Life in prison: A look at becoming an inmate
The Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, the state's biggest, houses about 2,100 male inmates on a wooded, 900-acre campus about 50 miles south of Atlanta.
Clean, shorn and photographed, they're led to a sorting area ringed by small offices where counselors and medical professionals interview the new arrivals to determine where they belong.
The linoleum floors have been buffed to an impressive shine by inmate laborers, and a faint smell of cleaning chemicals lingers in the air.
Inmates can leave their cells only five hours a week, under the supervision of guards with their wrists and ankles shackled.
Some play chess, keeping boards in their cells and shouting moves back and forth.
The cells are only 7 by 13½ feet, and inmates can't see out unless guards slide back a metal cover over the grated opening on the door.
In a room used for GED prep classes, large sheets of paper on the walls are scrawled with mathematical formulas, highlights of the civil rights movement and summaries of constitutional amendments.
The inmates on death row have been convicted of horrific crimes, but they generally cause few problems, Chatman said.
The 76 death row inmates live in four "pods" of neatly kept single-inmate cells measuring just 6½ by 9 feet and feature a bed, sink, toilet and shelves.
John Conner — who killed a friend who said he'd like to go to bed with Conner's girlfriend in January 1982 — smiled at a small group of reporters visiting death row in October.
The chamber where lethal injections take place — a small room with a gurney, separated by a large pane of glass from the observation area — is on the grounds.
On execution day, condemned inmates get a final meal and an opportunity to record a statement.
The inmate is allowed two minutes to make a final statement and is offered a prayer before the warden reads the execution order.