Dead Man Wheeled In -- The Graying of Death Row

LOS ANGELES--Clarence Ray Allen is old, sick and disabled, with a huge number of physical ailments. Barring any last minute reprieve, the condemned contract killer will die at California's San Quentin prison Jan. 17. Executing elderly men like Allen is unnecessary cruelty.

A 74-year-old Alabama inmate had even more ailments than Allen. He needed help to get to the shower and comb his hair, and was so far gone mentally he had trouble remembering his name. He limped to his execution in August 2004. Mississippi bumped off 77-year-old John Nixon in December. He, too, wasn't in much better shape than Allen.

A reporter that interviewed death row prisoner Stanley Tookie Williams shortly before his execution in December saw at least six prisoners who looked to be in their 50s and 60s on San Quentin's death row. Those were the ones within sight. According to the Department of Corrections, there are nearly 200 gray beards among the nearly 650 prisoners on San Quentin's death row. There are hundreds more prisoners aged 50 and older on the nation's other death rows. Eighteen men over 60 have been executed in the past five years. Many of the death row elderly have been there since the late 1970s and 1980s. They will spend on average a decade there before they are executed, die of natural causes, are exonerated or have their sentences commuted.

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