A look at the hard life inside San Quentin’s Death Row

Robert Galvan in prison for a double murder in 1996 gets 3 hours outside a day in a secure cell for exercises at the Adjustment Center of death row at San Quentin State Prison on Tuesday December 29, 2015, in San Quentin, Calif. less Robert Galvan in prison for a double murder in 1996 gets 3 hours outside a day in a secure cell for exercises at the Adjustment Center of death row at San Quentin State Prison on Tuesday December 29, 2015, in ... more Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 44 Caption Close A look at the hard life inside San Quentin’s Death Row 1 / 44 Back to Gallery

It’s both a lonely and crowded world inside the country’s largest Death Row, where hundreds of condemned inmates, stripped of nearly every freedom, wait around to die.

But for the more than 700 of the most notorious killers warehoused alone in cells in San Quentin State Prison, death likely won’t come at the end of a needle in the facility’s lethal-injection chamber.

That’s because nearly a decade ago, a federal judge placed a moratorium on capital punishment in California — bringing to a halt all executions.

For the first time since the death penalty was put on pause in the state, reporters on Tuesday got an in-depth look at the cold concrete corridors, locked cells and shackled inmates on California’s ever-growing Death Row.

“I don’t think I’ll ever live long enough to get out of here,” said 67-year-old Douglas Clark, who’s been in San Quentin since 1983. “But you get by. I’ve always been a very Zen person.”

Clark, an aging man with long, gray hair and an eye patch, looked little like his much-younger self — a serial murderer dubbed one of the “Sunset Strip killers” for a series of particularly grisly slayings in Los Angeles in 1980. He spoke Tuesday from inside a cell in the prison’s Adjustment Center, known by inmates as “the hole.”

Prisoners sent to the 102-cell hole are isolated because of their bad — usually violent — behavior in the main cell block, and are given limited time to exercise in outdoor metal cages.

In the yard Tuesday afternoon, inmates worked out in 8-by-10-foot, chain-link corrals while armed guards kept a watchful eye from above. Many of the prisoners spoke openly about their cases and have closely followed the state’s unresolved laws on capital punishment.

In recent weeks, supporters of two competing ballot initiatives — one seeks to scrap executions, while the other is trying to fast-track them — were cleared to gather signatures in hopes of changing the state’s laws.

“We are just left on a shelf, and that’s worse than being executed because you’re just waiting to die,” 42-year-old Robert Galvan said while taking a break between sets of pull-ups in his cage in the Adjustment Center’s yard.

Killed his cellmate

He was sentenced to die in San Quentin in 2013 after he killed his cellmate in 2010 during a gang dispute at California State Prison Corcoran, where he was doing time for a Fresno kidnapping for ransom and robbery.

Galvan and others on Death Row are considerably more likely to die at their own hand, from natural causes, a drug overdose, or by getting killed by a fellow inmate or prison guard, than by execution.

“To me, this is worse than death,” 41-year-old Raymond Lewis said inside his cell in the prison’s East Block, the five-tier, main Death Row cell block.

Lewis was sentenced to die for beating a woman to death with a 2-by-4 in 1988.

“If I had the courage or the heart, I would have ended it long ago,” he said. “I hope people understand, this is not a way to live.”

But that’s the way it goes on Death Row. Since 1978, when the Legislature re-enacted the death penalty, only 13 inmates have been executed, while more than 100 have perished from other means inside the prison walls.

A couple of doors down from Lewis was Richard Allen Davis, who got a death sentence for the 1993 abduction and killing of 12-year-old Polly Klaas in Petaluma.

The now-feeble convicted child killer hid inside his dark cell while reporters walked by — a stark change in behavior from his antagonistic courtroom theatrics that played out during his 1996 sentencing.

One tier above, convicted killer Andre Burton screamed from his cell.

“They’re treating us like animals!” he shouted. “We’re not horses and cows and s—. There’s no sun, no hot water, they’re giving us spoiled milk.”

Other inmates began to chime in, sharing Burton’s frustrations about the conditions inside the dark, desolate main housing facility for condemned inmates.

“Tell them about the five-minute showers! Tell them about the cold food and the dirty trays!” other prisoners called out from their cells.

But San Quentin’s warden, Ron Davis, has highlighted the strides his prison has made in inmate conditions, including a new state-of-the-art mental health facility designed to treat condemned prisoners with serious mental illnesses.

Housing for the privileged

Next door to the East Block, in San Quentin’s North Segregation, the more privileged of the condemned are housed.

“This is where you want to be if you are on Death Row,” said Lt. Samuel Robinson, a spokesman for the prison.

The North Segregation yard sits on top of the building and looks out on sweeping panoramic vistas of San Francisco Bay, Marin County and miles beyond in every direction.

On Tuesday, one of the prison’s most notorious inmates, Scott Peterson, played basketball with four other prisoners in the yard. He was convicted in the sensational 2002 murders of his wife, Laci, and unborn son in Modesto.

Peterson declined to speak with reporters and turned his back to photographers Tuesday.

Starting in 1893, 215 inmates were hanged at San Quentin. In 1938, lethal gas became the official method of capital punishment.

From then — when the prison became the exclusive site for executions — until 1967, 194 souls were gassed in the prison’s eerie, 7½-foot-wide, octagonal, green death chamber.

In February 1972, the California Supreme Court found the death penalty to violate constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and blocked all executions.

It took until April 1992, with the gassing death of 39-year-old Robert Alton Harris, for an execution to be carried out again.

On Feb. 23, 1996, serial killer William George Bonin became the first California inmate to die by lethal injection.

And Clarence Ray Allen, who at 76 struggled with heart trouble and diabetes, was the oldest and last man executed here. His Jan. 17, 2006, death by lethal injection came about a month after the state put to death 51-year-old Stanley Tookie Williams, the former Crips gang founder.

But those executions raised serious questions about the manner in which capital punishment was being carried out at San Quentin.

Two hours before Michael Angell Morales was set to be pumped full of poisons on a gurney inside the facility’s cramped former gas chamber, his execution was stayed. He remains at San Quentin.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose ruled in February 2006 that the state’s lethal-protocol was badly flawed.

Cruel and unusual

Poorly trained staff, with unclear instructions and little oversight in the dimly lit former gas chamber, risked leaving dying inmates conscious and writhing in pain, violating the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, Fogel said.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reviewed its protocols on lethal injections and built a new, roomy death chamber at the prison in 2008 with brightly lit viewing rooms.

No inmate has been executed in the new chamber, looming near the East Block. Only about 16 inmates have exhausted their appeals process and are even eligible to die there.

Whether the new $853,000 death chamber will ever be used remains to be seen.

“It’s almost like it’s not a real punishment,” said Charles Crawford, a 40-year-old prisoner sentenced to die for a 1996 double killing in Fremont. “It’s an abstract thought.”

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky