SAN QUENTIN, Calif. – A Los Angeles teacher faces criminal charges after she allegedly attempted to smuggle drugs and phones to a death row inmate at California’s San Quentin State Prison.

Assistant District Attorney Barry Borden told the Los Angeles Times that assistant teacher Teri Orina Nichols was arrested at the prison Thursday during a meeting with –year-old death row inmate Bruce Millsap.

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Nichols faces one felony count for smuggling drugs and a misdemeanor count of smuggling a wireless communication device. Millsap, a member of the East Coast Crips, is on death row for killing eight people during a string of robberies in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties in 2000, according to The Marion Independent Journal.

San Quinton State Prison Lt. Samuel Robinson told the San Francisco Examiner that Nichols was visiting Millsap in a module alone at the same time prison’s Investigative Services Unit was in the visiting unit on an unrelated matter. Investigators noticed ziplock bags in the trash that did not resemble packaging of items in the vending machines, so they strip searched Millsap but found nothing.

The Journal reports:

Officers then asked Nichols whether she would consent to a search, according to a prison arrest report. Nichols admitted to bringing food for Millsap in the plastic bags. She also produced a large cloth beanie under her clothing that contained 18 cellphones, 18 cellphone chargers, two unidentified blue pills and about 3 ounces of heroin, the prison alleges.

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“We are evaluating how she was successful in circumventing our security measures,” Robinson said.

Robinson described Nichols as an “assistant teacher” in the Los Angeles Unified School District, though district officials have not yet provided information on her employment status, according to the news site.

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Nichols was charged and released over the weekend, and she’s expected in Marion County Superior Court for an arraignment on Sept. 13, Borden said.

The Los Angeles Times reports the recent incident with Nichols is part of a much bigger problem of drug smuggling into state prisons.

Six death row inmates died between 2010 and 2015 with methamphetamines, heroin, or other drugs in their systems, and eight death row inmates died of drug overdoses during the same time period, according to the news site.

It’s unclear where the deaths occurred, but San Quentin hosts the states only death row for male inmates.

According to the Times:

Death row inmates are strip searched regularly, including before and after they leave cells to exercise, go to the law library or see visitors.

The overdoses on death row mirror the larger problem with drugs in California’s prison system as a whole. From 2010 to 2015, 109 inmates died of overdoses, according to state figures.