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A South Florida judge declared the state’s new death penalty law unconstitutional earlier this week while the fate of everyone on death row is being considered by the Florida Supreme Court. While the ultimate penalty in Florida remains uncertain, Mike Vasilinda tells us some inmates would rather die than eat poor food and get bad medical care for a decades.

Michael Lambrix has spent most of his adult life on death row.

“Over 32 years” he told us.

Lambrix was next in line to be executed when the US Supreme Court said Florida’s death penalty was unconstitutional. Lambrix says many…not most, but many  of those on death row would like to stay there.

“One of the big elements weighing heavily on these guys on death row  who are saying I don’t want a life sentence is because they see people growing old in prison. they see the kind of medical care we get around here” says the death row veteran.

But after coming within days of being executed, Michael Lambrix is not one of those who wants to die.

“I don’t want to grow old like that, but but the alternative is to die. And I can;’t keep trying to prove my innocence if I am dead.”

Most prisoners here claim innoncence. With Lambrix, it has been a constant since 1983 . That’s when he was first charged and offered a plea deal that would have set him free more than a decade ago.

“I would have gotten a sentence of 17-22 years. I would have been out many years ago. But I wasn’t going to plea to something I didn’t do.”

As recently s last week, the state was saying that most of the 390 death row inmates here should still be executed. If Florida justices agree with the state, the final say over who lives and who dies will likely come from the US Supreme Court.

As for Lambrix’s claim of Innoncence, we asked: ”Have you ever thought of what it would be like to walk out of here?”

”To walk out into the free world? I think about it every day. (laughs) I think about it every day” and indeed, anyone in Florida State Prison would think the same thoughts on a daily basis.

Michael Lambrix admits to killing one person in self defense. He is a high school dropout who originally went to prison for passing bad checks (in tampa). He was convicted of a double homicide in Glades County on the testimony of a girlfriend who was sleeping with the prosecutors investigator.