Suicides overtake executions on California's death row

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The latest death at San Quentin Prison marked a gruesome landmark: Suicides have now supplanted executions as the second leading cause of death on California's death row.

Tony Lee Reynolds' death on Sunday was the 14th suicide, one more than the number of condemned inmates executed in California, since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1978.

Thirty-eight inmates have died of natural causes, the leading cause of death.

In October, the California prison system instituted a series of reforms to cut the high rate of inmate suicides, which reached a record 43 last year.

A federal judge is overseeing the state's treatment of mentally ill and suicidal inmates as a result of a class-action lawsuit by prisoners alleging inadequate care.

There are now 666 inmates on death row, according to the Department of Corrections.

One reason for suicides surpassing executions as a cause of death is that executions have been halted for 16 months now, since a federal judge ordered prison officials to revise their lethal injection procedures to ensure inmates do not suffer unnecessarily.

The temporary moratorium will stay in place at least until state prison officials finish construction of a new death chamber designed to address the judge's concerns.

U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel said he wants to inspect the new death chamber in October if it is completed by then.

"The number of executions is absurdly low," said Kent Scheidegger, director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a victims' rights group based in Sacramento.

"The number of executions is low because of the great hostility the federal courts have with the death penalty."

San Quentin Prison spokesman Lt. Eric Messick said guards found Reynolds, 25, hanging from a bed sheet tied to his bunk bed Sunday night and he was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Reynolds had been sent to death row only 30 days ago for the rape and murder of a pregnant woman. Messick said the average stay on death row is 17-and-a-half years before execution.

A mental health expert at the Illinois juvenile hall where Reynolds served time as a teen testified at the trial in his behalf that Reynolds was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

Prosecutors challenged that diagnosis and a judge agreed with a jury's recommendation to sentence Reynolds to death.

Messick said a mental health report received by the prison staff did not show any diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and Reynolds was not considered a suicide risk.

"This guy didn't give us any indication," he said.

Reynolds' attorney at trial didn't return a telephone call Tuesday.

 

This was found at Daily Mail