Criminal
Aug. 8, 2002
San Quentin Prison Should Be Closed, Not Renovated
Forum Column - By Dick Spotswood - Just when it looked like there was a decent chance that San Quentin State Prison would close, forces opposed to the closure have chosen a new tactic. That gambit, if successful, will keep the prison open for decades.
By Dick Spotswood
Just when it looked like there was a decent chance that San Quentin State Prison would close, forces opposed to the closure have chosen a new tactic. That gambit, if successful, will keep the prison open for decades.
Their plan is to convince the Legislature to authorize an expenditure of $200 million to construct two new buildings at the Point San Quentin site capable of incarcerating 963 death row inmates. It's hard to believe, but there are almost 600 currently on death row, with more projected.
Leading the charge to retain San Quentin as the site of California's only death chamber are the criminal defense lawyers who represent death row inmates. These attorneys, understandably, are committed to two goals: getting their death row clients the best possible representation and continuing their own good life in San Francisco.
Moving death row to, say, Folsom in Sacramento County or, God forbid, Pelican Bay Prison in Del Norte County would be above and beyond their call. Pity the poor attorneys who represent the 13 women currently under sentence of death in California! These ladies are residents at the female death row located at the Chowchilla State Prison in Madera County.
The criminal defense bar's most powerful ally is Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco. He has the guts to buck the political tides and has long advocated abolition of the death penalty. But so long as there is a death row, Burton wants it located close to San Francisco. He accepts the criminal defense attorneys' assertion that moving death row from the Bay Area would cause a hardship on them and their clients.
In Sacramento, it is always a mistake to ignore Burton's tremendous clout when he really cares about an issue. It also would be a mistake to forget that term limits require Burton to retire from the State Senate on Dec. 31, 2004.
Favoring closure of the prison is Assemblyman Joe Nation, D-San Rafael. He has worked to secure legislation to review alternative locations for death row and is consistently spurring correctional officials to close the antiquated facility. The California Department of Corrections agrees with Nation, but they are powerless to act without the support of the Legislature.
Nation's bill was amended twice during the legislative process. The first change dictated that the only acceptable location for a new death row would be at the recently remodeled Folsom Prison. The second amendment capped the number of death row inmates at Folsom at 13. In other words, they politely gutted the bill.
The Marin County Board of Supervisors contends that a prison on this valuable site is a waste of scarce public resources. Under the leadership of Supervisor Steve Kinsey, the board's position is that the prison should be put to a more productive use. Their plan is to make it the site of needed work force housing as well as a new ferry terminal and transit hub at Point San Quentin. To them, San Quentin is the last and best location for significant affordable housing in Marin County.
A major player in the issue could be the powerful California Correctional Peace Officers Association. It's a jobs and safety issue to them. Don't ignore the reality that the guards' union is the single largest campaign contributor of any group in Sacramento. The union agrees that San Quentin's death row is antiquated and presents a safety risk to the guards.
Just as long as a replacement facility is constructed elsewhere, the guards support creating two new death rows: one at Folsom and a second in Los Angeles County. Yet the guards are slow to oppose Burton and the Legislature because such a stance could diminish their clout on the one issue that they really care about: wages.
Marin County supervisors and the adjacent cites of San Rafael and Larkspur need to be prepared to act decisively to block construction of a new death row. If the $200 million is spent, the prison will be there for another 50 years. The ideal answer is to revive Nation's bill to put together a comprehensive multiyear study of the problem and potential alternatives.
If Burton and the Legislature are determined to ram through construction of a new death row, then Marin County has only one alternative: litigate. Any environmental impact report conducted by the state will likely be a cursory affair, and, thus, a full court review is essential.
To some, the best solution would be to simply abolish the death penalty. Given the present mood of the public, this is unlikely. The other alternative is to select a new location for death row that takes into consideration the legitimate needs of prisoners to be near their attorneys and their families, while acknowledging that San Quentin is no longer an appropriate site.
The majority of families of death row inmates live in Southern California. A trip to the Bay Area is an expensive inconvenience that could easily be eliminated by a new Los Angeles facility.
A compromise could be to move San Quentin's 5,000-strong general prison population to a site where land and construction costs are cheap and locals are desperate for the jobs associated with a prison. Then death row inmates could be placed in a state-of-the-art, high-rise facility near their attorneys and the San Francisco-based California Supreme Court. The city's Mission Bay comes to mind as the perfect north state location.
Dick Spotswood is a syndicated columnist in Marin County and an attorney who practices in San Francisco and Marin.
Contributing Writer
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