Coronavirus Prison Fatalities Surpass Two Decades of Executions; COVID-19 Has Killed More California Death Row Prisoners Than the State Has Executed in 27 Years

More pris­on­ers in the United States have died in the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic than have been exe­cut­ed in the coun­try in past two decades, new prison data shows, and more California death-row pris­on­ers have been killed by the virus than have been exe­cut­ed in the state since 1993. 

Ohio State University Law Professor Douglas Berman report­ed in his Sentencing Law and Policy blog that as of August 23, 2020, pris­ons across the United States had con­firmed the deaths of 858 pris­on­ers from COVID-19. ​“This con­sid­er­able num­ber is sad and dis­con­cert­ing on its own terms,” Professor Berman wrote, ​“but it is even more remark­able giv­en that it amounts to more pris­on­er deaths than has been pro­duced by car­ry­ing out for­mal death sen­tences in the United States for the entire peri­od from 2001 to 2020. According to DPIC data, there were a total of 839 exe­cu­tions from the start of 2001 through [August 23].” 

By August 30, the num­ber of con­firmed pris­on­er deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19 had risen to 931, accord­ing to the UCLA Law COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project. That total equals the num­ber of exe­cu­tions in the coun­try since Alvaro Colambro was put to death in Nevada on April 5, 1999.

California’s death row has been espe­cial­ly hard hit by the prison system’s fail­ure to con­trol the pan­dem­ic. An out­break at San Quentin State Prison has killed at least 12 death-row pris­on­ers, as many as the state has exe­cut­ed since 1993. Prison offi­cials announced on August 19 that a 13^th death-row pris­on­er, Dean Dunlap, died at an out­side hos­pi­tal in late July. The San Bernardino County Coroner’s Department will deter­mine his cause of death. If he died from the coro­n­avirus, the COVID-19 death-row death toll in California will equal the num­ber of exe­cu­tions car­ried out by the state since the death penal­ty came back in the 1970s.

San Quentin death-row pris­on­ers Richard Eugene Stitely, Joseph S. Cordova, Scott Thomas Erskine, Manuel Machado Alvarez, Dewayne Micheal Carey, David John Reed, Jeffrey J. Hawkins, Troy A. Ashmus, John M. Beames, Johnny Avila Jr., Orlando G. Romero, and Pedro Arias have report­ed­ly died from the coronavirus.

DPIC has reviewed COVID-19-relat­ed infor­ma­tion received from pub­lic and con­fi­den­tial sources in var­i­ous states, includ­ing Departments of Correction, media reports, orga­ni­za­tions mon­i­tor­ing COVID-19 in pris­ons; death-penal­ty researchers; death-row pris­on­ers, their rel­a­tives, and autho­rized vis­i­tors; death-row exonerees; defense lawyers; and state and local death-penal­ty orga­ni­za­tions. We have ver­i­fied COVID-19 deaths on death row in Arizona and California. Known out­breaks have been report­ed on death rows in Arizona, California, Ohio, and Texas, with infec­tions report­ed on death rows in North Carolina and Pennsylvania and sus­pect­ed infec­tions on Georgia’s death row.

COVID-19 infec­tions have been report­ed in facil­i­ties hous­ing death-row, though not known to have reached death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers, in Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah and fed­er­al death row in Terre Haute, with at least one COVID-relat­ed death in the Kentucky facil­i­ty. Corrections staff are infect­ed with COVID-19 in many of the states list­ed above, as well as in Alabama. COVID-19 is not report­ed on death row in Idaho and Arkansas, but is present in facil­i­ties in close prox­im­i­ty to the pris­ons that house death row.

COVID-19 is not report­ed among death-row pris­on­ers in Indiana, Oklahoma, or Virginia or on mil­i­tary death row in Fort Leavenworth. Wyoming has no one on its death row. Former death-row pris­on­er Robert Tassin died from the coro­n­avirus in Angola prison in Louisiana.