When serial killer Rodney James Alcala was hustled off to death row at San Quentin State Prison in April, he joined 56 other killers condemned to die by Orange County judges.

The Orange County list begins with John Galen Davenport, who was sentenced in 1981 for a vicious torture, rape and murder a year earlier. He is still appealing his case 30 years later.

Alcala – the latest addition – would have been in front of Davenport on the list had his original death sentence in 1980 for kidnapping and murdering a 12-year-old Huntington Beach girl remained intact.

But that conviction and death sentence was reversed on appeal (as was a 1986 conviction and death sentence). Alcala has been in the court system ever since, and his appeal of his third death sentence is just getting started.

Superior Court judges in the Santa Ana courthouse have been adding Orange County convicts to death row for 31 years.

Profiles of killers

The Orange County Register has compiled summaries of each of the 57 killers, detailing their crimes, their victims and the state of their appeals.

The Register will begin publishing that list, two at a time, beginning Monday on ocregister.com.

Orange County has more death row inmates now (57) than any other county except Los Angeles (with 220) and Riverside (70), according to the California Department of Corrections. San Diego (41) is a distant fourth, followed by San Bernardino (37) and Sacramento (35).

Overall, there are 718 condemned inmates on death row in California, according to the department – including nine women, two of whom are from Orange County.

State-sanctioned executions in California have been around almost as long as the state. Legal executions were first authorized in 1851.

Before 1891, executions were carried out at the county level. A change in the law in 1891 required that hangings – then the approved method of execution – be conducted within the walls of a state prison, either San Quentin or Folsom.

The gas chamber

In 1937, the gas chamber replaced hanging in California, although hangings continued for a few years for those condemned inmates who were already under a sentence of death.

The death penalty in California was on hiatus for a few years in the 1970s, when it was struck down by the state Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court in different rulings as being “cruel and unusual.”

It was reestablished by state legislators in 1977, and by voters in 1978, and has been on the books ever since. The first execution after a 25-year delay was that of Robert Alton Harris in 1992.

In 1996, the gas chamber gave way to lethal injections.

In fact, serial killer William George Bonin, the so-called Freeway Killer who was sentenced to death by judges in Orange and Los Angeles counties, became the first to die by injection.

Even though state law allows for executions and most county prosecutors vigorously pursue them, few are executed.

The most recent delays were caused by the debate over whether lethal injections were constitutional, and by the limited supply of poison required to kill someone.

No one has been executed in California since Clarence Ray Allen in 2006.

According to the Department of Corrections, a total of 307 condemned inmates were hanged by the state; 196 were put to death in the gas chamber and 14 by injection.

Since capital punishment was reinstated in California in 1978, there have been 14 executions at San Quentin. Three of those sentences were imposed by Orange County judges.

During that same time period, 75 death row inmates have died of natural causes, suicide or other reasons. That list includes five men from Orange County.

No Orange County killers have an execution date scheduled.

Contact the writer: 714-834-3784 or lwelborn@ocregister.com