Man found dead on federal death row planned suicide in final weeks

A man who died on federal death row last month told loved ones he planned to kill himself in the weeks before U.S. prison staff reported finding his body.

Friends of Nasih Khalil Ra’id said he had been struggling to cope with conditions at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. The facility houses the U.S. prison bureau’s “Special Confinement Unit,” or federal death row.

They said Ra’id had been becoming increasingly hopeless since last fall, when the U.S. prison bureau moved every person on death row to a different part of the prison.

“I saw my friend deteriorating,” Rejon Taylor, a friend and fellow death row prisoner, wrote in a message. “The signs were apparent for anyone who cared to see.”

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Taylor’s description of Ra’id’s final days is the most detailed of three accounts reviewed by WFIU in the weeks since his unexplained death in federal custody, on Dec. 1, 2023.

A month later, the U.S. prison bureau still won’t say what happened to him.

“Beyond what was provided in the press release, we have no further information,” an unidentified official responded multiple times to emailed questions in December. The Dec. 1 press release offered few details and no answers.

The bureau also declined to discuss the temporary housing arrangement.

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