I'm a bit confused.. isn't this how it's suppose to be? Or maybe I'm not understanding.

I actually agree that this is probably a design decision rather than a bug; I also agree that it's a very poor choice.  When I have to sit for 30 seconds, give or take, at death, I want to be able to do something, and what I would like to use that downtime for is thinking about my stats/equipment, especially since the spawn is at the shops... basically I like to look at what I've got and pre-load my shopping.

I think there definitely needs to be access to the Character Screen and the Skills Screen while one is dead. There's a perfectly reasonable time to spend any skill points you've accumulated and later in the game you're out 30sec+. Why keep the player out of interaction, making decisions, and being engaged for that long?

These days, in terms of successful game design, the trend has been to always keep the player making meaningful decisions. It's a good trend. Interestingly, they don't have to be making meaningful actions, but they need to be able to be able to keep learning what's going on and planning what to do once they can act again. I think this is an awesome awakening in game design, leading to things like lesser, shorter "death penalties" in MMORPGs so players can get back in there and mix it up meaningfully.

When you're dead, the skills page closes and clicking on the button does nothing; that's not a bug but a design decision and I wasn't referencing that.

Clicking on the OTHER button, on the right of the portrait, opens up the window, but if you're dead, no equipment shows, your hero's stats are shown as zero, and the place where the normal fullbody portrait should be is a black square darker than the background. If you open this pane up while you're alive, close it, and then re-open it when you're dead, all your numerical stats show up, your equipment is listed, and your full body portrait is there, and appears to update even if, say, you open it, then close it, buy a bunch of equipment, and die 10 minutes later after a few levels. Thus, Bug; either the window shouldn't open, or it should be accurate the first time.