Death Row Welcomes You: Visiting Hours In The Shadow Of The Execution Chamber,Used

In the vein of Waiting for an Echo and Dead Man Walking, a deeply immersive look at justice in America, told through the interwoven lives of condemned prisoners and the men and women who come to visit them . . .In 2018, after nearly a decades hiatus, the state of Tennessee began executing death row inmates, bucking national trends that showed the death penalty in decline. In less than two years, the state put seven men to death, more than any other state but Texas in that time period. It was an execution spree unlike any seen in Tennessee since the 1940s, one only brought to a halt by a global pandemic.Awardwinning journalist Steven Hale was the leading reporter on these executions, covering them both locally for the Nashville Scene altweekly and nationally for The Appeal.In Death Row Welcomes You, Hale traces the lives of condemned prisoners at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institutionand the people who come to visit them. What brought themthe visitors and convicted murderers aliketo death row?The visitors are, for the most part, not activistsor at least they did not start out that way. Nor are they the sort of killerobsessed death row groupies such settings sometimes attract. In fact, in most cases they are average people whose lives, not to mention their views on the death penalty, were turned upside down by a facetoface meeting with a death row prisoner.Hales access to the people that make up that community afforded him a perspective that no other journalist has been granted, largely because Tennessees Department of Correction has all but shut off official media access.Combining topics that have long fascinated readerscrime, death, and life inside prisonHale writes with humanity, empathy, and insight earned by befriending death row prisoners . . . and standing witness to their final moments.