# Why do women marry men on death row? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 11, 2010, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-women-marry-men-on-death-row/542858 "2010-06-11T23:23:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2010, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-women-marry-men-on-death-row/542858/21 "2010-06-12T18:47:52Z")
Someone said that such marriages are likely to be short. I wonder what percent of people who are condemned are actually executed. Outside of a couple states like Florida and Texas, I wonder if it is as high as 1%. As for insurance, I cannot imagine an insurance company would write a policy on a condemned man (certainly not in Texas). Perhaps some of them want the status of married without the bother of sex. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2010, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-women-marry-men-on-death-row/542858/22 "2010-06-12T19:23:00Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Someone said that such marriages are likely to be short. I wonder what percent of people who are condemned are actually executed. Outside of a couple states like Florida and Texas, I wonder if it is as high as 1%. > > As for insurance, I cannot imagine an insurance company would write a policy on a condemned man (certainly not in Texas). > > Perhaps some of them want the status of married without the bother of sex. What good is a death penalty that doesn’t get enforced? We are talking about people who have already been convicted, right? I’m pretty sure they don’t overturn even a majority of cases by appeal, let alone 99%. ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2010, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-women-marry-men-on-death-row/542858/23 "2010-06-12T23:23:20Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > What good is a death penalty that doesn’t get enforced? Apparently, some US states do not have a “life without the possibility of parole” sentence, or they do but the condemned has a chance to be paroled anyway. So they find condemning them to death to be an effective way to keep them behind bars forever. ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2010, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-women-marry-men-on-death-row/542858/24 "2010-06-12T23:42:35Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > One does also occasionally hear of celebrity stalkers who are even crazier than the average stalker, people who aren’t letting their fantasies get the better of them but who are genuinely delusional. AFAIK that is not at all uncommon. I know a woman who is convinced that she wrote most of Bryan Adams’ songs and that they are close friends. She goes to as many of his concerts as she can and talks about how she used to work in Hollywood and wrote lots of famous songs, but she’s completely fixated on Bryan Adams. That’s on her good days–on bad days, she talks about how the Mafia is after her. I would not be at all surprised if Gavin deBecker has a file on her. ---
**Author:** ![Dereknocue67](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6de8d8/32.png) [@Dereknocue67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dereknocue67)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-women-marry-men-on-death-row/542858/25 "2010-06-13T09:12:50Z")
The reason? It’s simple. Some women just want to nag a man to death. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-women-marry-men-on-death-row/542858/26 "2010-06-13T09:57:18Z")
I’m surprised this isn’t mentioned yet, but there’s a known psychological mechanism where women try to “rescue” a “bad boy.” I’m not sure if it’s a recognized psychological disorder, and I don’t remember the term for it, but anecdotally, all my female friends have experienced it at some point in their lives. Obviously, men on death row are the worst of the “bad boys.” Also, this is the explanation about why some women stay in relationships with abusers or addicts…some sort of belief that their love will cause the man to change or improve. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-women-marry-men-on-death-row/542858/27 "2010-06-13T13:55:21Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > I’m surprised this isn’t mentioned yet, but there’s a known psychological mechanism where women try to “rescue” a “bad boy.” This type of woman actually was mentioned by several posters already, although I don’t know what you mean by “psychological mechanism”. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-women-marry-men-on-death-row/542858/28 "2010-06-13T14:17:22Z")
My firm makes, among other things, software for tracking crazies for private security companies. It’s an outgrowth of software for police intel divisions to track “persons of interest”. Pretty much every brand name famous person in show biz, big biz, or politics hires one of a handful of security companies to watch over them. The uber wealthy-and-famous often have their own such company. These companies’ services are sort of a combo of physical security, bodyguards, concierge to government (e.g. get out of jail, get a visa, squash a news story, etc.), and most significantly for this thread, private detective / intelligence agency services. Suffice it to say that if you have instant national name recognition, you have dozens, if not hundreds, of crazies who email or fax you daily or at least weekly. And the security firm is tracking all that, building out a dossier on each nutcase, and watching them carefully for signs that the long rambling emails are starting to get more agitated. The volume flat amazed me when we moved into this line of work. And a surprising percentage of nutcases have sex deeply woven into their weirdness. Regardless of the genders of the nut & the celeb or the apparent homo / hetero leanings of either. For entertainers who’s stock in trade includes being attractive this sorta goes with the territory. But for an overweight balding senator or CEO to be getting weird sexually explicit email daily from some 30 year old guy who claims to be hetero & really does have a wife & a kid? That’s some freaky shit. The point of this semi-digression is there is a rich vein of very confused people out there. Any bad guy who achieves even local temporary celeb status is gonna get a few hits from the sediment at the bottom of the mental health pool. ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-women-marry-men-on-death-row/542858/29 "2010-06-13T14:58:49Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > But for an overweight balding senator or CEO to be getting weird sexually explicit email daily from some 30 year old guy who claims to be hetero & really does have a wife & a kid? That’s some freaky shit. For some reason, this caused me to google “John McCain porn” and see what I’d get. The most interesting thing I found was [this](http://www.tmz.com/2010/04/03/senator-john-mccain-twitter-picture-guys-with-iphone/) (SFW, link to TMZ website). ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-women-marry-men-on-death-row/542858/30 "2010-06-13T15:06:06Z")
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