Pressure Grows to Shut Down San Quentin

For as long as anyone here can remember, this quaint waterfront hamlet on the north shore of San Francisco Bay has brandished a pair of infamous calling cards: the state’s oldest prison fortress and its storied death row where condemned inmates have met their ends by hanging, poisoned syringe or the dreaded gas chamber.

But high-ranking state officials now say that could change, because of growing legislative pressure, renewed security concerns and the increasing value of San Quentin’s prime real estate.

As prison officials prepare to execute convicted killer Robert Lee Massie--strapping him to a gurney and injecting him with a molasses-thick chemical cocktail--momentum is building in Sacramento to relocate state executions and even to impose a death sentence on San Quentin itself.

Critics say the pre-Civil War facility--opened when Millard Fillmore was president and home to criminals such as stagecoach robber C.E. “Black Bart” Bolton and serial rapist Caryl Chessman--is a crumbling relic that is more dungeon than prison, a throwback to a more primitive era in California’s colorful corrections history.

Its obsolete design has made San Quentin one of the most expensive facilities to operate in the state’s 33-prison system. And the union representing the prison’s 800 corrections officers says that security flaws, such as numerous blind spots and eroding walls and observation towers, endanger the lives of prison guards.

Housing 581 inmates, San Quentin’s death row is also dangerously overcrowded, forcing the prison to convert housing in less secure cellblocks to handle the overflow of condemned killers. Corrections officials worry that San Quentin’s security shortcomings could one day lead to an unprecedented death row breakout.

Though calls to close the prison have been made for years, officials say a new urgency has arisen among an alliance of politicians, and top-ranking prison officials--including Gov. Gray Davis’ top corrections appointee.

Some officials say recent lobbying by Adult Corrections Agency Secretary Robert Presley has given the drive to close San Quentin more political clout than ever before--prompting the state to conduct its first study of the issue in nearly 20 years.

Also, an escape from San Quentin last year--the only one in the entire California prison system--has raised new fears about security at the aging facility, which houses some of California’s most dangerous criminals.

“This prison should be closed, and I think we’ve finally got the head of steam to do it,” said Presley, who, as a state senator, once presented legislation to close San Quentin. “I think 150 years is long enough to serve as a prison.”

Activists say closing one of the state’s last true urban prisons, or even moving its death row, would rob inmates of quick access to appeals courts and a volunteer army to run critical prison programs--all based across the bay in San Francisco.

Yet many believe there are better uses for the 432-acre bay-front property in tony Marin County. With its views of downtown San Francisco and nearby Mt. Tamalpais, the sprawling San Quentin spread is considered to be the most coveted piece of state-owned real estate in all of California.

“I can’t imagine a more valuable piece of property--maybe other than Hearst Castle,” said Assemblyman Bill Leonard (R-San Bernardino), who also has introduced several bills to close San Quentin. “I can’t even begin to guess what that land is worth. But I do know one thing: We’d never build another prison on a site like this again.”

Presley has met with Marin County officials to discuss closing the prison. Local leaders envision replacing most buildings with a regional transportation center and ferry landing.

On the quarry where inmates pounded rocks until the 1950s, and on a nearby boot hill where the bodies of hundreds of prisoners are buried, they plan a mix of residential development and nature trails.

Said Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey: “In place of a prison, we want to create a village to rival Sausalito for its character and beauty.”

Moving death row would require a legislative vote to change a law that now requires all executions to be carried out at San Quentin. But officials are more hopeful than ever that could happen.

The state Department of General Services in July will issue a report detailing options to close the facility. And Leonard may soon introduce another prison-closing bill.

In an attempt to relieve dangerous death row overcrowding, Assemblyman Joe Nation (D-San Rafael) in February sponsored a bill to move problem inmates to such high-security facilities as Folsom, Pelican Bay and Corcoran State Prison--each of which is being considered as the permanent new home for state executions.

But inmate advocates argue that San Quentin’s proximity to San Francisco is a priceless commodity that prisoners cannot afford to lose. With 2,000 volunteers, San Quentin by far exceeds California’s other state prisons in the number of people who donate time to staff an array of outreach programs.

Activists say the sites being considered as a new home for death row are far less accessible: Corcoran State Prison lies in the heart of the Central Valley, Folsom is in the Sierra foothills northeast of Sacramento, and the most distant, Pelican Bay, sits just south of the Oregon border.

Moving death row would make it difficult for Bay Area attorneys specializing in death penalty appeals filed on behalf of their clients. It could also slow the filing of last-ditch appeals with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, activists say.

State Senate Leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) says state officials can’t close San Quentin until they have a place to move the prison’s 6,000 inmates.

And with the state’s newest prison in Delano not scheduled to open until 2003, even the most optimistic officials admit that a San Quentin phaseout could take years.

For now, Burton says, death row should remain near a big city as a reminder that our society regularly deals in capital punishment.

“We should keep executions close to mass media exposure, where demonstrators can express their opinions,” he said. “We can’t move it to an isolated place and just sweep it under the carpet.”

Along with its death row inmates, the prison houses 2,000 minimum security prisoners. It also serves as a Northern California reception center for another 3,000 inmates who are temporarily processed there before being sent to other prisons.

At San Quentin, where officials say the closure rumors are almost as old as the penitentiary itself, it’s business as usual. Officials are spending $42 million over eight years to seismically retrofit all of the facility’s buildings.

“The reality is San Quentin’s not closed yet,” said Bob Martinez, assistant director of the state Department of Corrections. “And, as a prison, we have to deal with it.”

Critics say there is indeed a lot to deal with. The prison’s design features blind spots and line-of-sight problems for tower guards, who struggle to keep their eyes on inmates.

Often, two or three escorts are required to move some inmates on the 67-year-old death row, which was designed for only 68 inmates. Also, the death row exercise yard is along an exterior wall, further heightening security concerns, official say.

When convicted child molester Eduardo Silva Mariscal tossed a blanket over a razor wire fence at San Quentin on Sept. 25, he became the only inmate last year to escape from a California maximum security area, officials say. He is still at large.

Meanwhile, the prison will spend $6 million to repair erosion damage--including shoring up a guard tower that nearly toppled into the bay during El Nino storms.

“This prison is a money pit,” said Stephen Green, a spokesman for the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, the parent organization to the state Department of Corrections.

Last year, for example, the prison spent $113 million for basic inmate costs compared with $84 million at Wasco State Prison, which has a similar number of inmates.

Steven Fama, a staff lawyer for the inmate advocacy Prison Law Office, describes San Quentin as “something out of an old Jimmy Cagney movie, with its towering, five-tiered cellblocks that are noisy and unpleasant.”

The union representing San Quentin’s prison guards agrees that the time to move death row has come.

Said Lance Corcoran, vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn.: “Dangerous death row inmates should not be housed in a prison built in 1852.”

County Supervisor Kinsey said, despite opposition by San Quentin officials, the decaying prison may soon close “by virtue of the termites.”

“It’s a maze of bubble gum patchwork--buildings that have had three or four lifetimes,” he said. “As soon as they make one repair another thing goes.”

About midnight on March 27, Robert Lee Massie is scheduled to become the 420th person to be executed at San Quentin. So far, 215 have been hanged, 196 have died in the gas chamber and eight have perished by lethal injection.

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San Quentin State Prison

There is a new movement to close San Quentin, the state’s oldest prison and home of its death row, because it is crowded, decaying and perched on valuable real estate overlooking San Francisco Bay.

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Opened: 1852

Location: Point Quentin, Marin County

Acreage: 432

Staff: 1,548 (915 guards, officers, medical; 633 support)

Operating Budget: $120 million

Design Capacity: 3,417 inmates

Actual Population: 6,121 inmates

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Infamous Inmates, Past and Present:

* C.E. “Black Bart” Bolton: Notorious stagecoach robber.

* Robert Lee Cannon and Albert Kessell: Cronies of gangster “Machine Gun Kelly”; first to die in gas chamber in 1938 for killing warden at Folsom Prison.

* Caryl Chessman: Los Angeles’ “Red Light Bandit”; committed robberies and sexual assaults along Mulholland Drive in the 1950s; executed in 1960.

* Barbara Graham: “Gun moll” convicted of robbing and murdering a wealthy Burbank woman in 1955; depicted in Susan Hayward film “I Want to Live;” executed in 1955.

* George Jackson: One of the San Quentin Six; Black Panther who died during attempted breakout in 1971; overwhelmed and killed three guards after hiding gun under hairpiece.

* Sirhan Sirhan: Assassinated Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles hotel in 1968; now in Corcoran State Prison.

* Charles Manson: Led cult that murdered actress Sharon Tate and seven others in Los Angeles in 1969; subject of book “Helter Skelter” by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi; now in Corcoran State Prison.

* Richard Ramirez: known as the Night Stalker; an El Paso drifter who killed 14 people in California in the mid-1980s.

* Charles Ng: 1980s murderer of 11 people in Northern California.

* Stanley “Tookie” Williams: Co-founder of L.A. Crips street gang convicted in 1981 of killing four people; later nominated for Nobel Prize for series of children’s books on nonviolence.

* Richard Allen Davis: Convicted of kidnapping, rape and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma.

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Source: California Department of Corrections