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Ann Nichols, an ASU professor of social work, speaks about prisoner rights at a Prisoners are People Too Day rally in Tucson. Nichols has corresponded with several death row inmates. |
By Stephanie Paterik
The letters show up in ASU Professor John Johnson's mailbox every week without fail. Most of them are several pages long and carefully decorated with small oval stickers that were once attached to oranges and bananas. Some of the vowels are repeated too many times, a sign of an old typewriter with sensitive keys and an author with unsteady hands.
The 200 letters are from an Arizona death row inmate, and Johnson and others who do this sort of thing certainly don't fit the stereotypical norm of young, affection-starved needy women being romanced by hardcore convicts.
The justice studies professor's relationship with a death row inmate is not uncommon.
Johnson, 58, said his relationship with murderer Viva LeRoy Nash -- who at 85 is the oldest death row inmate in the world -- began when Nash wrote him a letter three years ago.
Nash, who considered robbery his career, ended up on death row after shooting and killing a jewelry store manager when his plan to rob the store went awry. His home is Special Management Unit II in the state penitentiary at Florence, where all of Arizona's condemned await execution.
Letters are among Nash's few luxuries. He also gets three showers a week, a television set and an electric orange jumpsuit.
The first correspondence with Johnson was about Nash's case and problems with the criminal justice system. Now the two exchange intimate details about their families, health problems and daily activities. They consider each other close friends.
It has been eight years since Arizona resurrected the death penalty, which had been halted for 29 years. Since the execution of Donald Eugene Harding in 1992, a loosely knit group of respected, well-educated community members has become an unlikely friend to condemned men and women.
"I think I've been against the death penalty forever, but it was never an issue in Arizona because we went for so long without executing somebody," Johnson said. "I was the person who held the vigil outside the prison (for Harding), and I've been active ever since then."
Letters | Unlikely friends | A difficult task | Seeds of hope | Struggles and Stereotypes | Coping with Execution
