San Quentin

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I had to post this in this thread too...
Article Below......
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San Quentin State Prison
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Quentin_State_Prison

San Quentin State Prison is located on 432 acres (1.7 km²) on Point Quentin in Marin County, California, United States, north of San Francisco. San Quentin State Prison was opened in July 1852, and is the oldest prison in California.

Current facility

The prison occupies 275 acres of waterfront land overlooking the bay and is estimated to be worth $80 to $100 million, making it the most valuable prison in the world.[1] In addition, the annual operating budget of $210 million makes the prison the most expensive to operate on earth.

It has its own ZIP Code, 94974; the surrounding area is 94964. It is bordered by the water of the San Francisco Bay to the south and east and by Interstate 580, just after it crosses the bay on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

San Quentin has the only on-site college degree-granting program in California's entire prison system, run by the Prison University Project.[2][3]

The state's male death row is located at San Quentin, as well as its only gas chamber. In recent years, however, the gas chamber has been used to carry out lethal injections.

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If they made the inmates work for their care, and executed some of those "guilty as hell" prisoners, they could save some money instead of wasting it on college degrees! blue




Article Below....
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Peterson to begin life on Death Row

Michael Taylor, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, March 17, 2005

http://www.sfchroniclemarketplace.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/17/MNGDLBQMUO1.DTL

Scott Peterson, once an upwardly mobile fertilizer salesman in Modesto, will move to Marin County by Friday night, where he is to live the rest of his life in the downwardly mobile confines of San Quentin State Prison's Death Row.

He will spend much of the day in an 8-by-6-foot cell containing a steel bed frame bolted to the floor, with a sheet of steel lying on it. On top of that is a mattress. There used to be bedsprings, but guards found that prisoners tended to make weapons out of them.

On Wednesday, Sgt. Eric Messick, a spokesman for San Quentin, described what is in store for the soon-to-be newest resident of California's Death Row.

Once the 32-year-old Peterson arrives at San Quentin, Messick said, "he will be taken directly to the Adjustment Center, a 102-man cell-block reception center" for newly arrived condemned men. Messick said 97 of the 102 prisoners now living in the reception center are men who have been in trouble in prison and are classified Grade B inmates, as opposed to the Grade A prisoners who are better behaved.

Peterson will go through 45 days of interviews, in which his "social factors and educational background will be assessed by an institutional classification committee," Messick said.

"He'll have medical and psychological evaluations and then, because he's not from a criminal background, he will probably be sent to East Block," which houses 450 of San Quentin's 615 condemned men. Twenty-five condemned inmates are at other prisons. "There, he will be segregated with Death Row inmates for the rest of his life."

And how will he spend his time, given that it takes about 17 years to move from East Block into the death chamber?

Most of his time will be spent in the cell, which, in addition to the steel bed, has a sink, a commode and a wall locker. He may have records, tapes and CDs, a television set and books. He will also have two sheets, a blanket, a pillow, a pillowcase, two towels, boxer shorts, T-shirts, socks, blue denim pants and light-blue shirts.

All meals will be served in Peterson's cell, and it won't be like much of the highfalutin chow available down the road in Mill Valley or Sausalito.

A hot breakfast, at 6 a.m., will be something like a sausage patty, two hard-boiled eggs, a square of hash brown potatoes, and "the next day it might be coffee cake with hot cereal," Messick said.

Lunch, delivered in a sack, comes around 10:30 a.m. and consists of bread, lunch meat or peanut butter and jelly or tuna salad, along with cookies, chips, fruit and sugar-free Kool-Aid.

Dinner, at 5 p.m., is usually meat, potatoes and a vegetable, or various ethnic meals. After dinner, Peterson can watch TV, but can receive only local channels. If that gets boring, he can read until he falls asleep, no matter how late -- each cell has individually controlled light switches, Messick said.

Like all Death Row inmates in their windowless cells, Peterson won't be able to see or hear the bay, into which he dumped the body of his pregnant wife, Laci.

Peterson can exercise up to about five hours a day, six days a week. Whether he exercises communally or by himself is up to the classification committee. He may also have three showers a week.

His attorney can visit five times each week and Peterson can have two personal visits a week. Each visit can last up to 90 minutes. Should he manage to find a wife while on Death Row, no conjugal visits will be allowed.

As for the possibility that Peterson might be harmed by a publicity- seeking prison colleague (it happens), Messick said, "We have built-in procedures -- no double-celling, no contact with any inmates. If he's out of his cell block, he's under escort of three officers. Inmates on the general population main line, when they hear them coming, have to find the nearest wall and face it."

By the time his execution date comes around -- if ever -- Peterson will probably be nearing his 50th birthday. In the meantime, however, if he keeps out of trouble, he may be upgraded to a special unit called North Seg.

"Up there," Messick said, "you have your most senior, best-behaved Death Row inmates. They get 'tier time,' which means the tiers are cleared of all (prison) staff, the cells are unlocked and the inmates can come out and play pinochle and take showers."
The death penalty in California

Here's a look at the process and number of executions in the state, which has the largest Death Row in the nation with 640 inmates, including 15 women.

The executed

Name, year executed and time spent on Death Row:

Robert Alton Harris (1992; 13 years, 1 month)

Keith Daniel Williams (1996; 17 years)

Robert Lee Massie (2001; 21 years, 10 months)

Darrell Keith Rich (2000; 19 years, 1 month)

Stephen Wayne Anderson (2002; 20 years, 6 months)

Donald Beardslee (2005; 20 years, 10 months)

William George Bonin (1996; 13 years, 1 month)

Manuel Babbitt (1999; 16 years, 10 months)

Jaturun Siripongs (1999; 15 years, 9 months)

David Edwin Mason (1993; 9 years, 7 months)

Thomas M. Thompson (1998; 14 years, 1 month).

Average length of stay

California: 16 to 17 years

Florida: 11.8 years

Texas: 10.4 years.

Inmates on death row

By ethnicity/race (Number and percent of total)

White: 252 (39.3%)

Black: 228 (35.6%)

Hispanic: 121 (18.9%)

Other: 39 (6%).

By age (Number and percent of total)

0 to 19: 0

20 to 29: 30 (4.7%)

30 to 39: 192 (30%)

40 to 49: 238 (37.2%)

50 to 59: 138 (21.6%)

60 to 69: 37 (5.8%)

70 to 79: 5 (0.8%)

Source: California Department of Corrections, Death Penalty Information Center; Bureau of Justice Statistics, Chroncile research by Johnny Miller / Chronicle Research Librarian

E-mail Michael Taylor at mtaylor@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 18 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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Inland killer on San Quentin death row hangs himself

11:04 PM PDT on Monday, June 11, 2007

http://www.pe.com/localnews/rivcounty/stories/PE_News_Local_D_reynolds12.3c8c7d6.html

By PAIGE AUSTIN and SONJA BJELLAND
The Press-Enterprise

A former parolee sentenced last month for raping and murdering a pregnant Riverside mother hanged himself in his cell at San Quentin on Sunday night.

Tony Lee Reynolds, who prison officials said was found dead in his cell, is the 14th death row inmate to kill himself. That's one more than the number of condemned killers who have been executed in California since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978.

On Monday, victims rights groups called the statistic emblematic of a flawed judicial system in which prolonged appeals enable more condemned inmates to die of natural causes and suicide than execution. However, inmates rights advocates pointed to the prison systems' suicide rates as an indictment of mental health care behind bars.

Reynolds, 25, was sent to death row for the murder and **** of Estela Perez, a 29-year-old mother of two. Perez was stabbed 33 times and raped with a large object in her children's bedroom in March 2005. He pleaded guilty to the crimes in January and was sentenced May 4.

Reynolds had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and the sentencing judge called him a "fundamentally violent person."

Before being sentenced to death, Reynolds' attorneys said he deserved mercy because of his troubled childhood. Reynolds gave a confusing explanation of why he committed the crimes.
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"All I can tell people with questions, if they look in their heart and they will find the answer," Reynolds said. "... If people look up they will find the answer."

Perez was five months' pregnant and had just dropped her two children off at elementary school. She was planning to meet her sister, Antonia Galindo, to go for a walk and head to Starbucks. Instead, she was killed inside her Fairmount Boulevard home.

"For me it's meant the worst horror of my life," Galindo testified during the penalty phase of the trial. "I cannot sleep at night because I see her on the floor."

Police captured Reynolds a few months later after he sexually assaulted another woman in Riverside. His DNA matched evidence from the Perez killing. The crimes outraged some city residents because Reynolds had been released from prison 19 days earlier after a burglary conviction.

He was assigned to live in a nearby group home.

The public outcry led to state legislation allowing local governments more control over the location of such homes.

'It Doesn't Surprise Me'

In the days Reynolds was on his own, he told his parole officer that he felt he needed to return to prison.

"I think his life was a living hell. He was severely mentally ill genetically from birth," said Mark Johnson, who defended Reynolds. "I'm saddened by it but it doesn't surprise me at all. We have no conception of how mentally ill he was."

Reynolds had a long history of violence.

He was in fifth grade when the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services removed him and his siblings from their home. Reynolds had broken his mother's jaw with a baseball bat when she threatened to cut off his genitals while she was bathing him.

San Quentin prison staffers said they found Reynolds hanging from his bunk just after 8:30 p.m. Sunday with a makeshift noose fashioned from his bed sheets.

Reynolds was what is known as a "walk alone" inmate, who is not allowed to go the exercise yard with other inmates, said San Quentin spokesman Lt. Eric Messick. New inmates are typically segregated until they can be categorized based on the security risk they pose as well as the dangers they face from other inmates.

Reynolds was not on suicide watch, and his mental health diagnosis did not require intensive treatment, Messick added.

"It's kind of surprising when a man is here only 30 days and commits suicide," Messick said. "It's the second leading cause of death here, but I can't remember anyone doing it so soon, and I've been here 25 years. Usually it comes from the despair of having no end in sight."

Most inmates on death row die of natural causes. Of the 666 people on death row, 71 have died -- mainly from natural causes, said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

In California, an inmate averages 17.5 years on death row before being executed, Thornton said.

By state law, Reynolds' death sentence was automatically appealed, but Johnson said it would have been another few years before he would have been assigned an appeals attorney.

The number of suicides in California prisons has been closely watched because of a class-action lawsuit alleging inadequate mental health treatment for prisoners, Thornton said. Last year, 43 California inmates killed themselves.

Targeting Suicides

The department recently implemented a suicide reduction plan aimed at improving conditions for inmates who are isolated from others. The plan includes an increase in the number of mental health evaluations, and the department has begun allowing segregated inmates to have televisions to combat the effects of sensory deprivation.

The Prison Law Office, an inmate advocacy group that brought the class-action lawsuit, said more improvements are needed. Not all death row inmates are segregated from other inmates. However, walk-alone inmates such as Reynolds receive very little time outdoors on a small square of concrete, said staff attorney Steve Fama. They frequently spend more than 23 hours a day alone in their cells, he said. The level of mental health care for such inmates is still inadequate, Fama added.

Kent Scheidegger, director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a victims rights' group, said the death row suicide rate reflects a backlogged legal system that subjects victims and their families to decades of despair as they wait for justice.

Appeals often drag on unnecessarily even when the inmates and victims' families ask to end the appeal process, he said.

"I hear the pain in their voices as they get frustrated with the system," Scheidegger said. "It takes too long."

Reach Sonja Bjelland at 951-368-9642 or sbjelland@PE.com

Reach Paige Austin at 951-893-2106 or paustin@PE.com

BY THE NUMBERS

Inmates on death row:

666

From Riverside County:

60

From San Bernardino County:

37

Leading causes of death on death row:

Natural causes:

38

Suicide:

14

Execution:

13