Rare death row slaying at California's San Quentin prison

Officials say one condemned inmate killed another Friday, the first slaying of a death row inmate in California in more than 20 years.

Corrections department spokeswoman Terry Thornton says 30-year-old Jonathan Fajardo was stabbed in the chest and neck with an inmate-made weapon in a recreational yard of the cell house that holds the bulk of condemned inmates at San Quentin State Prison. She said 34-year-old Luis Rodriguez is considered the suspect. Investigators were trying to determine a motive and how he obtained or was able to make the weapon.

Such slayings are common in California prisons but rare on death row, where the last one occurred in 1997.

Thornton said there is high security on death row, were every inmate is housed separately but most are allowed to congregate in small groups in the exercise yard where Fajardo was killed.