The new death penalty: COVID now a leading modern killer of California inmates on death row

As reported in this local article, headlined "Fifth San Quentin Death Row Inmate Dies During Prison COVID-19 Outbreak," the global pandemic is hitting California's death row hard these days. Here are the details:

While California has not executed a death row inmate since 2006, an out-of-control COVID-19 outbreak at San Quentin State Prison may have contributed to the death of a fifth condemned inmate on Saturday.

To date, more than 1,300 prisoners and 120 staff members have tested positive for COVID-19 at the state prison in Marin County. Among those who have fallen victims to the deadly illness have been San Quentin’s aging population on death row.

On Saturday, Dewayne Michael Carey, 59, died at an outside hospital from what appear to be complications related to COVID-19. An exact cause of death has not yet been determined. Carey was committed to CDCR on Dec. 16, 1996 as a condemned inmate from Los Angeles County for first-degree, special-circumstances murder. He was convicted of killing Ernestine Campbell in her Harbor City home. Her hands were tied to a staircase handrail and she had been stabbed to death....

On Friday, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation identified two inmates who died while being treated for COVID-19 infections as Scott Thomas Erskine, 57, and Manuel Machado Alvarez, 59. Both died while being treated at San Francisco Bay Area hospitals. Erskine had been on death row since 2004 for the murder of two young boys in San Diego, while Machado had been on death row since 1989 for a string of crimes in Sacramento including rape and murder.

There have been two other deaths of condemned inmates deaths amid an exploding number of coronavirus cases at the prison. Richard Stitely, 71, was found unresponsive in his cell last week on June 29 and was confirmed Monday to have tested positive for COVID-19. He was sentenced for the 1990 rape and murder of a 47-year-old woman in Los Angeles County.

Joseph S. Cordova, 75, was found dead in his cell on July 1. He had been sentenced to death for the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in San Pablo....

“The prison was built in 1852. It’s the oldest prison in the state and it’s got old grill cells, they’re not closed doors,” said Assemblyman Marc Levine. Levine says the style of the prison cells allowed the disease to spread like wildfire. He has been a strong critic of the botched handling of the pandemic....

The CDCR said there are currently 722 people on California’s death row. While California doesn’t currently have a way to carry out capital punishment, inmates still continue to be sentenced to death. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a moratorium on it shortly after taking office and the death chamber at San Quentin was dismantled. The state has executed only 13 murderers since 1978, the last in 2006.

As this article highlights, nobody has been executed in California in nearly 15 years. And, as this Wikipedia page details, only five condemned California inmates have been executed by the state over the last two decades. As I have noted in prior posts (some linked below), COVID has been killing many more total prisoners in the US than has capital punishment. And now in California, COVID is even killing more death row prisoners that the state is likely to execute anytime soon, perhaps ever.

Prior related posts:

• The new death penalty: COVID has now killed more US prisoners in weeks than the US death penalty has in over a decade 
• The new death penalty: COVID has now killed more than 500 US prisoners and prison staff according to UCLA Law data