Keen On

Should death row prisoners have the right to demand to be executed? In her debut book The Volunteer, Bay Area journalist Gianna Toboni exposes the absurd bureaucratization of the American death penalty system through the story of Scott Dozier, a death row inmate who volunteered for execution. Convicted of two murders on circumstantial evidence, Dozier preferred death to living 22-24 hours daily in a cell. Despite his and the state's shared goal of execution, bureaucratic delays and legal challenges prevented it. Toboni describes how extended solitary confinement undermined Dozier's mental health, eventually leading to his suicide, which she suggests was effectively state-induced. Toboni questions whether Americans truly understand the monstrously inefficient system they fund, where death sentences cost ten times more than life imprisonment yet only 15% of death row inmates are actually executed.FIVE TAKEAWAYS IN THIS CONVERSATION WITH TOBONI* The death penalty system is dysfunctional: Despite sentencing peopl