Gov. Jerry Brown pulled the plug today on plans to construct a new housing facility for condemned inmates at San Quentin.

Brown said in a statement that he believes it would "be unconscionable to earmark $356 million for a new and improved death row while making severe cuts to education and programs that serve the most vulnerable among us."

That bill would add an estimated $28.5 million general fund costs in annual debt service payments, his office said...

A San Quentin State Prison death row inmate died Monday of natural causes at a hospital outside the prison, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said this afternoon.

Richard Ray Parson, 67, was received on death row from Sacramento County on Oct. 22, 1996, according to the CDCR.

He was convicted of killing 60-year-old Theresa Schmiedt at a Sacramento apartment complex on Jan. 2, 1994, CDCR spokeswoman Peggy Bengs said...

So far, the death penalty for defendants in Kern County has just meant a long stay in prison.

Consider these facts:

Of the 31 death penalty verdicts by Kern juries since 1978, only three defendants have died -- two by suicide and one from throat cancer. Five other cases were reversed and four of those defendants were resentenced to terms of life in prison. One is awaiting a hearing on whether he will receive a life term.

Thirteen people were executed in California between 1992 and 2006, the state reported. Executions were stopped in 2006 because of issues over lethal injections. Those have been resolved so executions may resume soon...

Officials with the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Wednesday they have delayed awarding a contract for the first phase of the $356 million death row complex at San Quentin State Prison until Feb. 9.

The corrections department has notified the three lowest bidders of its intention "to extend the period of award ... to allow additional time for the department to brief the new administration on various aspects of the project," said Paul Verke, a corrections spokesman.

Marin officials are mounting a desperate last stand to prevent the awarding of the contract and kill the project...

A federal judge has ended nearly three decades of supervision over conditions on Death Row at San Quentin State Prison after authorities made court-ordered improvements ranging from giving inmates more legal help and exercise time to getting rid of rodents and bird droppings.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco filed an order Tuesday closing a case that began in 1979 when a group of condemned prisoners sued the state. Court monitoring started in October 1980 when state officials agreed to a settlement known as a consent decree…

Thomas Francis Edwards died a week ago Saturday of natural causes at age 65. That may not sound strange until you consider that Edwards, the convicted killer of a 12-year-old Orange County girl, had been on death row for 22 years.

That's right. Two decades later, the state of California still hadn't carried out a sentence imposed in the mid-1980s. And there's nothing unusual about that. Of the state's 680 death row inmates, 67 have been waiting to die for 25 years or more; nearly 300 have waited 15 years or more.

Today, a death row inmate is more likely to die of old age than to be put to death by the state. Since 1978, when California reinstated capital punishment, 43 have died of natural causes, five more of "other causes," 16 by suicide — and 14 have been executed, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation…

For Jeanne Woodford, the former warden of San Quentin and former Director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, it wasn't the years of delays in death penalty cases but the experience of actually carrying out executions that shaped her perspective. In October, the L.A. Times published Woodford's reflections:

As the warden of San Quentin, I presided over four executions. After each one, someone on the staff would ask, "Is the world safer because of what we did tonight?" We knew the answer: No…

Not everyone can handle it. For those who work in a prison, there are two lives: inside and outside. Once they put the uniform on and go through the gate, they are in an alternate universe. Here they must be able to navigate a psychological and emotional labyrinth, inure themselves to being suckered, and sublimate instincts to react. Mental stamina is as crucial as physical strength.

We know very little about what the job is like: the pressures, the cycle of emotions, what they experience on the inside and the impact it has on the outside. SCI Muncy in Pennsylvania is the only correctional facility in the US with a "death row" for women that agreed to allow me inside. Correctional facilities and officers have nothing to gain from opening up. One of the most salient features of the job is anonymity. Officers make sure the inmates know as little about their personal lives as possible. They need to remain unknown. It's safer for them and for their families.

The perception of corrections officers as callous and hard-nosed is bolstered by the Hollywood myth of the sadistic guard and the constant atmosphere of repressed violence. Yet it becomes apparent that mental strength is not the only facet women officers require. Compassion, too, is very much on display. There is understanding, a recognition that the female inmates they work with have made mistakes and bad choices…

From the forbidding, steely confines of San Quentin Prison's death row, scores of California's most notorious convicts have been reaching out to the free world via the Internet.

Scott Peterson's Web page features smiling photos of himself with his wife Laci, whom he was found guilty of murdering and dumping into San Francisco Bay while she was pregnant with their unborn son. It also links viewers to his family's support site, where Peterson has a recent blog posting on his "wrongful conviction."

Mustachioed Randy Kraft, condemned Orange County slayer of 16 young men, is looking for pen pals. So is convicted Northern California serial killer Charles Ng, who describes himself as shy and offers to sell his wildlife drawings…

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Monday followed up on its ruling last week upholding the commonly used lethal injection method of execution and rejected appeals by 11 death row inmates in seven states.

The ruling cleared the way for a resumption of executions that had been halted for nearly seven months while the justices considered a constitutional challenge to the three-drug cocktail used in the executions.

The ruling means more than a dozen death row inmates likely will get early execution dates. Officials in the leading death penalty states, like Texas, Virginia and Florida, said they planned to schedule executions that previously had been on hold…