At least eight inmates on America’s largest death row have died of suspected coronavirus. On Tuesday, the child murderer John Beames, 67, became the last to die in San Quentin State Prison in California.
Troy Ashmus, 58, a child rapist and murderer, was pronounced dead the day before. San Quentin houses 717 convicts, more than any other prison in the United States.
Those on death row are part of a general prison population of nearly 4,000 in San Quintín, north of San Francisco.
There have been 2,041 cases of coronavirus in prison since the outbreak began, and more than half of the inmates tested positive. A total of 244 prison workers have also contracted the virus.
Authorities said 861 inmates have active infections, with 132 of those reported in the past two weeks.
It is the oldest prison in California, which opened in 1852, and the spread of the virus has been attributed to overcrowding.
A San Quentin nurse said, “The whole place has barely been held together by hope and prayer.”
California death row inmates have not been executed since 2006.
Last year, Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor, issued a moratorium on death sentences, and closed the San Quentin execution chamber.
Some of those who have been victims of the virus have been on death row for decades.
Beames was sentenced to death in 1995 after being convicted of torturing and beating his girlfriend’s 15-month-old daughter to death.
Manuel Machado Álvarez, 59, who also died of coronavirus, had been sentenced to execution in 1989 for stabbing a man in a shopping center.
A spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said: “We have implemented extraordinary measures to protect staff, the incarcerated population and the community at large.”
That included shipping hundreds of additional personnel and tens of thousands of additional pieces of personal protective equipment.
California has overtaken New York as the US state with the majority of coronavirus cases.
There have been more than 421,000 cases in California, while New York has seen 413,500.
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