SAN QUENTIN--Execution is going to be a much more visible and sterile experience at San Quentin State Prison from now on.

Prison officials are offering their first glimpse of a new lethal injection center just days ahead of a planned execution few think will actually be carried out, and the differences between this stark-white place and the old apple-green gas chamber are marked.

The spacious $853,000 center has three brightly lit witness viewing rooms, and each gives a considerably better view than the cramped gas chamber's lone, poorly illuminated viewing room.

In particular, the main observation room for 12 state officials and 17 media witnesses offers four wide, flat windows looking straight into a roomy, open chamber where the lethal injection gurney sits. This makes every angle of the execution visible, unlike the truncated, partially blocked sightlines of the old center.

On the north side of this main witness room is a smaller, seven-seat room for survivors and friends of the condemned inmate's victims. On the south side is an identical room with seven chairs for relatives and friends of the prisoner. Each of those rooms has two wide windows providing unimpeded views.

Execution in doubt

But it is unclear whether there will be any witnesses at 12:01 a.m. next Wednesday to see rapist-murderer Albert Greenwood Brown, 56, of Riverside put to death as planned. That's because the execution itself is in doubt.

The state attorney general's office issued a death warrant for Brown's execution last month, and the prison has been making plans ever since for its first execution in four years. Brown raped and strangled a 15-year-old Riverside girl in 1980. (Source: San Francisco Chronicle)

Story Date: September 23, 2010