New death chamber for San Quentin
California prison officials at San Quentin, who are preparing to execute an inmate next week for the first time in nearly five years, opened the new lethal injection chamber for inspection by representatives of the media yesterday. The new center was built on the site of a former visiting area to overcome legal challenges to the manner in which California inmates are executed.
Although court battles have kept anyone from execution since January 2006, San Quentin officials are moving forward with plans to execute the convicted Riverside County killer Albert Greenwood Brown at 12:01 AM Wednesday, September 29, on the authority of a death warrant signed by a Riverside County judge.
The new execution compound differs markedly from the old death house, where 13 inmates died, two by cyanide gas and 11 by lethal injection, since Robert Alton Harris was executed in 1992 after a 14-year interruption. In the old room, friends and family of both the victim(s) and the inmate were within view and earshot of each other. The new chamber has a main witness room for 12 official witnesses and up to 17 media witnesses. To one side is a room for up to six friends or family members of victims and on the opposite side is an identical room for family and friends of the inmate. Both of these rooms have two windows, one of which has one-way glass so that they can watch the execution without being seen by the inmate.
Within the death chamber is the gurney used in earlier executions by injection, in the middle of the room. Four holes through the wall allow intravenous tubes that are routed from the “infusion control room.” A clock is on the wall directly above the place where the inmate’s head will be and another is on the wall facing the inmate.
The infusion control room contains a safe, a padlocked refrigerator, a sink and a digital clock, and four telephones inside marked as direct lines to the governor, the attorney general, the Supreme Court, and the warden.
(Note added September 28, 2010: Albert Greenwood Brown’s execution was postponed today by a federal judge.)
-Bill at
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