Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/14-7955_aplc.pdf
Page Number: 72.0

22 

GLOSSIP v. GROSS 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

(1991)  (Clarence  Lee  Brandley:  execution  stayed  twice,
once 6 days and once 10 days before; later exonerated); M. 
Edds,  An  Expendable  Man  93  (2003)  (Earl  Washington, 
Jr.: stayed 9 days before execution; later exonerated). 

Furthermore,  given  the  negative  effects  of  confinement 
and  uncertainty,  it  is  not  surprising  that  many  inmates 
volunteer  to  be  executed,  abandoning  further  appeals.
See, e.g., ACLU Report 8; Rountree, Volunteers for Execu­
tion: Directions for Further Research into Grief, Culpabil­
ity,  and  Legal  Structures,  82  UMKC  L. Rev.  295  (2014) 
(11%  of  those  executed  have  dropped  appeals  and  volun­
teered);  ACLU  Report  3  (account  of  “ ‘guys  who  dropped 
their  appeals  because  of  the  intolerable  conditions’ ”).  
Indeed, one death row inmate, who was later exonerated, 
still  said  he  would  have  preferred  to  die  rather  than  to
spend  years  on  death  row  pursuing  his  exoneration.
Strafer,  Volunteering  for  Execution:  Competency,  Volun­
tariness and the Propriety of Third Party Intervention, 74
J. Crim. L. & C. 860, 869 (1983).  Nor is it surprising that 
many inmates consider, or commit, suicide.  Id., at 872, n. 
44  (35%  of  those  confined  on  death  row  in  Florida  at­
tempted suicide).

Others have written at great length about the constitu­
tional  problems  that  delays  create,  and,  rather  than  re­
peat  their  facts,  arguments,  and  conclusions,  I  simply 
refer  to  some  of  their  writings.  See,  e.g.,  Johnson,  558 
U. S.,  at  1069  (statement  of  Stevens,  J.)  (delay  “subjects
death  row  inmates  to  decades  of  especially  severe,  dehu­
manizing  conditions  of  confinement”);  Furman,  408  U. S., 
at  288  (Brennan,  J.,  concurring)  (“long  wait  between  the 
imposition of sentence and the actual infliction of death” is
“inevitable” and often “exacts a frightful toll”); Solesbee v. 
Balkcom,  339  U. S.  9,  14  (1950)  (Frankfurter,  J.,  dissent­
ing) (“In the history of murder, the onset of insanity while 
awaiting  execution  of  a  death  sentence  is  not  a  rare  phe­
nomenon”); People v. Anderson, 6 Cal. 3d 628, 649, 493 P.