Number of California inmates observed for Legionnaires’ disease jumps

Authorities from a California state prison announced on Wednesday., September 2, that a death row inmate has died due to natural causes. On Tuesday, officials said they were working to provide access to the showers for those inmates.

The inmate was awaiting execution and his cause of death is yet to be determined.

San Quentin State Prison is beginning to add back services as the investigation continues into an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease.

Since 1978, when the death penalty was reinstated in California, the state has executed only 13 people.

The judge overturned Jones’s death sentence, but the case is under appeal, with arguments taking place this week.

Technically, death penalty is lawful in the state of California; however, various issues questioning the measures with which lethal injection is administered, as well as political conflicts in the liberal state have left the inmates in what seems like a torturous waiting game. Last year, a Field Poll was carried out in which 58% showed support for the death penalty, a decline from 2011 when the percentage was 68.

Six inmates are confirmed to have the disease, a severe type of pneumonia, and 95 others exhibiting symptoms of the illness are being monitored in the prison’s medical unit, said Dana Simas, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Seaton was sentenced to death in 1989 by a Riverside County jury for the 1986 first-degree murder of Willis Paul Jones during a robbery at Jones’ home.

But the state said on Wednesday that there are no indications that the disease was a factor in Seaton’s death.