Tim Koors/The Arizona Republic

Death row inmate Viva Leroy Nash, 86, doesn't believe the ruling will affect him, but others in his unit are hopeful.

By Carol Sowers
The Arizona Republic
July 08, 2002

FLORENCE - At 86, Viva Leroy Nash is the oldest death row inmate in America. He's also a news junkie.

To stay connected to the outside world, he watches several news shows a day on a 13-inch television in his sparse cinderblock cell.

That was how he learned of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that could trigger new sentencing hearings for all of Arizona's 126 condemned prisoners. As lawyers begin a battle over the impact of the high court's ruling, Nash and his death row companions are left with the same uncertainty that hung over their fates before the decision was handed down.

Some are resigned to death. Others cling to a small hope that their lives will be spared by the Supreme Court ruling. It found that inmates in Arizona and four other states were denied their constitutional right to trial by an impartial jury because they were sentenced to death by judges, not juries.

The decision meant little to the nimble-minded Nash, who subscribes to the New York Times and monitors the Internet through pen pals.

"At 86, I don't worry about a thing," said Nash, a reedy 165-pounder with a swath of white hair. "I'm a heart patient. I take seven medications a day and have a hernia that bothers my stomach."

"Everything has fallen off except my IQ."

The news, according to some, caused barely a ripple among the quiet hallways of death row, part of the prison's Special Management Unit 2, which also houses other high-risk inmates.

"Happy, I guess," is how inmate Frank Robinson, 61, described his reaction. He was sentenced to death in 1988 for his role in the shooting death of his estranged girlfriend's mother.

Department of Corrections Capt. Jeri Erbert described the day the decision came down as one like any other.

"There was talk back and forth among friends," she said, but little noise.

"It is a very quiet place."

'Unanswered questions'

Lawmakers are expected to meet this summer to craft a bill that would fix the problem for future defendants. But what the ruling means to those on death row is less clear.

Legal experts argue about whether it applies to only the 30 inmates with open appeals, or if everyone on death row is now eligible for a new sentencing hearing, where prosecutors would have to dredge up old evidence and witnesses to win new death sentences.

Others worry the ruling will set some death row inmates free because before 1994 the stiffest sentence short of death was life without the possibility of parole for 25 years. After that a natural life sentence was added that allowed convicts to be imprisoned forever.

"Quite frankly, this is one of the most significant decisions from the Supreme Court in a number of years," Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley said. "It has created many, many unanswered questions that we are just going to have to sort through."

The Arizona Supreme Court took a first step last week by ordering that the 30 cases in early appeal stages be grouped together for one hearing, which is not yet scheduled. Lawyers for both sides will argue about how the ruling should affect those defendants.

Nash, who has been on death row for nearly two decades after killing a coin-shop employee during a robbery, isn't optimistic.

"It's all over the Internet that it isn't retroactive to us anyway," he said.

But at least one inmate senses optimism on death row.

Inmate Richard Rossi, 54, told National Public Radio two days after the June 24 ruling that there were "little bits of screams and yells" in his 10-cell pod as news spread. Rossi has been on death row for 19 years after killing a Scottsdale man in a dispute over a typewriter.

"It was heartwarming to hear these guys have some hope, you know, because there is very little hope in here."

Stark and isolated

Special Management Unit 2 isn't a place that spawns hope.

Splayed across 10 acres of saguaro-studded desert three miles from the Department of Correction's original prison on the edge of Florence, it is one of five medium- to super-maximum-security units in the Eyman Complex, named for late Warden Frank Eyman, known for welding shut cells of rioting inmates in 1958.

Eyman, who retired in 1972, would not recognize the futuristic prison that bears his name.

The bluish-gray unit is protected by two whirring gates, 14-feet high razor wire fences and an underground motion detector sensitive enough to detect a landing sparrow. Inside is a hospital-clean world of concrete, cinderblock, steel and unimaginable sameness.

Correction officers in a control room monitor every movement on death row, which is divided into pods that each contains 10 cells.

Aside from medical appointments and two non-contact visits a week, inmates are only allowed out of their cells one at a time for three showers a week, and three one-hour games a week of solitary handball or a stroll around a concrete recreation yard.

Erbert patrols the halls wearing a 15-pound department-issued knife-proof vest and goggles to protect her from spitballs or feces hurled through the punched steel door.

She knows the isolation wears on the men, but says they ease it by calling to each other through air vents or yelling down a drainpipe to those in the recreation yard.

Inside the 8- by 10-foot cells, inmates view their cloistered world through a huge strainer, a steel door with 3/8-inch wide holes. Meals are slipped through a slot in the door at 5 a.m., 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. Lights go out at 10 p.m.

No apologies offered

Robinson, who has never had a visitor, says he rarely talks to other inmates.

"I keep to myself," he said, filling his days reading an old Bible and paging through scrapbooks filled with pictures of his 16 children.

Assistant Deputy Warden Ruben Montaña does not apologize for the isolation of what he calls "nothing-to-lose prisoners."

He points to a display of confiscated knives carved from plastic meal trays, a lethal-looking ball shaped from latex paint scraped from a cell wall and held together with saliva, and a rope made of toothpaste and toilet paper.

No assaults in a year

There hasn't been an assault in the unit for a year, he said, a statistic he attributes to ever increasing searches and security measures.

"They are beginning to understand who is in charge," he said.

Former death row inmate Ray Krone, 45, spent a decade in prison before being freed this year after DNA testing proved he was innocent of the 1991 slaying of a Phoenix barmaid.

After a second trial commuted his sentence to life, he was housed with the mainstream population. After five years on death row, Krone said he rejoiced in small pleasures given to inmates outside of Special Management Unit 2.

"The small freedoms were incredible," he said. "All of a sudden I had 40 to 50 people to interact with during rec hours . . . It was crazy excitement."

Arizona Republic reporters Beth DeFalco and Brent Whiting contributed to this article.

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