The Marshall Project

I’m on Death Row for Punching a Man

“After three decades, I now feel like I’m dying a slow death.”

It’s 1988. Me and my homeboy—Schoolboy we called him—are sitting in a car in Las Vegas, drinking. A woman we know comes up to us. She has a black eye, and we ask her what happened. She says her pimp had beat her up and she wants him out of her room. She wants us to help her.

So we go over to the hotel room and open the door. The guy jumps off the bed and

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