For most of his 12 years on death row, Anthony Graves lived in what he called an 8-by-12 "cage." To see outside he would stand on top of his rolled-up plastic mattress and look through a small window at the top of the concrete wall in the back of his cell. He spent 22, sometimes 24, hours a day in this room.

"Solitary confinement does one thing: It breaks a man's will to live and he ends up deteriorating. He's never the same person again," said Graves, who served over 18 years in a Texas prison before being exonerated of all crimes in 2010.