Death penalty is considered a boon by some California inmates

A guard checks cells on California's death row at San Quentin State Prison. The condemned live in single cells that are slightly larger than the two-bunk, maximum-security confines elsewhere, they have better access to telephones and they have 'contact visits' in plexiglass booths by themselves rather than in communal halls as in other institutions. (Los Angeles Times / October 25, 2004)

Given the state moratorium on executions and an appeals process that can last for decades, inmates can expect to live a long time, and with privileges other prisoners lack.

By Carol J. Williams
LA Times

November 11, 2009

White supremacist gang hit man Billy Joe Johnson got what he asked for from the Orange County jury that convicted him of first-degree murder last month: a death sentence.

It wasn't remorse for his crimes or a desire for atonement that drove him to ask for execution; it was the expectation that conditions on death row would be more comfortable than in other maximum-security prisons and that any date with the executioner would be decades away if it came at all.

Although executions are carried out with comparative speed in states such as Virginia, where Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad was put to death Tuesday night, capital punishment in California has become so bogged down by legal challenges as to be a nearly empty threat, say experts on both sides of the issue.

(More here.)