State moves toward emptying San Quentin’s Death Row; condemned inmates are at CCI, other prisons

California Gov. Gavin Newsom in March 2019 declared a moratorium on executing prisoners sentenced to death. But as of Jan. 4, there were still 671 inmates in state prisons with death sentences. Of those, 18 were housed at prisons in Kern County and about 90 others at facilities throughout the state as part of the pilot program for the state’s Condemned Inmate Transfer Program.

On Jan. 11, the CDCR released proposed regulations that will also make the program mandatory, meaning that inmates cannot opt out of transfers. Under the proposed regulations, condemned inmates can be transferred from segregated housing at San Quentin to other prisons — and inmates in condemned housing at the CCWF can be transferred to other areas of that facility.

The CDCR implemented a two-year pilot program from Jan. 29, 2020, through Jan. 29, 2022, to test and evaluate the effectiveness of the program.

As of the first of the year, 15 condemned inmates were housed at the California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi and three others were housed at Wasco State Prison, with the remainder at prisons elsewhere in the state, CDCR Press Secretary Dana Simas said in an email on Jan. 18.

According to the CDCR, 27 condemned inmates currently in custody were convicted in Kern County. Kern contributed the seventh largest number of condemned inmates in the state, with only Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange, San Bernardino, Alameda and San Diego counties having sent more inmates to California’s Death Row, out of 58 counties. LA County sent the most – 204— and 39 counties have contributed fewer than five each.

Status of death penalty

At least while Newsom serves there may not be executions in California, but the governor’s moratorium did not take the death penalty off the books. CDCR data shows that 13 people statewide have been given a death sentence since the moratorium was enacted in March 2019, including one conviction from Kern County of an inmate who was charged with killing a cellmate at Kern Valley State Prison.

But it’s a 2016 vote of the people — not an action by the governor — that triggered the transfer program.

California voters were faced with two competing ballot measures related to the death penalty in 2016. Proposition 62, which failed, would have repealed the death penalty. Proposition 66, which passed, kept the death penalty in place and attempted to change the appeals process with the aim of speeding up the process, although that part of the measure was overturned in a later court decision.

Proposition 66 required condemned prisoners to work while in prison with 70 percent of their pay going toward restitution to victims’ families — and it authorized death row inmate transfers among California prisons.

Transfer program

“Under the pilot program, 101 death-sentenced people previously housed at San Quentin State Prison were transferred to designated institutions and 10 death-sentenced people at Central California Women’s Facility were transferred to alternate housing units at the prison,” the department said in a news release.

Inmates were not forced to transfer under the pilot program, but in addition to making the CITP permanent, the proposed regulations will make transfers of condemned inmates mandatory.

“Transfers of death-sentenced individuals to other prisons allows CDCR to phase out the practice of segregating people on death row based solely on their sentence,” the news release stated. “This is consistent with CDCR’s move toward a behavior-based system where incarcerated people are housed according to their individual case factors, behavior and other needs. No one will be re-sentenced as a result of these housing moves, and everyone will be housed according to their individual case factors in appropriate custody-level prisons.”

The fiscal impact of the proposed regulation is more than $21 million in savings, according to the notice.

Capital punishment

San Quentin, California’s oldest prison, has operated since 1852. However, until 1891, county sheriffs were in charge of executions ordered by courts. After the state took over, executions by hanging took place at either San Quentin or Folsom prison until the legislature replaced hanging with lethal gas as the method of execution. The state’s gas chamber was installed at San Quentin in 1938 and used until 1967. In February 1972, the California Supreme Court found the death penalty unconstitutional and 107 condemned inmates were resentenced to life with the possibility of parole and removed from death row.

Following other legal action, the state legislature reenacted the death penalty statute in 1977 and voters approved Proposition 7 in November 1978, reaffirming the death penalty. Eventually lethal injection became the state’s only method of execution. However, there were no executions in California between 1967 and 1992. There were 13 between 1992 and 2006.

Meanwhile, with the sentencing statute still in place and no executions taking place, the death row population continued to grow.

At both San Quentin and CCWF, however, condemned inmates are a small part of the population. According to the most recent statistics released by the department, San Quentin has 3,400 inmates and is at 110 percent of its capacity while CCWF has 2,281 inmates and is at 114 percent of its capacity. Statewide, there are currently 650 male inmates and 21 female inmates with death sentences.

According to the organization Death Penalty Focus, five prisoners have been found innocent and released from San Quentin’s death row, the most recent in April 2018. The CDCR reports that about 40 condemned inmates have died in prison since the governor’s moratorium was put in place. Some of the deaths were attributed to COVID-19.

Proposed regulations

The proposed regulatory changes implement and make specific the statutory authority to move male condemned inmates from San Quentin to other institutions throughout the state commensurate with their case factors and security needs. Female condemned inmates will continue to be housed solely at CCWF, in compliance with the Penal Code, but will be transitioned to general population housing or other housing consistent with their case factors and security needs.

According to the notice of proposed regulations, the institutional design of the condemned housing at the two facilities limits the availability of work assignments so that the department is unable to fully meet the work mandate as required in the penal code.

The proposed regulation also addresses how the CDCR's inmate classification score system will interface with the transfer program. Inmates are assigned a numerical score based on various factors and their housing placement is determined by that score with lower placement scores indicating lesser security control needs and higher scores indicating greater security control needs.

Currently, according to the notice of proposed regulation, condemned inmates have a mandatory minimum placement score of 60 points, making their housing level placement no lower than that of a Level IV facility, except when authorized by a departmental review board. The proposed regulation would reduce the mandatory minimum score from 60 points to 19 points, which would allow placement to now lower than a Level II facility, except when authorized by a departmental review board.

Under the proposed regulatory change, CDCR would assign condemned inmates to a Close Custody designation for at least five years. This designation would mean that the inmate would receive closer supervision during work activities than inmates with a less restrictive designation.

“This custody level will afford CDCR the highest custody level for an inmate in a non-segregated environment, while still allowing for the integration of the condemned population into the general population,” the notice or proposed regulation states. It also notes that condemned inmates won’t be housed in a facility with a security level lower than that which is authorized to house inmates sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Claudia Elliott is a freelance journalist and former editor of the Tehachapi News. She lives in Tehachapi and can be reached by email: claudia@claudiaelliott.net.