AP Interviews 5 Mo. Condemned Prisoners

Inmate Martin Link, sentenced to death in the murder of an 11-year-old girl, gestures during an interview at Potosi Correctional Center, Missouri's maximum security prison where condemned men live in the general prison population, Jan. 11, 2007 in Mineral Point, Mo. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson) (Jeff Roberson - AP)

POTOSI, Mo. -- One after another, the condemned men arrive. Usually, this spartan room _ deep inside the concrete-and-razor-wire fortress that is Potosi Correctional Center, Missouri's maximum-security prison _ is used for parole hearings. But on this day, five CPs (capital punishment offenders) have agreed to be interviewed.

These are men who live in the shadow of death, even as shadows hang over the death penalty, itself. While a majority of Americans still favor executions, polls show a dip in support _ perhaps because death-row prisoners have been proven innocent by DNA tests, or because of doubts about whether methods of execution are humane.

The debate, not surprisingly, reverberates on death row, but in a very personal way. Every day, these men struggle with the knowledge of how _ though not when _ they are likely to die.

They tell their stories, they share their fears.

And as they do, a staff sergeant watches their every move.

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Jeffrey Ferguson worries who will care for his aging parents. It won't be him.

He's next in line to be executed, for a 1989 murder he doesn't remember.

Back then, he'd drink until he was unconscious _ a case of beer a day, some vodka. Add a little cocaine. He'd been drinking heavily since his days in the Army in Europe. But he ran a business, and didn't own a gun.

"The night of the crime I don't remember going out with these guys," he says. "I don't know how I got back from there. All I know is somewhere along the way we picked up a girl and killed her for whatever reason."

He's not guilty of first-degree murder, he insists _ he was an alcoholic, and out of it. But those days are long gone; the man who described himself as "Happy-Go-Lucky Jeff" was sobered and shaken by the death sentence.

"I've gone through ALL the stages," he says. "Anxiety attacks. I couldn't sleep. I didn't think of anything else, but I gave it to God finally, completely. It takes years."