+
upworthy
More

These 11 powerful photos offer a glimpse of life on death row.

It's been 10 years since California's last execution. But death row continues to grow.

What began in 1852 as 20 acres of seaside land purchased for $10,000 is now known as San Quentin State Prison.

Today, the prison covers 432 acres, and it houses over 4,000 men, including hundreds of men who are on death row.

Visitors arrive at San Quentin State Prison in 2015. All photos by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.


At San Quentin, nearly 700 men live on death row.

It's the only correctional facility in California for condemned men. But there's a problem: There hasn't been an execution at San Quentin since 2006. That means that those hundreds of men are waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for their death sentences to be carried out — and some have been waiting for more than 10 years.

Why the wait? Legal challenges surrounding the cocktail of drugs used during lethal injections have put executions on hold. In November 2016, California voters will decide whether to eliminate the death penalty entirely or, at the very least, expedite the process. But until then, these men's futures hang in flux.

Regardless of where you stand on capital punishment, the current prison system is inarguably flawed.

While prison should remain a punishment, especially for the most dangerous offenders, keeping a future in the balance for literally decades at a time is borderline inhumane. The condemned inmates live in single cells, with limited access to fresh air or mental enrichment.

These photos reveal just what it looks like to spend your days trapped in an outdated facility, within a broken system, where your only options are to wait and wonder.

1.  Little has changed in San Quentin's East Block — where condemned inmates are held — since it was built in 1930.

2. Nothing is automated. Each cell is opened and closed by hand.

3. Unlike inmates in the general population, where men are kept two to a cell and have access to enrichment programs, inmates on death row spend most of their days alone.

4. If you think it's lonely and isolating, you're right.

4.  In their single cells, some write or draw.

5. Others study or read to pass the time.

6. Outside time is limited to four days a week, when inmates get access to an exercise yard.

7. There, they can workout.

8. Or pace.

9. Or just think.

10. There's always plenty of time for that.

11. After all, waiting is what they're on death row to do. The question is — for how long?

A Mickey Mouse clock marks the time, along with a little graffiti from someone with a cruel and unusual sense of humor.

And this isn't just California's problem — it's a problem everywhere.

Between sentencing and execution, inmates on death row can wait an average of 190 months. That's up from 74 months in 1984.

It's clear our corrections system wasn't built for this — unduly cruel sentences of indeterminate length in prisons more than a century old. Surely there's a way to get justice for victims and punish perpetrators without sacrificing our own humanity.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

Keep ReadingShow less

A nasty note gets a strong response.

We've all seen it while cruising for spots in a busy parking lot: A person parks their whip in a disabled spot, then they walk out of their car and look totally fine. It's enough to make you want to vomit out of anger, especially because you've been driving around for what feels like a million years trying to find a parking spot.

You're obviously not going to confront them about it because that's all sorts of uncomfortable, so you think of a better, way less ballsy approach: leaving a passive aggressive note on their car's windshield.

Satisfied, you walk back to your car feeling proud of yourself for telling that liar off and even more satisfied as you walk the additional 100 steps to get to the store from your lame parking spot all the way at the back of the lot. But did you ever stop and wonder if you told off the wrong person?

Keep ReadingShow less
Innovation

A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

Keep ReadingShow less
Health

8 nontraditional empathy cards that are unlike any you've ever seen. They're perfect!

Because sincerity and real talk are important during times of medical crisis.

True compassion.

When someone you know gets seriously ill, it's not always easy to come up with the right words to say or to find the right card to give.

Emily McDowell — a former ad agency creative director and the woman behind the Los Angeles-based greeting card and textile company Emily McDowell Studio — knew all too well what it was like to be on the receiving end of uncomfortable sentiments.

At the age of 24, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin's lymphoma. She went into remission after nine months of chemo and has remained cancer-free since, but she received her fair share of misplaced, but well-meaning, wishes before that.

On her webpage introducing the awesome cards you're about to see, she shared,

"The most difficult part of my illness wasn't losing my hair, or being erroneously called 'sir' by Starbucks baristas, or sickness from chemo. It was the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn't know what to say or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it."

Her experience inspired Empathy Cards — not quite "get well soon" and not quite "sympathy," they were created so "the recipients of these cards [can] feel seen, understood, and loved."

Scroll down to read these sincere, from-the-heart, and incredibly realistic sentiments.

Keep ReadingShow less
Health

This woman's powerful 'before and after' photos crush myths about body positivity

"Body positivity is about saying that you are more than a body and your self-worth is not reliant on your beauty."



Michelle Elman, a body positivity coach, helps people who are struggling to find confidence in their own skin.

After persevering through numerous medical conditions and surgeries in her own life, Elman realized a few years ago that body positivity wasn't just about size or weight. Things like scars, birthmarks, and anything else that makes us feel different of self-conscious have to be a part of the conversation, and she tries to make the movement accessible to everyone.

Sharing her own journey has been one of her most effective teaching tools.

Keep ReadingShow less
via wakaflockafloccar / TikTok

It's amazing to consider just how quickly the world has changed over the past 11 months. If you were to have told someone in February 2020 that the entire country would be on some form of lockdown, nearly everyone would be wearing a mask, and half a million people were going to die due to a virus, no one would have believed you.

Yet, here we are.

PPE masks were the last thing on Leah Holland of Georgetown, Kentucky's mind on March 4, 2020, when she got a tattoo inspired by the words of a close friend.

Keep ReadingShow less