with EMILY MELTON
Lifestyles Editor

I visited Death Row last week.

I was there with Kim Gunter’s English class, covering their story.

All semester, they’ve been researching and discussing capital punishment, and last week, we walked the halls of Raleigh’s Central Prison, the last halls that more than 1,000 inmates have ever seen, ever walked.

Before I got there, I expected to see what I saw in movies, on television: drugged-out-looking addicts in orange jumpsuits, scowling behind bars.

I soon realized my stereotype was far from the truth.

After hearing an introduction on prison life, we followed our guide to another location - we were in a large building, everything painted white with black trim.

There were a couple long hallways, each with adjoining rooms on either side - like a retirement home, but not quite as nice.

I saw workers working, wearing uniforms of white. They were talking, they were laughing…I wondered where the prisoners were.

Then, Dr. Gunter turned to me.

“Emily, those are inmates,” she said. “The guys in white are inmates.”

And my stereotype shattered.

“They look like you and me!”

And they do – I saw many who were clean, groomed, blankly staring back at us, probably wondering who we were and why we were gazing at them as if they were animals in a cage.

There were no bars to separate us, and I was not scared; they did not look scary.

They looked, acted, talked and walked like human beings.

They did not look, act, talk or walk like monsters, like drugged-out-looking addicts in orange jumpsuits, scowling behind bars. 

I was two feet away from a man on Death Row.

He wore red.

“Hey. How are y’all doing?”

He nodded politely.

“Good. How are you?”

He nodded back.

And at that moment, I learned that prisoners are, in fact, human beings – some with great flaws, some who made an irreversible mistake and one that cost them their lives.

Some are tall, some are short.

They are many different colors and they come from many different backgrounds.

But at the end of the day, they all go to sleep at night and wake in the morning.

They eat, drink, watch television and have conversations with their neighbors.

They prefer some foods to others; their stomachs hurt if they eat too much and they can go outside, look up and see the sky.

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