Death Row Inmate Died OF Corona Virus – Richard Stitely had spent nearly 30 years on death row when the pandemic hit California’s San Quentin State Prison. Stitely, 71, was found dead in his cell, marking the first known death linked to coronavirus inside the California prison with the largest outbreak of Covid-19 in the state.
More than a third of incarcerated people in San Quentin have tested positive for the virus and nearly half of coronavirus cases throughout the state’s prison system are currently there, according to a tally from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
As of Thursday, there were at least 1,345 active cases in the facility and 2,783 cases in the state, the CDCR said. The jail houses about 3,400 detainees and it’s at 112% of it’s capacity.
San Quentin is among numerous prisons and jails across the country that have become hotbeds for the virus. In the past months, outbreaks in Colorado, Arkansas and Ohio prisons made up for a large number of each of those state’s total cases.
But San Quentin had not seen a spike of cases until inmates from the California Institute for Men in Chino — where thousands of people have tested positive — were transferred to the facility last month, state Sen. Nancy Skinner has said.
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