18 California Condemned Inmates Have Exhausted Appeals.

California Propositions 66 and 62 were on the November 8, 2016 ballot.  A YES vote on 66 supported changing the procedures governing state court appeals and petitions that challenge death penalty convictions and sentences. A NO vote means the state's system for governing death penalty appeals and petitions go unchanged.

Proposition 66 intends to speed up executions by designating trial courts to hear petitions challenging death row convictions, limiting successive petitions and expanding the pool of lawyers who could take on death penalty appeals.  It also included provisions for victim compensation.

Whereas, Proposition 62 would have replaced capital punishment  for murder with life in prison without parole.   Proposition 66 passed with 50.9 percent to 49.1 percent.  Proposition 62 failed to pass.

California death penalty opponents filed a taxpayer suit the next day on November 9th to block Proposition 66 from going into effect. Once again those opposed to the death penalty refuse to respect the will of the people.  Moving forward with implementing state law has been postponed pending a decision by the California Supreme Court.

The following California Condemned inmates have exhausted all their appeals and are ready to be executed if the California Supreme Court upholds Proposition 66.

Age: 65

Sentenced: Nov. 30, 1989

Time on death row: 27 years, 1 month

Ayala was convicted of triple homicide in 1988 for killing three men and wounding a fourth during an attempted robbery of A & Z Auto Repair being used as a distribution point for heroin.  The victims’ hands had been bound behind their backs as Ayala and his brother demanded $10,000. Three were shot to death, while a fourth was able to escape wounded.

Age: 55

Sentenced: Oct. 6, 1982

Time on death row: 34 years, 3 months

In 1981 Belmontes beat a 19-year-old girl to death during a robbery of her house in San Joaquin County. Belmontes drove to the home of an acquaintance, hoping to steal her stereo while she was out. She was home and in an effort to do away with the only witness to his crime, Belmontes pounded her head 15 to 20 times with an iron dumbbell, crushing her skull. The victims parents arrived home later to find their 19-year-old daughter dead on the floor in a pool of blood. Meanwhile, Belmontes and two accomplices had sold the stolen stereo for $100 and bought some beer.

Age: 62

Sentenced: Feb. 22, 1982

Time on death row: 34 years, 10 months

Three years after he raped a 14-year-old girl, Brown raped and strangled a 15-year-old girl as she walked to school. Brown had been posing as a jogger along the route. After dragging her to an orange grove, he brutally raped and sodomized her and strangled her to death with her own shoelace.

Age: 58

Sentenced: May 15, 1985

Time on death row: 31 years, 7 months

After escaping from a prison camp, Cooper killed four people sleeping in a house in which he was hiding and used a hatchet to dismember some of the bodies. A mother, father, daughter and a boy from the neighborhood were killed. A son survived having his throat slit.

Age: 50

Sentenced: Apr. 30, 1986

Time on death row: 30 years, 8 months

Cox and his accomplices sought to carry out a contract killing. They went to the wrong address and executed an NFL football player 's mother, sister and two nephews. On death row, Cox stabbed another condemned inmate, and he was part of a 2000 escape attempt. Alexander is one of the most prominent voices behind Proposition 66, which would speed the appeals process and allow faster executions.

Age: 51

Sentenced: Jun. 16, 1989

Time on death row: 27 years, 6 months 

Cunningham killed a man he met at a bar after following him and a partner to the parking lot and demanding their money.  The victims left the bar and proceeded to the parking lot behind the bar.  Cunningham approached the two, drew a gun, demanded cash, and then fatally shot one victim. The other victim attempted to flee, and Cunningham shot him in the thigh. 

Age: 63

Sentenced: Nov. 10, 1982

Time on death row: 34 years, 2 months

Despondent over a breakup, Deere killed his girlfriend's brother and the man's two children.  Deere threatened his girlfriend he would kill her family if she left him.  Deere was waiting for his victim when he showed up at his trailer. Deere fired a fatal shot from a .22-caliber rifle into his right eye. Deere did not expect to find the victim’s daughters at the home. The girls knew Deere well and would call him Uncle Ronnie. Deere killed them both with the same rifle so there would be no witnesses.

Age: 64

Sentenced: Sep. 5, 1989

Time on death row: 27 years, 4 months

After sexually assaulting one woman, Fairbank tortured and killed a second woman in his apartment, then dumped her in the woods and set her body on fire. Four days before the murder, a San Francisco judge had released Fairbank without bail after his arrest on a rape charge.

Age: 60

Sentenced: Aug. 21, 1979

Time on death row: 37 years, 4 months
Paroled from prison after manslaughter conviction, Fields went on a three-week crime rampage, robbing five people and killing one of them after holding her captive in his bedroom for several days.

Age: 79

Sentenced: Aug. 8, 1986

Time on death row: 30 years, 5 months

Hayes took $250,000 from two people who sought to buy cocaine and then lured them to a remote part of a Santa Cruz college campus for the promised delivery. He had dug shallow graves ahead of time and shot the two, chopping off their heads and hands before burying them.

Age: 68

Sentenced: Mar. 30, 1981

Time on death row: 35 years, 9 months
Heishman raped a woman and, three months later while he was free on bail, killed her to prevent her from testifying against him in a criminal trial.

Age: 67

Sentenced: Sep. 23, 1983

Time on death row: 33 years, 3 months
Seeking revenge on an old acquaintance, Mickey returned from a military base in Japan and robbed and murdered the man and his 18-year-old girlfriend.

Age: 56

Sentenced: Jun. 14, 1983

Time on death row: 33 years, 6 months
Morales attempted to strangle a woman with his belt until it broke, beat her repeatedly on the head with a hammer, dragged her body to a field and raped her, and finally stabbed her four times in the chest to ensure she was dead.

Age: 62

Sentenced: Mar. 5, 1982

Time on death row: 34 years, 10 months

Payton raped and murdered a woman at the boarding house where he had lived with his wife, and attempted to murder another woman and her son with a butcher knife, stabbing them more than 60 times.

Age: 57

Sentenced: Jun. 4, 1984

Time on death row: 32 years, 7 months

Pinholster stabbed to death two men during a 1982 drug robbery. His lawyer claimed childhood brain injuries left Pinholster unstable and he was institutionalized at a psychiatric hospital as a child. The 9th Circuit overturned his death sentence, but a divided U.S. Supreme Court reinstated it in 2011, saying federal judges had overstepped their bounds in second-guessing the state court.

Age: 63

Sentenced: Jun. 28, 1988

Time on death row: 28 years, 6 months

Samayoa killed a woman and her 2-year-old daughter during a home-invasion robbery. According to the evidence in Samoyoa’s trial, the woman was struck in the face a number of times and the baby was hit at least three times.

Age 56

Sentenced: Sep. 11, 1987

Time on death row: 29 years, 4 months

Sims and a partner killed a pizza delivery man, stole his uniform and then robbed the pizza restaurant where he worked, locking employees in a locker.

Age: 72

Sentenced: Jul. 15, 1986

Time on death row: 30 years, 5 months

Sully, a former police officer from Millbrae, ran an escort service. He killed five women and one man during a series of cocaine-related crimes, torturing and holding victims captive in a warehouse.