Facing seven murders in the first nine weeks of the year, California prison officials have announced they have restricted prisoners’ movements and revoked privileges such as visiting and calling at high-security facilities throughout the state.
In a statement dated March 8, California Department of Corrections officials cited a “surge in violence” directed at both inmates and staff as reasons for crackdowns in 11 prisons.
CDCR officials have declined to request an interview from the Times. Authorities are conducting a “comprehensive investigation” into the causes of the violence, said Terry Hardy, a spokesman for the department.
At the current pace, 2025 nearly doubled last year, reporting a total of 24 murders within state prisons.
Authorities didn’t say for how long visiting, phone use and other privileges would be restricted on high-security yards at Calipatria State Prison, Centinela State Prison, California Correctional Institution, High Desert State Prison, Kern Valley State Prison, California State Prison-Los Angeles County, Mule Creek State Prison, Pelican Bay State Prison, California State Prison-Sacramento, Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and Salinas Valley State Prison.
The day before the department announced the “fixing” three inmates were killed in attacks in three different prisons.
The first murder was found at 6:13am on March 7, with Jake Kennedy dead in a cell that security guards shared with Tyler Yates at the California State Jail, Sacramento said in a statement.
Two weeks ago, Kennedy and Yates allegedly stabbed Jonathan Rood, a car burglar convicted by Butte County.
If convicted of killing Kennedy and Rude, Yates would have been convicted of killing three people in prison. The 30-year-old, who went to prison to serve an eight-year term in robbery and assault in 2017, was sentenced to life in 2022 without parole for murdering Nathan Marcus at the California State Jail in Sacramento.
The Sacramento Lockup has become one of the state’s most violent prisons, recording four murders in 2024 and three this year. On March 5, a brawl broke out in prison among 40 prisoners, some armed with knives, officials said. Five prisoners were hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.
About an hour after Kennedy’s body was found, Terrance Shaw killed Joshua Peppers at the California State Jail in Lancaster, CDCR officials said in a statement.
Pepper, 39, was jailed for a robbery. Shaw, 42, was sentenced to 14 years of service in 2023 to possess weapons as an assault, battery and Monterey County prisoner.
The third prisoner, Merino, Germany, was murdered at Delano’s Karn Valley State Prison at 5:47pm. CDCR officials identified Merino’s murderers as Gilbert Garcia and Rodolfo Cortez. Garcia, 43, has been working for 11 years due to the assault. Cortez, 33, is in the middle of a 24-year term of robbery, carjacking and police assault.
A member of the SDK gang, short for “Surenos de Kill,” said Merino, 37, was sentenced to life in prison in 2009 for murdering a Southern Los Angeles man, according to an appeal decision that summarises the evidence at his trial.
Recent murders continue to be a permanent problem in the California prison system. The prisoners are already serving life sentences — and there’s nothing to lose by spending more time — commit murders with seeming immunity.
Mario Campbell, 36, was jailed for sexual assault, firearm assault, robbery, robbery, false imprisonment and threatening witnesses when he was murdered on Jan. 15 at the California State Jail in Sacramento.
His killers, Cody Taylor and David Gomez, both are serving life sentences for murdering prisoners, CDCR officials said in a statement.
According to a report by KQED radio station, Taylor stabbed an unprotected inmate handcuffed to a chair in 2019.
According to CDCR officials, Gomez, a convicted rapist, received a second lifetime term for murder in 2015. He strangled, beat, slashed his cellmates, and later told psychologists that murder was a “gift.”
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