San Quentin in the process of dismantling Death Row
It's been nearly two decades since San Quentin executed an inmate.
It's been nearly two decades since San Quentin executed an inmate.
It's been nearly two decades since San Quentin executed an inmate.
San Quentin State Prison has always been home to those responsible for the most horrific suffering, but change in its infamous death row block is coming.
Since 1893, when the first inmate was hung at San Quentin, 421 others have been put to death.
"It does become like 'Groundhog Day,'” said inmate Paul Carasi. “It's the same thing over and over again every day."
The inmates were waiting day after day for their number to be called.
"I'm here for killing a gang member from my own gang,” inmate Michael Lamb said. “I don't like the stigma of being on death row."
It's been nearly two decades since San Quentin executed an inmate.
In 2016, California voters approved Proposition 66 requiring death row inmates to work inside the prison to pay restitution back to their victims. Three years later, Gov. Gavin Newsom officially ordered a halt to all executions and for the death chamber at San Quentin to be dismantled.
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is in the process of sending the inmates to other prisons around the state. Around 399 inmates should be transferred by the end of summer.
"This is great because the system is broken,” Lamb said. “They are never going get around to killing us anyway. It saves the taxpayers money and we get to go next to our families."
"This my first experience in prison so this was all like wow," Carasi said.
Carasi is in San Quentin for stabbing his mother and his child's mother to death in 1995.
"The transfer program will give us an opportunity to have more freedom and also to do what we call programming-- which is going to school, bettering ourselves and learning a vocation,” Carasi said.
Two weeks ago, the state changed the prison’s name to San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.