HausFrau Speaks-Death Penalty at Perryville

Many have asked me "just what Jodi Arias will be facing at Perryville a Prison if she receives the death penalty?"  The following is from The a Huffinton Post.  In the next blog, I'll be discovering "what if?" for Natural life!  Thank you for reading, and as always, I appreciate and invite your comments!

Death Penalty

If sentenced to death, Arias will basically live a twilight existence, a purgatory between this world and whatever comes next, according to Carl Toersbijns, the former deputy warden at Eyman Correctional Complex in Florence, Arizona.

"She'll basically be in solitary confinement," Toersbijns told The Huffington Post. "It's very restrictive, very secure and very isolated."

Arias would join Wendi Andriano and Shawna Forde, the two other women currently sitting on death row at Perryville State Prison in Goodyear, Arizona.

Martinez, the same prosecutor Arias faced, secured a conviction against Andriano in 2004 for the premeditated murder of her husband. Forde was convicted in 2011 for her role in a home invasion that claimed the lives of a 9-year-old girl and her father. No execution date has been set for either woman, as they are both still appealing their sentences.

While Arias would be housed in the same unit as Andriano and Forde, women on death row in Arizona live in individual 12-by-7-foot cells.

Each cell has a concrete bunk with a thin mattress, a stainless steel toilet and sink, a shelf that doubles as a desk and a small chair. Each cell also has a 6-by-30-inch window that looks out onto the prison yard and a 6-by-18-inch door-window that the guards can use to look in on the inmates.

"The cells are very bare," Toersbijns said. "The air is also restricted because it's an old ventilation system. It gets cold in the winter and hot in the summer."

Personal property allowed inside the cells is limited to hygiene items, two appliances, two books and writing materials, which must be purchased from the inmate commissary.

The only available appliances, according to Toersbijns, are a transparent television set, a fan and a radio.

Meals are provided to the inmates three times a day, Monday through Friday, and twice on the weekend. All meals are eaten inside the cell.

Time outside the cell is limited to a secure outdoor area commonly referred to by prison guards as a "dog run." Inmates are permitted to spend two hours a day, three times a week, in the dog run. They are also allowed out of their cell to shower three times a week. 

Interactions with the outside world are limited on death row. 

While death row inmates can send -- depending on their ability to purchase stamps and materials -- and receive an unlimited amount of mail, they are only allowed two 10-minute phone calls per week, made from a phone that is brought into the cell, and one two-hour visit per week.

"[Arias] would only have visits behind glass," retired Maricopa County Judge Donna Leone Hamm told HuffPost. "She would never have a contact visit and any time she is moved she would be in handcuffs, belly chains and leg irons."

There are no jobs or prison programs available for death row inmates. Other than visitation, showers and outdoor time, inmates remain in their cells, with the exception of medical or mental health treatment.

"Having worked in max custody isolation units for more than seven years, either as an administrator or officer, I believe the hardest thing I have seen prisoners cope with is the isolation," Toersbijns said. "Not being able to interact with or touch anyone is very difficult for them."

According to the Arizona Department of Corrections, the average stay for a death row inmate in the United States is 12 years. 

The last woman executed in Arizona was Eva Dugan, in 1930. In that case, a hangman’s mistake resulted in Dugan's decapitation by the noose.

The state no longer hangs death row inmates. The primary method, as of 1992, is lethal injection.

A death sentence, if that is what Arias receives, would be akin to a state of suspended animation -- the same deadening, structured routine week after week, year after year.

"It would be a miserable existence for her until the moment she takes her last breath and is put in a fiberboard coffin at the prison," Hamm said