Death Row Welcomes Media for Sales Pitch
SAN QUENTIN, Calif. — Pressing their case for a new death row, officials at San Quentin State Prison on Tuesday gave reporters their first peek in 30 years inside the crowded and deteriorating home of California's condemned.
Housing 614 men and expanding by about 30 inmates each year, death row is scattered among three buildings, a patchwork design that creates danger for guards and is vulnerable to escape, officials told journalists invited on the four-hour tour.
Unlike modern prisons with remote-control doors and other high-security features, San Quentin's antiquated design requires guards to have frequent contact with the state's most dangerous inmates -- escorting them to showers and exercise yards, delivering meals and collecting dirty laundry.
Although the cells have metal screens across the doors, some convicts still manage to hurl urine, feces and makeshift darts at passing guards, officials said.
Moreover, San Quentin -- the state's oldest prison -- lacks the electrified perimeter fence common at other lockups with maximum-security inmates. From the outer wall of the main exercise area it is less than 50 yards to the shore of San Francisco Bay.
"This facility simply does not provide the high security we need for a death row population," San Quentin Warden Jeanne Woodford said.
Reporters have been barred from visiting death row since the early 1970s, a policy adopted, corrections officials said, after media exposure turned some condemned prisoners into celebrities.
Davis' Proposal
In allowing the rare visit Tuesday, officials hoped to stir support for Gov. Gray Davis' proposal to spend $220 million on a new 1,000-cell death row just west of the old one. The project would be funded with revenue bonds that would not come due until 2007, but critics said even that sort of financing is questionable given the state's budget crisis.
"In my district, I'm facing the closure of clinics, trauma centers shutting down, overcrowded classrooms and lots of other pain because of this crisis," said state Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), who heads an oversight committee on prisons and toured San Quentin last week. "So I don't see this as a time when it makes sense to build a new and improved death row."
Built in 1852, San Quentin sits on a scenic point about 20 miles north of San Francisco. From a distance, the prison's cream-colored walls, red roofs and tree-dotted grounds have a Mediterranean look. But inside death row, the lockup's age and mission become clear.
