“Noted political scientist and author Marie Gottschalk has called life without parole ‘death in slow motion.’ Pope Francis deemed it ‘a death penalty in disguise.’ Kenneth Hartman, who served more than 37 years in prison before California governor Jerry Brown commuted his sentence, was the first to label it ‘the other death penalty.’ When he was still behind bars, Hartman wrote for The Marshall Project that life without parole is ‘the sense of being dead while you’re still alive, the feeling of being dumped into a deep well struggling to tread water until, some 40 or 50 years later, you drown’.“

Truthout Magazine

September 16, 2018