shower the prisoners are inspected for anything that they should not have on them. Some of the prison officers search through their clothes, while others search the prisoner himself in his hair, mouth, behind, under his arms, feet and prospective male parts.
The shower is 1,5 x 1,8 m and they can shower for 10 minutes. Sometimes they have hot water, other times not. They have to take what they get. After this they have to wait for someone to come and get them. Usually this takes about an hour, and there is nothing to do but stand there and wait in the smell of rotten building.

The cell it self is 2 x 3.5 m, and there is always a light on. This means that some of the prisoners have trouble sleeping. There is always a lot of noises, and people arguing between the cells. Because the prisoners can’t physically be with each other, there is a lot of problems that they have to deal with through the the walls. This can disturb other prisoners, and the whole thing can get pretty loud.

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Desse menneska lever under forhold som eg tykjer er umennesklege! Det er gale nok at dei ventar på å verta drepne, men dei må vente i mange år, under desse forholda, og den einaste moglegheita for å koma vekk er å anka saka (nesten berre rike, kvite menn som får mehold), eller bli henretta på ein "human" måte. Det kjem garantert meir om dette seinare.