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LOUISVILLE (AP) - Gerald Otahal arrived at death row early on a recent Thursday morning, ready for his regular visit to counsel and pray with condemned inmate Gregory Wilson. What happened next left Otahal puzzled - guards turned him away at the door with instructions to go home as the Kentucky Department of Corrections cracks down on pastoral visits at the Kentucky State Penitentiary.

"He has no outlet now. He has no one to pray with. No one to talk to him about the hereafter," said Otahal, a part-time pastor from Owensboro who ministers to death row inmates. "Good grief. I'm just astounded they took this away."

What has changed is viewed by inmates as a lifeline snatched away and by the Department of Corrections an oft-ignored rule put back into place.

The policy limits access to inmates by pastors. Under the policy change, instead of notifying the prison ahead of time of plans to visit multiple inmates, pastors must now have one of three slots on an inmate's visitation list to meet with them one-on-one. The policy change came earlier this month after prison officials objected to a pastor meeting with more than one death row inmate during a visit to the facility in rural Eddyville.

"You have a right over their life," said Otahal, an ordained Southern Baptist minister. "You don't have a right over their soul."

Kentucky Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Lamb said the new warden, Phil Parker, is just invoking rules that have been on the books, but not enforced.

"Things were occurring that were totally outside our institutional policy," Lamb said. "All we are doing is adhering to that policy."

The change in pastoral visitation rules comes as three inmates - Wilson, Ralph Baze and Robert Foley - await word whether Gov. Steve Beshear will set dates for their executions. Beshear's spokeswoman, Kerri Richardson, said the governor has all the information he needs to consider the warrant requests, but has not set a deadline for signing them. Should a warrant be signed, an execution could take place within 30 days.

Pastoral visits take on an outsized importance to prisoners, particularly for death row inmates. Eddyville is isolated, 181 miles from Louisville, 280 miles from Northern Kentucky and 360 miles from Pikeville in eastern Kentucky.

"Most of us don't get visits from family regularly," said Randy Haight, who was condemned to death for the 1985 slayings of the murder of Patricia Vance and David Omer in central Kentucky. "Our pastors are all that we get."

Along with the rule on pastoral visits, condemned inmates were required to cut down their visitor lists to three people, after years of being allowed to meet with people, mainly pastors, not on the preapproved list.

Dick Murphy, director of social concerns with Catholic Charities of Owensboro, said the inmate-pastor relationship helps the inmates spiritually as they come to grips with their crime and the possibility of dying and keeps them from becoming isolated from the outside world.

"These pastors really care for these men," Murphy said.

Baze and Haight say the dispute centers around Ralph Hale, a pastor who has worked for more than a decade with Baze, condemned for the shooting deaths of a sheriff and deputy in 1992, and other inmates awaiting execution. Pastors usually send notice to the prison about a planned visit and prison officials put it on the schedule. Kentucky law allows an inmate at least one visit per week by a minister, priest, or rabbi of the inmate's choice. But, a person cannot be on the list of more than one death row inmate.

Baze and Haight said prison officials became upset when Hale wanted to meet with multiple inmates in a visit.

"We're talking about basic morality here," Baze said.

Hale, of Bardwell, confirmed the changes in pastoral visitation rules, but declined to elaborate on what prompted the dispute.

Baze and Haight filed a grievance in June, alleging the prison was violating it's own rules and the law.

"Who in the world would want to take one of the best things, one of the most fruitful things, away from us?" Haight asked. "It just don't make no sense."

Lamb said some inmates included pastors on their visiting list, but the pastors were also meeting with other inmates against institutional policy. To accommodate the renewed enforcement, prison officials allowed inmates to change their visiting lists earlier this month instead of having to wait the usual six months to make an addition or deletion, Lamb said.

"There was no intent at all to shut anyone out," Lamb said. "if they wanted to add the individual that had been coming, they could do that."

Otahal didn't see the sense in turning him away at the prison doors as he sought to see Wilson, who was sentenced to death in October 1988 in Kenton County for kidnapping and murdering Deborah Pooley a year earlier.

"They ought to be making inroads for pastors to come in and talk to these guys about how to live a better life," Otahal said.

(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)