Arizona Death-Row Prisoner Dies of COVID-19, 7 Others Test Positive for Coronavirus

UPDATE: Arizona has expe­ri­enced the first known COVID-19 death-row fatal­i­ty and the coro­n­avirus is spread­ing on the state’s death row, lawyers for the pris­on­ers have said.

Alfonso Salazar died from the virus on April 30, 2020, sev­en oth­er death-row pris­on­ers on death row in the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence have test­ed pos­i­tive for coro­n­avirus, and eleven oth­ers who have not been test­ed are show­ing symp­toms of COVID-19, Dale Baich, chief of the fed­er­al defend­er cap­i­tal habeas unit in the fed­er­al defender’s office that rep­re­sents the state’s death-row pris­on­ers told the media. That is a dou­bling in one week’s time from the four who test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus and five who exhib­it­ed symp­toms on April 23.

Baich expressed con­cern about the health and wel­fare of the pris­on­ers on April 23, say­ing that ​“peo­ple who may have symp­toms are not being test­ed.” Following Salazar’s death, he said “[t]he prison was slow to act and is not being trans­par­ent about its han­dling of the pan­dem­ic. Even before the COVID-19 cri­sis, med­ical care in Arizona pris­ons was poor and it is the sub­ject of ongoing litigation.”

Arizona cor­rec­tions offi­cials declined to com­ment to the media about Salazar’s death.

The Arizona prison com­plex hous­es 3,600 pris­on­ers, includ­ing the state’s 114 male death-row pris­on­ers. The 22 cas­es of the dis­ease report­ed in the facil­i­ty on April 23 rep­re­sent­ed near­ly two-thirds of the 34 cas­es then report­ed across Arizona’s prison system.

Patrick Bearup, the first of Arizona’s death-row pris­on­ers to test pos­i­tive, told the Associated Press that he and oth­er COVID-pos­i­tive pris­on­ers were being quar­an­tined in a dirty, roach-infest­ed build­ing with­out suf­fi­cient clean­ing sup­plies and with poor water qual­i­ty. In an inter­view, he said he had been sick for two weeks with body aches, nau­sea, and phys­i­cal weak­ness that kept him con­fined to bed. ​“This is the sick­est I have been in my life,” he said.

“Prisoners’ lives still mat­ter,” Bearup said. ​“There are a lot of men in here in my com­mu­ni­ty — I get what we are in here for. I get there’s crime and pun­ish­ment, but this is not the pun­ish­ment that was assigned to them.” 

Prison offi­cials said they were act­ing to reduce the spread of dis­ease by sep­a­rat­ing pris­on­ers with flu-like symp­toms, pro­vid­ing soap, and waiv­ing the usu­al $4 copay for pris­on­ers seek­ing med­ical care for cold or flu symptoms. 

In a law­suit filed by Arizona pris­on­ers, attor­neys allege that the Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry was not pre­pared for the pan­dem­ic, and that pris­on­ers were being held in unsan­i­tary con­di­tions. They also said that med­ical­ly vul­ner­a­ble pris­on­ers were being con­fined in crowd­ed, dirty facil­i­ties with­out proper ventilation. 

According to The Marshall Project, as of April 24, 2020, more than 9,000 pris­on­ers nation­wide had test­ed pos­i­tive for coro­n­avirus and 131 pris­on­ers had died of COVID-19. Prisoners’ rights orga­ni­za­tions have raised con­cerns that the con­di­tions in pris­ons could result in rapid spread of the dis­ease. As of April 22, the rate of ill­ness among pris­on­ers was more than 2.75 times the rate among the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion (696 cas­es per 100,000 vs. 250 per 100,000).