SAN QUENTIN -- Scott Peterson has become the latest addition to a San Quentin Death Row that already houses serial killer Richard Ramirez, known as the Night Stalker, Richard Allen Davis, the killer of Polly Klaas, David Carpenter, the Trailside Killer, and recently arrived Cary Stayner.
California is home to the nation's most clogged death row, housing 641 condemned men and women, but the state has executed just 10 inmates since it resumed capital punishment in 1978. In that same period, 38 death row inmates have died of other causes: Three were killed by other prisoners, a dozen committed suicide, and the rest died of natural causes.
Now convicted and recommended by the jury for death, Peterson will be transported to San Quentin after the sentence is officially pronunced by Judge Alfred A. Delucchi at a hearing scheduled for Feb. 25. Delucchi could override the jury's recommendation but that has not been his pattern in the 20-plus other death cases he has presided over.
"The first day will be a big adjustment for him," said Vernell Crittenden, the spokesman for San Quentin.
Peterson's arrival has also caused a buzz along the cell block.
"They (the inmates) have access to newspapers and television," Crittenden said. "There is a lot of awareness that he is coming."
Peterson will be housed in a 5-by-8 foot cell -- about the size of a large walk-in closet. He will be allowed just six cubic feet of personal property and he will eat all his meals in the cell alone. He will allowed to use the exercise yard three times a week.
"One of the biggest thing will be that he will have a great deal of inactivity," Crittenden said. "He will eat at the same time every day and only leave his cell to go to the exercise yard or to religious services if he chooses."
Peterson's stay on death row could be a long one. He might not be executed for decades -- if ever -- and it can take years for even the first phase of the appeals process to begin. Of the 38 states with the death penalty, California moves the slowest toward executions. The most active death penalty state, Texas, has executed 23 inmates this year and 336 since 1982, when executions resumed there.
Ironically, Peterson could also catch an occasional glimpse across the San Francisco Bay waters of the spot where he launched his boat on Christmas Eve 2002, not far from where the bodies of his pregnant wife and unborn child eventually floated to shore.
Cell doors on two of the three units at San Quentin look past walkways patrolled by rifle-toting guards, out at the same water that doomed Peterson when jurors didn't buy his alibi, that he just happened to be fishing when his wife, Laci Peterson, disappeared.
The rooftop exercise yard on the original 1934 death row building, which now houses 68 of the best behaved condemned inmates, also overlooks the bay.
Parole is not an alternative for Peterson, who faces death by lethal injection after being convicted of first-degree murder in the death of his wife, with the special circumstance of killing the fetus she was carrying. Scott faces an additional 15-year term for second-degree murder in that death.
Even the relative segregation of death row didn't stop an assault Davis, who kidnapped and killed Klaas in 1993.
To this day, Davis avoids communal exercise yards, where he is a target because his crimes sparked California's three-strikes law for repeat offenders.
Another inmate still managed to punch him, causing him to hit his head on a locker, as he was being escorted through the general San Quentin prison population to a medical appointment in August 2003.
Davis wasn't seriously injured although he was treated in the prison's hospital facility.
Copyright 2006 by KTVU.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Video On Demand: San Quentin Spokesman Vernell Crittenden On Life On Death Row 
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