NEW PERSPECTIVES: ​“The Last Days of Death Row in California”

A recent arti­cle in the The Guardian described the reac­tions of some of the California pris­on­ers who have been moved from San Quentin’s death row and trans­ferred to oth­er facil­i­ties around the state. The pris­on­ers are still under a sen­tence of death, but in 2019 Governor Gavin Newsom declared a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions and has dis­man­tled the execution chamber.

For exam­ple, Ramon Rogers, 63, who has been on death row since 1997, jumped at the oppor­tu­ni­ty for a dif­fer­ent facil­i­ty: ​“I was itch­ing to get out of there,” he said. ​“I knew there were going to be bet­ter and brighter things in store for me than what I had to look for­ward to in the last 24 years.”

He was amazed at the sim­ple plea­sure of feel­ing grass under his feet: ​“We just mar­veled at the soft­ness and the smell of the grass and the earth. It was remark­able. The offi­cer let us stand there and watch as we left our foot­prints in the grass. It’s just an amaz­ing thing that peo­ple take for granted.”

Another pris­on­er, Correll Thomas, 49, who has been on death row since 1999, was grate­ful to leave his cell with­out hand­cuffs and with­out a full-body strip search: ​“For 22 years, I was hand­cuffed and escort­ed around like I was an ani­mal. Now I don’t have to strip down naked when I’m called for a med­ical appoint­ment any more. It’s a lot more freedom.”

Some pris­on­ers were anx­ious about the effects of their trans­fer. Keith Doolin, a pris­on­er who has been on death-row for 27 years, expressed his con­cern about his upcom­ing move: ​“Being forcibly moved to anoth­er prison, it adds anoth­er 10,000 pounds of weight on my shoul­ders. What if I’m moved down south and am twice as far from my fam­i­ly and my lawyers?”

The Guardian report­ed that ​“California’s first exe­cu­tion was a hang­ing at San Quentin in 1893. Five hun­dred peo­ple were sub­se­quent­ly put to death until the state supreme court struck down the death penal­ty in 1972, deem­ing it ​‘imper­mis­si­bly cruel.’…[S]ince 1978, more than 1,000 peo­ple have been con­demned to death, though only 13 have been executed…The most recent exe­cu­tion was in 2006 by lethal injection.”