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 5th 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 1st-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 the morning of the murder, Carey was seen leaving the Campbell home and he was later connected to property stolen from the house.
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 2 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 2 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 8-year-old girl in San Pablo.
UCSF infectious disease specialist Peter Chin-Hong said he’s not surprised by the prison outbreak that has sent dozens of critically ill inmates into care at Bay Area ICUs.
“It’s a lot of people together, they’re not all masked, the windows are closed, the facilities are not open and there’s a lot of shouting and screaming, which allows those droplets that the virus travels on to travel further,” he said.
UCSF infectious disease specialist Dr. Peter Chin-Hong is part of the team that treats some patients from San Quentin. He likened the outbreak to Chernobyl.
“Like Chernobyl, there’s widespread effects outside of that tower. The effects are in the surrounding counties, because we absorb those patients. The effects are in the community, where the healthcare workers and the prison guards live in,” he said.
The outbreak is believed have started after a transfer of prisoners from a correctional facility overrun by the illness in Southern California.
“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.
“We now, very late in the game have a unified command system here at San Quentin with the Office of Emergency Services. We are bringing a mobile hospital to the grounds of San Quentin that will have 160 beds by next Friday,” said Levine.
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.
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde