A record 110 per­sons aged 60 and old­er were on death rows across the United States at the end of 2003, a num­ber that is near­ly triple the 39 death row seniors count­ed nine years ago by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, accord­ing to an arti­cle in USA Today. In many states, elder­ly pris­on­ers who are not on death row are housed in geri­atric facil­i­ties with­in pris­ons or they are placed in ​“end of life” pro­grams, but these pro­grams are not offered to seniors fac­ing the death penal­ty. The con­demned sta­tus of death row pris­on­ers requires that they are seg­re­gat­ed from the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion and housed in indi­vid­ual cells with­in spe­cial facil­i­ties.

“ ​‘Dead man walk­ing’ is one thing. ​‘Dead man being pushed along to the exe­cu­tion cham­ber in a wheel­chair’ has a dif­fer­ent feel,” com­ment­ed Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law pro­fes­sor who has worked with old­er pris­on­ers. He says that war­dens do not rel­ish the idea of exe­cut­ing those who are lame, deaf and infirmed. Though some seniors are on death row for crimes com­mit­ted at an old­er age, many are there because cap­i­tal appeals can stretch for decades.

LeRoy Nash (pic­tured) is an 89-year-old man on Arizona’s death row and prob­a­bly the old­est per­son on death row in the U.S. He suf­fers from heart dis­ease, deaf­ness and arthri­tis, con­di­tions that usu­al­ly keep him from tak­ing advan­tage of the one hour of exer­cise time he is offered each day. Nash, who has been in prison for more than half of his 89 years, is appeal­ing his death sen­tence in hopes of receiv­ing a sen­tence of life with­out parole and return­ing to the gen­er­al prison pop­u­la­tion. There, he could inter­act with oth­ers and par­tic­i­pate in prison senior care pro­grams. Nash’s appeal has been before the U.S. District Court in Phoenix for four years with­out a rul­ing. His attor­ney, Thomas Phalen, observes, ​“The judges can read the files; they know when they’re deal­ing with an old pris­on­er. It’s hard not to con­clude that they’re hop­ing that nat­ur­al caus­es will take an uncom­fort­able deci­sion out of their hands.”

(USA Today, February 10, 2005). See Death Row.

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