Seth Perlman/AP I opened my email at 8:30 in the morning and my heart sank. A “dear subscriber” notification, simple and plain, told me that my client Richard was no longer in Graham Correctional Center because he was deceased. There was no further information, no condolences offered, no way to follow up. Had I not signed up for these notifications — status updates that are useful when clients are transferred from institution to institution — no one would have told me that he died. Opinion Richard, an affable and religious man who was bombarded by love from family and friends, was 71 when he died. When I met him earlier this year, he had served 37 years of a natural life sentence for robbing a grocery store in Champaign, Illinois, one of hundreds of mostly Black men condemned to die in prison on his “third strike.” He never hurt anyone, in that case or in any other. While in prison, he dedicated his life to his fellow prisoners, to his family, and to God. He studied the Bible and became an ordained minister. Trusted by both incarcerated people and correctional officers alike, Richard worked with the assistant warden and the prison chaplain.