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)

He says he came to terms with dying, and life after death. Now, he's just waiting for an execution date.

He is 52 years old. He tries to console his parents, his ex-wife, their two children and three grandchildren.

"I've hurt a lot of people by my actions. I've had to forgive myself ... or I'd keep reliving this, and that's a sin too. So, there's a lot of suffering going on."

Since arriving at Potosi in 1992, he's seen dozens of friends and acquaintances taken away to be executed. Some, he believes, were innocent.

He volunteers with the prison's hospice program, feeding, changing, showering and sitting with dying inmates.

"Nobody should die alone in prison. It's about the worst it gets."

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Roderick Nunley is not looking forward to execution, but he doesn't dwell on it, either.

"I'm mentally prepared to deal with it," he says.

Nunley, 41, doesn't allow himself anxiety or fear. "I can't afford to feel such a feeling. This is not a place to be emotional in. That's a sign of weakness, I think. In prison it is."

When Nunley was a boy, his father left the family just before his beloved older brother, his "rock," died of spinal meningitis. Sometime after that, he says, something _ he won't say what _ happened that left him vulnerable to drugs.

In 1989, when he and Michael Taylor abducted 15-year-old Ann Harrison _ when they raped and killed her _ he'd been strung out on cocaine for days, he says.