Leo Stanley

Leo Leonidas Stanley (1886 – 1976) was an American surgeon who served as the Chief Surgeon of the San Quentin State Prison from 1913 to 1951. He was most notable for performing unethical human experiments on inmates during his tenure.

Biography Early life Stanley was born in Buena Vista, Oregon. His father was a country doctor. When Stanley was 9, the family moved to San Luis Obispo County, California, where he studied at Paso Robles High School.

In 1903, Stanley studied at the Stanford University. A month before his graduation, Stanley married Romaine Stanley, While racial segregation was not enforced in San Quentin when Stanley arrived, Stanley oversaw the building of a new hospital that allowed segregation. Californian laws at the time allowed Stanley to forcibly sterilize inmates, though only up to a certain proportion. As a result, Stanley also encouraged voluntary sterilization, which led to around 600 total sterilization by 1940 and San Quentin far outpacing other Californian prisons in their sterilization program. Amongst those targeted for sterilization were homosexual and bisexual inmates. In his memoir, Stanley stated that "sterilization, when given its chance, will do much to stamp out crime. The right to bear children will in time be reserved to the fit."

Other experiments conducted by Stanley included thyroid removals for badly-behaving inmates and injecting ground-up testicles into the abdomens of inmates. Stanley also performed plastic surgeries on inmates, believing that they would be less likely to commit crimes if their appearances could help them find more work. He encouraged his interns to perform experiments on inmates, explaining that "patients could be under daily observation, and the 'follow up' conditions were ideal."

Contemporary reports mostly praised Stanley's efforts. In particular, the presence of professional medical staff meant that San Quentin was more sophisticated in medical treatments than other United States prison. Prison reformer Austin MacCormick praised San Quentin as one of "the best... in all the state institutions of the country." Stanley, influenced by his wife's struggle with tuberculosis, improved lighting and air-flow at his new hospital.

Stanley's wife Romaine died of tuberculosis in 1926. After her death, Stanley briefly left the prison in 1929 to become the ship's surgeon on the . In 1933, Stanley briefly served as the San Quentin warden when Warden James B. Holohan was recovering from an illness. Stanley remarried Bernice Holthouse in 1938.

Second World War In December 1941, shortly following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Stanley was called into service as a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy Reserve. He was posted to the naval hospital on Mare Island, then the San Francisco Naval Officer Procurement, the Pearl Harbor naval hospital and finally the Treasure Island naval hospital. Meanwhile, U.S. Navy physicians performed medical experiments on San Quentin inmates, many of whom volunteered due to patriotic fervor.

Later life and death After the war, he returned to his position at San Quentin, though he would find the newly-reorganized California Department of Corrections now used therapy as the guiding model.

Stanley retired from San Quentin in 1951. He operated a private practice in San Rafael, California, for a short time, and later worked as a physician on cruise ships. In his final years, he stayed at his farm, the Crest Farm, in Marin County, California. He died at the age of 90, with no children.