Rare condemned to death killed at California's San Quentin Prison

A convicted prisoner has killed another Friday, the first murder of a death row in California for more than 20 years, officials said.

Jonathan Fajardo, 30, was stabbed in the chest and neck with a weapon made by an inmate in the cell yard that houses most of the convicts at San Quentin State Prison, the spokeswoman said. Terry Thornton Prison Department.

Luis Rodriguez, 34, is considered the suspect, she said. The investigators were trying to determine a motive and how he had obtained or was able to make the weapon, she explained.

These killings are common in California prisons but rare on death row, where the last was in 1997.

"It's very unusual," said Amy Smith, an associate professor at San Francisco State University, who studies capital punishment and the psychological impact of death row. "This is not supposed to happen, of course."

Security is very high in the death row, where each inmate is housed separately, but most are allowed to gather in small groups in the exercise yard where Fajardo was killed, Thornton said.

In addition to high security, Smith stated that statistically, inmates serving life sentences and "rank-and-file" individuals are generally the ones who experience the least amount of violence in prison, even those who are in prison. It seems that they could do something because they have the worst sentence In fact, their rate of violence in prison is very very low. "

Fajardo was waiting for execution under two counts of murder in Los Angeles County for what was considered a hate crime. He also received seven life sentences.

He was identified as a member of a Latin American gang that killed a 14-year-old black girl in a racially motivated shootout. Two weeks later, he had also been sentenced for the death with the knife. According to one prosecutor, he was killed because other members of the gang thought he might cooperate with the police.

Rodriguez is awaiting execution for two counts of murder, also from Los Angeles County. According to local media reports, Rodriguez would be a member of another Latin American gang found guilty of murdering two men belonging to a rival gang. He was already suspected of another murder that would have resulted in a life sentence.

No one has been executed in California since 2006, although voters in 2016 have adopted an initiative to speed up the death penalty. Many more death row inmates on death row have died of natural causes or suicides than those executed since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978.