California death penalty boon to some

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- California's bogged-down execution process means death-row inmates can expect to live a long time and in better conditions than other inmates, officials said.

California has the nation's largest death row population -- with 685 currently sentenced to die -- but only 13 executions have taken place since 1977 and none since a moratorium was imposed nearly four years ago, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

Death-row inmates in California are far from pampered, but they are allowed to live in single cells, usually can mingle with inmates in exercise yards, have sole control over televisions and music players in their cells and have greater access to telephones because of the need to talk regularly with their lawyers, said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Laurie Levenson, who teaches criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said some inmates figure they will be better off on death row.

"We have a perverse system, given that we have a death row but we don't really have executions," Levenson said.