CA Death Row Inmates Likely to Die of Something Other than Lethal Injection

Death Row Inmates More Likely to Die of Old Age, Disease or Suicide

Earlier this week Richard Ray Parson died of natural causes in a California prison. Not an entriely unusual situation. Except Parson was on California's death row, and more people die of natural causes and suicide on California's death row than die by execution.

The death penalty returned to California in 1978. Since then the state has executed 13 killers, while 53 have died of disease, old age or other natural reasons. Another 18 have committed suicide, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

There are 712 men and women on California's death row, more than any other state in the nation. The last person to die by lethal injection was Clarence Ray Allen, in January 2006.

According to the Chronicle, Parson was sent to Death Row from Sacramento County in 1996 for robbing and killing a 59-year-old nurse. He beat her to death with a hammer in her Sacramento apartment.

To read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/crime/detail?entry_id=84010#ixzz1FM1eK4RU