From Death Row to Life Row

AUGUST 10, 2022

LIVINGSTON—About 200 of the inmates at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit—a Texas Department of Criminal Justice maximum-security prison near Livingston—are housed on Death Row, where prisoners typically spend 23 hours a day in a small single-occupancy cell.

‘Broken men become whole’

About 200 of the inmates at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit—a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison near Livingston—are housed on Death Row. (Photo / Ken Camp)

But Terry Joe Solley, an inmate in the general prison population who devotes 12 to 14 hours a day visiting those otherwise-isolated prisoners, is committed to turning Death Row into “Life Row.”

“We introduce them to the one who can give them spiritual life. They find spiritual life in a place where they have come to die,” Solley said. “On Life Row, broken men become whole.”

Solley is one of six field ministers at the Polunsky Unit. Field ministers are inmates who have completed a Bachelor of Arts in biblical studies degree program, offered to men at the Darrington Unit in Brazoria County (renamed the TDCJ Memorial Unit last year) and to women at the Hobby Unit in Falls County. They receive certification as field ministers after receiving specialized training from the Heart of Texas Foundation Field Ministers Academy.

The two field ministers at the Polunsky Unit—Solley and Hubert “Troop” Foster—are assigned specifically to Death Row where they “are basically pastors to the Death Row population,” Chaplain Joaquin Gay said.

As a field minister, Terry Joe Solley has the freedom to visit prisoners on Texas Death Row without being accompanied by a correctional officer. (Photo / Ken Camp)

Field ministers “are the heart of our Death Row ministry at Polunsky,” Gay said. The field ministers have earned the trust of men housed on Death Row—not only teaching classes and conducting worship services, but also visiting the inmates daily, praying with them and being on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he explained.

The field ministers—who are permitted to enter Death Row without being escorted by a correctional officer—often are awakened in the middle of the night at the request of a condemned inmate who wants to talk.

Some Death Row inmates grow so despondent, they consider suicide, Solley said.

“I’ve had men give me the razor blade they were going to cut themselves with,” he said.