A Plea for Prison Reform
IT SEEMS bizarre that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation would construct a new execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison without telling the Legislature about it.
Prison officials tell us that they were only trying to meet the concerns expressed by U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel last December about the cramped conditions and poor lighting of an antiquated gas chamber built in 1938 and recently used for lethal injection. Until those concerns are met, no one can be executed in California.
EDITORIAL in the San Francisco Chronicle