I have always maintained that the death penalty does deter premeditated murders and felony murders. The only reason the death penalty may not deter such murders is because the killers do not believe they will ever be executed should they be sentenced to death.
Viva Leroy Nash is just one of many condemned inmates who have spent more than two decades on death row. Nash, 94, the oldest death row inmate, has just died of natural causes. Due to endless appeals, he had been lingering on Arizona’s death row for more than 26 years. During that time Nash became deaf, blind, crippled, mentally ill and developed dementia.
Nash spent most of his life in and out of prison since 1930. I930 he was sent to Leavenworth for an armed robbery. He spent 25 years locked up for killing a Connecticut cop in 1947. In 1977 Nash received two consecutive life sentences for a robbery and murder in Salt Lake City. In 1982 he escaped while on a prison work crew. Three weeks after his escape he killed a Phoenix coin shop employee during a robbery, the crime for which he received the death sentence in 1983.
Endless appeals have kept Nash and other cold blooded killers on death row for more than 10, 20 and 30 years, thus making a mockery of capital punishment. Only a tiny percentage of murderers are ever sentenced to death. There has to be a better way of resolving the post-sentence process than to let the condemned linger on only to die of old age.
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