He’s Too Mentally Ill to Execute. Why Is He Still on Death Row After 45 Years? Raymond Riles has been on death row longer than anyone in America. He’s one of many who have languished there for decades with severe mental illnesses. Raymond Riles, right, with Ronald O'Bryan at the Ellis Unit in Huntsville, Texas, in 1979. In that era, incarcerated people on death row could go to the exercise yard for three 90-minute periods a week. Bruce Jackson The death penalty is in flux. These are the stories that you need to know about capital punishment's past, as well as its uncertain future.