An inmate held in San Quentin’s death row died after being found unconscious in his cell early Thursday, prison officials said.
The Marin County coroner will now work to determine how 55-year-old Gilbert Rubio died after correctional officers found him unresponsive during a security check just after 6 a.m.
Rubio was sentenced to die on Sept. 20, 2000 for the 1998 murder and robbery of high school vice principal George “Skipper” Blackwell in his Long Beach home.
He was convicted of first-degree murder with the special circumstance of robbery and burglary by a Los Angeles County jury.
Rubio and two others, 59-year-old Monica Chavez and Alex Vega, 61, robbed and bound Blackwell during a home-invasion robbery on Jan. 12, 1998.
During the robbery, Chavez and Vega left the home to cash a $2,000 check written by Blackwell. When his two accomplices left, Rubio shot and killed his victim.
Chavez was sentenced to life without parole and remains incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. Vega was sentenced to life without parole and remains locked up at the California State Prison in Corcoran.
Avoiding execution by perishing from other means is all but certain in San Quentin, the state’s only Death Row.
Since the Legislature re-enacted the death penalty in 1978, 13 inmates have been executed while more than 100 have died from other means.
No one has been executed at the prison for nearly a decade after U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose ruled the state’s protocol for capital punishment was badly flawed.
There are 747 people on California’s Death Row.
Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.
The Marin County coroner will now work to determine how 55-year-old Gilbert Rubio died after correctional officers found him unresponsive during a security check just after 6 a.m.
I'm guessing he was suffocated by that animal living on his chin.
We were taking the ferry from Larkspur to ATT park last Monday. Larkspur is right next to San Quinton. And I thought then, as I often do, that if they moved the prison and sold off the prime bayshore land they would make a goddamn fortune.
Why waste such a fantastic piece of real estate on thugs? Move them someplace nasty like the Mojave desert, the NE California lava beds, or Death Valley! Charley would have such good memories.
Why waste such a fantastic piece of real estate on thugs? Move them someplace nasty like the Mojave desert, the NE California lava beds, or Death Valley! Charley would have such good memories.
btw: Charles Manson is confined at Corcoran State Prison which is in the middle of the California desert.
Sell off the land in which San Quentin occupies, I'm sure a better use can be found for the land.
Why should murderers, rapists, child molesters and former politicos enjoy the view?
Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.
Even if they do have a view, I doubt they enjoy it. I went on a tour of Alcatraz once (back when old inmates and guards gave the tour) and there were a number of cells that had a view of the bay and San Francisco. The guide said the many of the inmates referred to those cells as the worst punishment in Alcatraz, as it hammered home where they were.
I would think they could sell the land for a good price, but wonder what building another maximum security prison (with a death row) would cost aand how the two amounts compare. I doubt the state would make out on such a deal, or even break even.
I doubt the state would make out on such a deal, or even break even.
Given what usually goes on when the politico's do things like this, a few well connected people will make tons of money and the tax payer will be hit with the bill. Then start the cost over-runs and such. Yes, Leave well enough alone.
rubato wrote:If the prison population in Calif. is reduced to a more reasonable and functional level we can just shut it down and sell it off.
yrs,
rubato
Perhaps all those with "only misdemeanor offenses" could be placed on house arrest?
Also let the sidewalk spitters, gum twiddlers, and other grievous offenders be granted their freedom.
I think it requires a felony to be admitted to a state prison but that detail aside, we could stop locking people up for 20-life for possession of drugs and drop the idiotic "3 strikes" law which costs a fortune and does nothing.
