He's a great-great grandfather. He's also a convicted murderer who began his life of crime as a teen in Utah.
At age 80, Viva LeRoy Nash is the nation's oldest death row inmate. Although Nash is convinced he'll die in prison, he's fighting to get off death row.He's occupied a maximum-security cell at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Florence since being convicted of murdering a Phoenix coin shop employee almost 14 years ago.
"I try to imagine the spectacle of taking this old, feeble man down the corridor, strapping him to a gurney and injecting him with poison," said Donna Leone Hamm, director of Middle Ground, a Phoenix-based advocacy organization for prisoners and their families.
Nash, who will turn 81 in September, said he has suffered five heart attacks - the most recent while he was in prison.
He takes medication four times each day to combat a weak heart and high cholesterol, and the prison's food service gives him a special low-fat diet.
"Some of the guards really respect that I'm old," Nash told The Tucson Citizen in an interview.
Arizona's prison system houses about 22,000 inmates - 396 of them older than 60, according to the most recently available Department of Corrections statistics.
All but 10 of those inmates are men.
"(Nash) is going to die in prison; there's no question," Leone Hamm said. "It costs taxpayers a lot more to keep prisoners in death row. And this man is not going any-where.
"He doesn't pester anyone. At 80, his life expectancy is very short, no matter how you calculate it."
Paul McMurdie, chief counsel of the criminal appeals section for the Arizona Attorney General's Office, said he has little sympathy for Nash.
"We're asked a lot about this case. But (Nash) didn't allow his victims to grow old," McMurdie said. "We are prosecuting this case for execution. It was a very cold-blooded, callous murder committed while he was on escape."
Nash, who was first arrested at age 16 for stealing a car in Salt Lake City, was serving time for aggravated robbery and second-degree murder in the Utah State Prison when he escaped while on an outside work crew.
He'd been on the run just 20 days when he shot Moon Valley Coin & Stamp store worker Greg West three times with a stolen handgun on Nov. 3, 1982.
West pleaded for his life before Nash killed him and fled the store with $600, according to court records. Nash admits he committed the crime.
He's acting as his own lawyer in trying to get off death row but has asked a federal appeals court to appoint one for him.
Nash, who has a seventh-grade education, spends hours every day poring over legal books and writing letters, poems and essays. He also feeds the birds outside his cell by shooting pieces of bread out a tiny window.
Were he part of the regular prison population, Nash said he might get a job and have visitors more often and more interaction with fellow inmates.
Nash said he never leaves his cell for recreation breaks and can't remember the last time he went outside.
"There are no friends on death row. These guys are all strangers," Nash said. "Half of them are kind of lowbrow people. They are out of sight, out of mind."