Time To Take Out The Garbage

[dales]

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/A-l ... 727171.php

It’s both a lonely and crowded world inside the country’s largest Death Row, where hundreds of condemned inmates, stripped of nearly every freedom, wait around to die.

But for the more than 700 of the most notorious killers warehoused alone in cells in San Quentin State Prison, death likely won’t come at the end of a needle in the facility’s lethal-injection chamber.


That’s because nearly a decade ago, a federal judge placed a moratorium on capital punishment in California — bringing to a halt all executions.

For the first time since the death penalty was put on pause in the state, reporters on Tuesday got an in-depth look at the cold concrete corridors, locked cells and shackled inmates on California’s ever-growing Death Row.

“I don’t think I’ll ever live long enough to get out of here,” said 67-year-old Douglas Clark, who’s been in San Quentin since 1983. “But you get by. I’ve always been a very Zen person.”

Clark, an aging man with long, gray hair and an eye patch, looked little like his much-younger self — a serial murderer dubbed one of the “Sunset Strip killers” for a series of particularly grisly slayings in Los Angeles in 1980. He spoke Tuesday from inside a cell in the prison’s Adjustment Center, known by inmates as “the hole.”

Prisoners sent to the 102-cell hole are isolated because of their bad — usually violent — behavior in the main cell block, and are given limited time to exercise in outdoor metal cages.

In the yard Tuesday afternoon, inmates worked out in 8-by-10-foot, chain-link corrals while armed guards kept a watchful eye from above. Many of the prisoners spoke openly about their cases and have closely followed the state’s unresolved laws on capital punishment.

In recent weeks, supporters of two competing ballot initiatives — one seeks to scrap executions, while the other is trying to fast-track them — were cleared to gather signatures in hopes of changing the state’s laws.

“We are just left on a shelf, and that’s worse than being executed because you’re just waiting to die,” 42-year-old Robert Galvan said while taking a break between sets of pull-ups in his cage in the Adjustment Center’s yard.

Killed his cellmate

He was sentenced to die in San Quentin in 2013 after he killed his cellmate in 2010 during a gang dispute at California State Prison Corcoran, where he was doing time for a Fresno kidnapping for ransom and robbery.

Galvan and others on Death Row are considerably more likely to die at their own hand, from natural causes, a drug overdose, or by getting killed by a fellow inmate or prison guard, than by execution.


“If I had the courage or the heart, I would have ended it long ago,” he said. “I hope people understand, this is not a way to live.”

But that’s the way it goes on Death Row. Since 1978, when the Legislature re-enacted the death penalty, only 13 inmates have been executed, while more than 100 have perished from other means inside the prison walls.

A couple of doors down from Lewis was Richard Allen Davis, who got a death sentence for the 1993 abduction and killing of 12-year-old Polly Klaas in Petaluma.

The now-feeble convicted child killer hid inside his dark cell while reporters walked by — a stark change in behavior from his antagonistic courtroom theatrics that played out during his 1996 sentencing.

One tier above, convicted killer Andre Burton screamed from his cell.

“They’re treating us like animals!” he shouted. “We’re not horses and cows and s—. There’s no sun, no hot water, they’re giving us spoiled milk.”

Other inmates began to chime in, sharing Burton’s frustrations about the conditions inside the dark, desolate main housing facility for condemned inmates.

“Tell them about the five-minute showers! Tell them about the cold food and the dirty trays!” other prisoners called out from their cells.

But San Quentin’s warden, Ron Davis, has highlighted the strides his prison has made in inmate conditions, including a new state-of-the-art mental health facility designed to treat condemned prisoners with serious mental illnesses.

Housing for the privileged

Next door to the East Block, in San Quentin’s North Segregation, the more privileged of the condemned are housed.

“This is where you want to be if you are on Death Row,” said Lt. Samuel Robinson, a spokesman for the prison.

The North Segregation yard sits on top of the building and looks out on sweeping panoramic vistas of San Francisco Bay, Marin County and miles beyond in every direction.

On Tuesday, one of the prison’s most notorious inmates, Scott Peterson, played basketball with four other prisoners in the yard. He was convicted in the sensational 2002 murders of his wife, Laci, and unborn son in Modesto.

Peterson declined to speak with reporters and turned his back to photographers Tuesday.

Starting in 1893, 215 inmates were hanged at San Quentin. In 1938, lethal gas became the official method of capital punishment.

From then — when the prison became the exclusive site for executions — until 1967, 194 souls were gassed in the prison’s eerie, 7½-foot-wide, octagonal, green death chamber.

In February 1972, the California Supreme Court found the death penalty to violate constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and blocked all executions.

It took until April 1992, with the gassing death of 39-year-old Robert Alton Harris, for an execution to be carried out again.

On Feb. 23, 1996, serial killer William George Bonin became the first California inmate to die by lethal injection.

And Clarence Ray Allen, who at 76 struggled with heart trouble and diabetes, was the oldest and last man executed here. His Jan. 17, 2006, death by lethal injection came about a month after the state put to death 51-year-old Stanley Tookie Williams, the former Crips gang founder.

But those executions raised serious questions about the manner in which capital punishment was being carried out at San Quentin.

Two hours before Michael Angell Morales was set to be pumped full of poisons on a gurney inside the facility’s cramped former gas chamber, his execution was stayed. He remains at San Quentin.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose ruled in February 2006 that the state’s lethal-protocol was badly flawed.

Cruel and unusual

Poorly trained staff, with unclear instructions and little oversight in the dimly lit former gas chamber, risked leaving dying inmates conscious and writhing in pain, violating the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, Fogel said.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reviewed its protocols on lethal injections and built a new, roomy death chamber at the prison in 2008 with brightly lit viewing rooms.

No inmate has been executed in the new chamber, looming near the East Block. Only about 16 inmates have exhausted their appeals process and are even eligible to die there.

Whether the new $853,000 death chamber will ever be used remains to be seen.

“It’s almost like it’s not a real punishment,” said Charles Crawford, a 40-year-old prisoner sentenced to die for a 1996 double killing in Fremont. “It’s an abstract thought.”

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky

[rubato]

Maybe you should join ISIS; they like a good killing as much as you do.


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

I was going to post about that article Dale...

When I saw that on the front page of the Chron this morning I was absolutely disgusted...

They're actually trying to makes us feel sorry for these scum bags?

Fortunately, help may finally be on the way to alleviate their sad circumstances:

California measure to bolster death penalty cleared for signature gathering



A pro-death penalty initiative championed by former NFL defensive back Kermit Alexander was cleared Thursday to gather signatures for the 2016 ballot.

Alexander, whose relatives were murdered three decades ago by a man now on death row, wants to place responsibility for overseeing expedited death penalty appeals in the hands of the state Supreme Court, as well as mandate that inmates facing death work and pay restitution to victims’ families.

Death penalty advocates are hoping the state’s new lethal injection method will revive an execution program that has been dormant for nearly a decade.

The new measure, which must receive 366,000 signatures, also states that other voter-approved efforts relating to the death penalty be void should it pass with more affirmative votes.

One potential competing initiative would strike from the penal code death as a possible punishment. Voters rejected Proposition 34, a death penalty repeal, in 2012.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-gov ... rylink=cpy

In all the years I have lived in California, there is no initiative, state or local, which I have supported more enthusiastically. I am going to sign the petition, make a contribution, and offer to give some volunteer time.

Here is the website for the initiative:

http://deathpenaltyreform.com

Meanwhile, back on The Planet Stupid:

Maybe you should join ISIS; they like a good killing as much as you do.


yrs,
rubato

LMFAO

Just how stupid does a person have to be to compare people supporting the execution of people like this:

a serial murderer dubbed one of the “Sunset Strip killers” for a series of particularly grisly slayings in Los Angeles in 1980.

after they have received a fair trial with full constitutional protections and decades of appeals, to a murderous cult that butchers innocent people by the cart load?

Rube Stupid, that's how stupid...

[dales]

Jim, rube can't help himself.

His mental health issues get the best of him at times.

[liberty]

Maybe you should join ISIS; they like a good killing as much as you do.


yrs,
rubato

What would you do with them? If you put them in the general population that would give them a chance to kill again, another prisoner or a guard perhaps. In my opinion death would be preferable to the life they have now.

[Bicycle Bill]

Well, there is one thing that Texas does that the rest of the country might want to adopt for themselves:



-"BB"-

[oldr_n_wsr]

I got no sympathy for them.

[Jarlaxle]

Maybe you should join ISIS; they like a good killing as much as you do.


yrs,
rubato

What would you do with them? If you put them in the general population that would give them a chance to kill again, another prisoner or a guard perhaps. In my opinion death would be preferable to the life they have now.

Offer a class, open to all inmates: Suicide 101: Getting it Right The First Time. Means to do so should be provided upon request.

[Lord Jim]

Good news for the restoration of justice and sanity in the Death Penalty process in California:

California Death Penalty Reform Proponents Submit Signatures to Qualify for November Ballot

SACRAMENTO, Calif., May 19, 2016 – The Californians for Death Penalty Reform and Savings campaign submitted 593,000 total signatures across the state’s 58 counties today to qualify the initiative for the November ballot.

California currently requires 365,880 valid signatures to qualify a statutory ballot measure.

Press conferences are being held today in ten major cities throughout the state with speeches from local District Attorneys, law enforcement officials, crime victim advocates, and community leaders.

The Death Penalty Reform and Savings Act seeks to reform California’s death penalty laws so they can be fairly and appropriately applied in the most heinous of crimes. The initiative will help keep Californians safe and ensure justice for murdered victims and their families. At the same time, the measure will save taxpayers millions of dollars per year while maintaining due process protections for those sentenced to death.

The initiative’s proponent, former NFL player Kermit Alexander, will speak this afternoon in Riverside today about his thirty year effort to seek justice for his mothers, sister and two nephews who were murdered in 1984.

“Justice is not easy, and it is certainly not gentle. But justice denied is not justice,” says Alexander.

“We the people of California have consecutively and systematically voted to reinstate and preserve the use of capital punishment despite the efforts of those who refuse to carry out an execution.”

Death row inmates have murdered over 1000 victims, including 226 children and 43 police officers; 294 victims were raped and/or tortured before being killed. California’s death row includes serial killers, cop killers, child killers, mass murderers, and hate crime killers.

The California Death Penalty Reform and Savings Act of 2016 was introduced on October 20, 2015 and will ensure justice for both victims and defendants by:

Expanding the pool of available defense attorneys so death penalty appeals can proceed quickly.

Requiring that a defendant who is sentenced to death is appointed a lawyer at the time of sentence, rather than waiting for years just to get a lawyer.

Allowing the Department of Corrections to house condemned inmates in less costly housing with fewer special privileges while still maintaining strong security.

Requiring that condemned inmates work and pay restitution to victims.

Allowing the Department of Corrections to enact an execution protocol without having to reply to every question or suggestion by any citizen who sends them a letter.

Giving the California Supreme Court oversight over the state agency that manages death penalty appeals.

http://deathpenaltyreform.com/californi ... er-ballot/

[Bicycle Bill]

• ● Expanding the pool of defense attorneys
  ● Requiring that a condemned person be assigned an attorney at the time of sentencing
       (like, what happened to the attorney they had throughout the trial process?
  ● Requiring condemned inmates to work and pay restitution to victim (this I DO like)
  ● Giving the Cali Supreme Court oversight over the state agency managing death penalty appeals

Why does this sound more like adding another layer or two of bureaucracy to the process rather than streamlining it?

-"BB"-