DELAWARE (USA): PRISON OFFICIALS QUIETLY DISBAND DEATH ROW

December 9, 2016: As Delaware's Supreme Court weighs whether 12 men sentenced to death should be spared from execution, prison officials have quietly disbanded the state's death row and moved its former occupants to other housing.
Prison officials say the move, which occurred in August, resulted in former death row inmates having 5 times more recreational time than they had before, and in some cases, sharing cells with other inmates who are not facing the death penalty.
"It's gone well," Department of Corrections Commissioner Robert Coupe told The Associated Press this week. "Some of the inmates initially preferred not to interact ... but we continued to work with them through our behavioral health folks and eventually all of them were moved out of what was formerly known as death row."
The former death row space is now being used as general maximum security housing. In August, a majority of Delaware justices concluded that Delaware's law was unconstitutional because it allowed a judge to sentence a person to death independently of a jury's recommendation and did not require that a jury find unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant deserves execution.
The Supreme Court is now considering whether that ruling applies retroactively to the 12 men already facing execution. (Source: Associated Press, 09/12/2016)