Inside America's military death row: only four inmates await execution
America's smallest death row sits inside a military prison in Kansas, where just four men wait to learn whether sentences handed down years ago will ever be carried out.
Tucked inside the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is the smallest death row in America. Only four inmates are held there under sentence of death, in a system used so rarely that the US military has not carried out an execution since 1961.
Military capital punishment works very differently from the civilian courts. Service members convicted of the gravest crimes are sentenced by courts-martial, but no execution can go ahead unless the president personally approves the sentence. Layers of automatic appeals mean decades can pass between a verdict and any execution date, leaving prisoners in a limbo that can last most of a lifetime.
The most prominent of the four is Nidal Hasan, the former army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009 and whose execution by firing squad has now been approved. His case has dragged this quiet corner of the justice system into the national spotlight, and drawn condemnation from Pope Leo, who restated the Catholic Church's opposition to the death penalty.
Supporters of military executions argue the ultimate penalty must exist for the worst crimes committed in uniform. Opponents point to the decades of uncertainty and the irreversible risk of error. With four lives in the balance, and a presidential signature now given in the most high-profile case, the row's long silence may finally be about to end.
Life on the row is austere. The four men are held in a dedicated tier, eat separately and exercise under guard, in a regime shaped as much by military discipline as by prison routine. For the families of their victims, the decades of waiting have brought a different kind of sentence: hearings, anniversaries and headlines that reopen wounds which never fully close.
Reporting based on coverage from BBC News.
