Is James Fayed Still Alive on California’s Death Row?

Yes. James Michael Fayed is still alive. As of March 2026, the 63-year-old remains on California’s condemned inmate list for orchestrating the 2008 contract killing of his estranged wife, Pamela Fayed.¹ He is held at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton, and a statewide moratorium on executions means no execution date is on the horizon.²

Where He Is Held Now

Fayed is no longer at San Quentin. Beginning in early 2024, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation launched the Condemned Inmate Transfer Program and moved hundreds of condemned prisoners to roughly two dozen facilities across the state. San Quentin’s death row units were emptied so the space could be converted to educational and rehabilitative use.³

Fayed was among those transferred. He is now housed at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton, a medical prison that as of 2025 holds roughly 80 former death row prisoners. Many live in an honor unit with access to work crews and programming that were not available on San Quentin’s segregated death row.⁴ His legal status has not changed with the move. He is still a condemned inmate; the state has simply stopped concentrating that population in one prison.

Why He Has Not Been Executed

California has not carried out an execution since 2006. In March 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom imposed a formal moratorium on the death penalty. The order granted a reprieve to every condemned inmate in the state, withdrew California’s lethal injection protocol, and directed the closure of the execution chamber at San Quentin.⁵

The moratorium is not a commutation. It does not undo any conviction or vacate any death sentence. It only prevents the state from scheduling execution dates while the order remains in place.⁶ So Fayed’s sentence stands on paper, but the mechanism to carry it out has been shut down for years.

What He Was Convicted Of

Pamela Fayed was stabbed to death on July 28, 2008, in a Century City parking garage in Los Angeles. She had just left a meeting with divorce attorneys. Her attackers stabbed her thirteen times; the fatal wound was to her throat. Security cameras captured them fleeing in a red SUV that had been rented by the couple’s precious metals company, Goldfinger Coin & Bullion.⁷

James Fayed had come from the same attorney meeting. Surveillance footage showed him sitting on a nearby bench, texting on his phone, while bystanders ran toward his wife’s screams.⁷ Prosecutors proved that he had paid his employee Jose “Joey” Moya $25,000 to arrange the killing. Moya recruited Gabriel Jay Marquez, who brought in his nephew, Steven Vicente Simmons, who an appellate court later noted “probably did the actual killing.”⁸

A key piece of the state’s case was a jailhouse recording. After Fayed was arrested on federal financial charges in August 2008, a fellow inmate named Shawn Smith wore a recording device supplied by LAPD detectives. On tape, Fayed admitted paying Moya to kill Pamela and asked Smith to help arrange a hit on Moya to eliminate him as a witness.⁸

A Los Angeles jury convicted Fayed in May 2011 of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, and found true two special circumstances: murder for financial gain and murder by lying in wait. The jury returned a death verdict. On November 17, 2011, Judge Kathleen Kennedy formally sentenced him to death for the murder plus 25 years to life for the conspiracy. She called him “one cold, calculating human being” and noted that he had tried to subvert the jury process by arranging anonymous emails and phone calls alleging juror misconduct.⁷

What Is Left of His Appeals

Fayed’s direct appeal is over. On April 2, 2020, the California Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and death sentence in full. His central argument had been that the jailhouse recording should have been suppressed on Sixth Amendment and Miranda grounds, and that his federal detention was unlawful because bail had been improperly denied. The court rejected each argument, holding that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is offense-specific and did not extend to the uncharged murder, that a conversation with someone Fayed believed to be a fellow inmate was not coercive enough to trigger Miranda, and that any error in denying bail would not justify suppressing his statements.⁸

Federal habeas review has also closed. Fayed’s petition in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California was dismissed, and the Ninth Circuit denied a certificate of appealability in September 2022.⁹ In May 2025, Fayed filed an original habeas petition directly with the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court denied it on October 6, 2025.¹⁰

One proceeding remains open. A state habeas corpus petition filed in March 2020 by the California Appellate Project is still pending before the California Supreme Court. It is a placeholder, meant to preserve Fayed’s rights until court-appointed counsel is assigned and can amend it with substantive claims. No amended petition has been filed.²

The practical picture: Fayed is alive, in state custody at a medical prison in Stockton, under a death sentence that survives every court review filed so far, and shielded from execution by a moratorium that shows no sign of lifting.

1
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Condemned Inmate List
2
U.S. Supreme Court. Brief in Opposition, In Re James Michael Fayed, No. 24-7445
3
CDCR. CDCR Launches Condemned Inmate Transfer Program
4
San Quentin News. Former Death Row Residents Thrive at CHCF
5
California Governor’s Office. Governor Gavin Newsom Orders a Halt to the Death Penalty in California
6
CDCR. Capital Punishment
7
Los Angeles Times. James Fayed Gets Death Penalty for Wifes Killing
8
FindLaw. People v. Fayed, S198132
9
U.S. Supreme Court. Petition Filing, In Re James Michael Fayed, No. 24-7445
10
U.S. Supreme Court. Docket, In Re James Michael Fayed, No. 24-7445