San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

MEMORY LANE

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A look back at some of the major stories we’ve covered over the years

1980 Clinton Duffy, the San Quentin warden who started the San Quentin News in 1940, was hospitalized after suffering a stroke. He’d made such a positive impact during his years as warden former convicts came to visit him in his hospital room. Duffy, himself the son of a prison guard, used his power to abolish corporal punishment, hire Black and Asian guards, and build treatment and training programs for prisoners.
2018 Vicente Benavides, who spent more than 25 years on Death Row, was exonerated after the medical professionals who testified in his case recanted. Later experts testified that the victim’s purported cause of death was ‘anatomically impossible.
2009 Larry “Watani” Stiner, a San Quentin resident (and former SQNews staffer) who escaped with his brother during a family visit in 1974, then turned himself in after two decades on the run in politically-turbulent South America. Stiner was then returned to San Quentin with the expectation of serving out the remainder of his sentence and earning parole. 16 years later, awaiting his next parole hearing, he had lost all hope of ever being released. He was finally found suitable for parole and rejoined society in 2015.
1971 The New Year’s Eve edition of the San Quentin News profiled the prison gallows, a method of execution utilized for more than 200 condemned prisoners.
1979 Some people just never learn: In November, the San Quentin Commissary suffered its second break-in and was burgled by unknown parties.
2010 Governor Schwarzenegger’s bold new prison healthcare plan was announced, along with claims that it would save taxpayers an estimated $12 billion by turning healthcare over to the University of California. The plan met with heavy opposition from both the prison guards’ union and the union that represented over 800 healthcare professionals working in state prisons.
2010 Judge Thelton Henderson, the federal judge who put California’s prison healthcare system into receivership, made the rounds at San
Quentin, meeting with the staff of the SQNews and program facilitators.
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