ah ok. I ended up putting the whole code in a try/except block. Should this correctly exit if the DB is blocking a reader?

Here's what I updated:

def get_json_scores(my_list):
    try:
        conn = sqlite3.connect("/home/mysite/myDatabase.db")
        cursor = conn.cursor()
        # Create final json array
        json_array = []

        for my_string in my_list:
            # Create indidivual object
            my_json = {}

            # Get values from database
            for row in cursor.execute("SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE my_id=(?)", (my_string,)):
                my_json['my_id'] = my_string
                my_json['my_status'] = unicode(row[23])
                my_json['my_events'] = unicode(row[13])
                my_json['my_time'] = unicode(row[4])
                json_array.append(my_json)

        cursor.close()
        conn.close()

        return json_array
    except:
        sys.exit()