Many of the people that San Diego County sent to death row are no longer sitting on actual death row.
Their sentences have not been commuted. They still face the potential of execution. But as part of voter-approved Proposition 66, California is phasing out its death row units at San Quentin — the state’s oldest prison and the site of the first state-conducted execution in 1893. Rather, the state is moving people with a condemned sentence into the general populations in two dozen high-security prisons across the state.
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That includes Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in Otay Mesa, which as of the end of April houses 22 condemned inmates. The prison currently houses the fifth-highest number of condemned inmates outside San Quentin in the state.
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At least four of them now at Donovan were sent to death row from San Diego County. They include Jaime Hoyos, 66, convicted of killing a Jamul couple and injuring their 3-year-old son in 1992; and Ramon Rogers, 64, convicted of killing two former girlfriends and a male friend in 1993. Three years after the killings, police discovered body parts in a storage area at Roger’s College Area apartment.
Donovan also houses a few high-profile inmates serving life sentences, including Sirhan Sirhan, who was convicted of killing Sen. Bobby Kennedy in 1968, and brothers Lyle and Eric Menendez, convicted of killing their parents in 1996.
It’s unclear how many more condemned inmates the state will send to Donovan. The transfers started at the end of February and should wrap up this summer.
Thus far, about 40 percent of death row inmates have been moved. They include David Westerfield, sentenced to death more than 20 years ago for the 2002 murder of 7-year-old Danielle van Dam, who is now at High Desert State Prison roughly two hours north of Lake Tahoe. Cleophus Prince, convicted of sneaking into homes and stabbing six women to death throughout 1990, is now in a Sacramento prison.
David Westerfield sits in front of a photo of Danielle van Dam during closing arguments on Aug. 6, 2002, in San Diego.
(Dan Trevan/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Jesse Michael Gomez, sent to death row in 2022 for killing a San Diego police officer, is at Centinela in Imperial County. So is Manuel Bracamontes, convicted of the 1991 kidnap, rape and murder of 9-year-old Laura Arroyo in San Ysidro.
The last execution in California was in 2006.
Narrowly passed in 2016, Proposition 66 sought to speed up executions with a mandatory five-year deadline for appeals — although the state’s high court later essentially struck down the time-limit portion. Additionally, the measure called for condemned inmates to work in prison to pay debts owed to victims and allowed them to be housed outside death row.
The transfers of condemned inmates comes as the state plans to transform San Quentin from a maximum-security prison in disrepair into “San Quentin Rehabilitation Center,” a Scandinavian-inspired approach that will focus on providing education, training and rehabilitation.
That same year Proposition 66 passed, voters rejected Proposition 62, which would have abolished the death penalty.
In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a moratorium preventing the state from carrying out the death penalty during his time in office — meaning no executions while he’s the governor. His order does not bar a judge from issuing a sentence of death, nor does it preclude prosecutors from continuing to pursue capital punishment in current cases.
The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office is not seeking the death penalty in any of its current cases. The last person to be sentenced to death by a San Diego Superior Court judge was Gomez in March 2022. Before that, the local courts had not sent anyone to death row since 2010.
Jesse Gomez, right, who was convicted of first-degree murder for killing a San Diego police officer, listens to testimony during his sentencing hearing at the San Diego Central Courthouse on March 4, 2022. He is the last defendant to be sentenced to death in San Diego County.
(Eduardo Contreras/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
California has the largest death row in the country, with 639 people with condemned sentences as of the end of April, including 36 sent from San Diego. Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the relocations are a large undertaking.
“It’s pretty unprecedented to have a transfer of this many death-sentenced people to other prisons,” she said.
Maher said the philosophy of rethinking the approach toward condemned inmates is “gaining popular approval among the public.”
“The idea here is to treat them with the kind of human dignity that many people believe is appropriate for every single prisoner — death-sentenced or not — and to provide them with opportunities,” she said.
Incarcerated men visit with California Gov. Gavin Newsom after he spoke inside an empty warehouse at San Quentin State Prison on March 17, 2023. Newsom plans to transform the prison, a facility in the San Francisco Bay Area known for maintaining the highest number of prisoners on death row in the country. Newsom said his goal is to turn the prison into a place where inmates can be rehabilitated and receive job training before returning to society.
(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)
Nationwide, 27 states have the death penalty, although six of them — including California — have a moratorium in place. Maher said only a handful of states are actively carrying out death sentences.
With the transfers, the facility with the highest number of condemned inmates — 44 people — outside the Bay Area’s San Quentin is California Health Care Facility in Stockton, which is designed for incarcerated people with acute or long-term medical needs.
State prisons officials say the department’s Institution Classification Committee thoroughly reviews the circumstances of each condemned person and recommends where to transfer them to based on individual case factors.
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A defiant Eric Anderson admonished the jury that convicted him of murder on July 7, 2005. Now 45, Anderson was a 30-year-old parolee in 2003, when authorities say he fatally shot Cajon Speedway owner Stephen Brucker during a botched robbery.
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Hector Ayala as he was sentenced to death on November 30, 1989. Ayala, 67, and brother Ronaldo Ayala, 68, were convicted in the 1985 execution-style murders of three men during an auto repair shop robbery.
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February 9, 1989 file photo of Ronaldo Ayala at his sentencing. Ayala, 68, and brother Hector Ayala, 67, were convicted in the 1985 execution-style murders of three men during an auto repair shop robbery. (Barry Fitzsimmons / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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July 31, 1992 file photo of Steven Bell. At left is Bell’s attorney. Bell, 53, was convicted of stabbing to death his girlfriend’s 11-year-old son as the boy watched TV in 1992. Authorities said Bell wanted to steal the TV to sell to buy crack cocaine. (Gerald McClard / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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February 22, 1991 file photo of Christopher Box as he was sentenced to death for triple murder. Box, 50, was 21 in 1989 when authorities say he and a 17-year-old killed a mother, her 3-year-old son, and a houseguest in a Clairemont Mesa Boulevard home during a robbery. (Tom Kurtz / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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February 9, 2004 file photo of Manuel Bracamontes, 55, who was convicted of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing 9-year-old Laura Arroyo in San Ysidro in 1991. In 2003, DNA evidence led to his arrest. (John Gibbins / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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February 7, 2006 file photo of Adrian Camacho, left, with lawyer William Stone, as they listen to Judge Joan Weber read the death sentence in a Vista courtroom. Camacho, 43, shot and killed Oceanside police Officer Tony Zeppetella during a traffic stop in June 2003. (Eduardo Contreras)
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April 11, 1989 file photo of convicted killer David Carpenter talking with his attorney in a San Diego courtroom. Carpenter, 88, became known as the “Trailside Killer” after the early 1980s murders of seven hikers in Marin County. The trial was moved to San Diego County. (Howard Lipin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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April 10, 1991 file photo of Dean Phillip Carter shown during opening statements in San Diego County courts phase in his death penalty trial. Carter, 63, was convicted of killing four women in the 1980s, including a 24-year-old woman who, in April 1984, was strangled and stuffed her a closet in her Pacific Beach home. (Howard Lipin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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July 7, 2008 file photo of Tecumseh Colbert, left, with his attorney, Brad Patton, as the judge pronounced the death sentence in San Diego Superior Court. Colbert, 35, was convicted of killing two men during robberies within two weeks in 2004. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune)
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May 15, 1985 file photo of convicted murderer, Kevin Cooper, as he stands before the judge while being sentenced to death. Cooper, 61, was found guilty in 1985 for the 1983 slayings of a mother, father, their 10-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old friend of their son in the family’s Chino Hills home. The trial was moved to San Diego. He has maintained his innocence. In December, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered new tests of physical evidence in the case. (Dave Siccardi/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Kerry Lyn Dalton, now 66, who is one of few women on death row, convicted of murder with the special circumstances of torture and lying in wait for the 1988 slaying of Irene Melanie May at the Live Oak Springs trailer park in East County. (California Department of Corrections)
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July 17, 2008 file photo of Susan Eubanks as she was sentenced to death. Eubanks, 54, shot and killed her four sons — ages 4 to 14 — and shot herself in her San Marcos home in 1997. (Charlie Neuman/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Michael Flinner, 51, was an Alpine landscaper convicted of hiring one of his workers to kill his 18-year-old fiancee in order to collect insurance money in 2000. (Dan Trevan/San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Johnaton George, 61, was convicted of fatally shooting during a carjacking near 5th Avenue and G Street, after escaping from a sheriff’s van in 1992. (Jerry Rife / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Ivan Gonzales, 52, and wife Veronica Gonzalez, 49, were convicted of torture and murder of her 4-year-old niece, who had been scalded to death in a bathtub in 1995. (Gerald McClard / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Veronica Gonzalez, 49, and husband, Ivan Gonzales, 52, were convicted of torture and murder of her 4-year-old niece, who had been scalded to death in a bathtub in 1995. (Gerald McClard / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Jaime Hoyos, 60, was convicted of killing a marijuana distributor and his wife and injuring their 3-year-old son in their Jamul home in 1992. (James Skovmand / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Bryan Jones, 56, was convicted of strangling two women, and trying to kill two others, who survived to testify against him. All the crimes occurred in 1985 and 1986. (California Department of Corrections)
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Robert Jurado, 48, was one of three people convicted of killing a pregnant woman when she was strangled, beaten with a tire jack and left to die in Balboa Park in 1991. (California Department of Corrections)
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David Lucas, 63, was convicted of three murders, including slashing the throats of a mother and her 3-year-old son in their Normal Heights home in 1979, and the death of university student who disappeared after her car ran out of gas in La Mesa in 1984. (Howard Lipin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Kurt Michaels, 52, was convicted in the 1988 throat-slashing murder of his girlfriend’s mother in Escondido. ( Charlie Neuman / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Calvin Parker, 49, was convicted of raping and killing his female roommate in their Morena District apartment in 2000, then covering it up by cutting off her fingers and placing her bloodless body in a trash can. (Peggy Peattie/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Cleophus Prince, 52, was convicted of murdering six women who were stabbed to death in their homes in Clairemont, University City and East San Diego between January and September 1990. (Dave Siccardi / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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June 9, 2009 file photo of Jean Pierre Rices, who pleaded guilty to the 2006 execution style slaying of two people at an El Cajon Liquor store. (John Gibbins/San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Ramon Rogers, 58, was convicted of killing two former girlfriends and a male friend in 1993. Rogers was arrested in 1996 after police discovered body parts in a storage area at his College Area apartment. (Tony Doubek/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Rudolph Roybal, 62, was convicted of stabbing and slitting the throat of a 65-year-old woman in her Oceanside home in 1989. (Charlie Neuman/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Brandon Taylor, 45, was convicted of raping and murdering an 80-year-old neighbor in her North Park home in 1995. (John R. McCutchen/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Correll Thomas, 45, was convicted of beating a neighbor to death, then three weeks later using a submachine gun to kill a stranger who had smiled at his girlfriend in 1996. (John Gastaldo / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Derlyn Threats, 37, was found guilty of killing a young mother after she interrupted a mid-morning robbery in her Vista home in 2005. (Charlie Neuman / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Billy Ray Waldon, 67, was convicted of three 1985 murders and 21 other crimes, including rape, following a trial in he which acted as his own attorney. The slaying victims included a 42-year-old woman and her 13-year-old daughter. (Gerald McClard/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Randall Wall, 50, was convicted of killing an elderly couple in their Clairemont home during a 1992 robbery. (James Skovmand / San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Latwon Weaver, 50, was found guilty of killing a Vista jewelry store owner during a 1992 robbery. (Tony Doubek/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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David Westerfield, 67, was convicted in one of the region’s most notorious cases — the murder of Danielle van Dam, 7, a neighbor who went missing from her home in Sabre Springs in 2002. (Dan Trevan / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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George Williams, 63, was found guilty in 2004 of kidnapping a 14-year-old girl from her Chula Vista home in April 1986, then raping and strangling her, and dumping her body in Barrio Logan. DNA led to his arrest. (Don Kohlbauer / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Jesse Gomez, who was convicted of first-degree murder, listens to testimony during his sentencing hearing at the San Diego Central Courthouse on Friday, March 4, 2022 in San Diego, CA. (Eduardo Contreras / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan said that while the transfers are authorized by recent law, moving condemned inmates is “another change that can bring stress and trauma to victims of these vicious crimes as it permits housing in lower levels of security. Of course, we trust that CDCR makes the assessments carefully, to protect the public.”
Condemned people cannot be moved into a different unit at San Quentin because the facility lacks a lethal electrified fence. The rehoused residents from death row must be at prisons with the deadly perimeter.
The transfers started with a pilot program from January 2020 to January 2022, during which time 104 people with a condemned sentenced were relocated out of San Quentin.
Once they are moved to a new site, they will spend five years in “close custody,” which state prisons officials said is “the highest security level for condemned population while still allowing them to be integrated into the general population.”
The state’s 20 condemned female inmates have long been housed at Central California Women’s Facility, north of Fresno. They all remain at the institution but are now housed in the general population.
