2nd retrial to start for man previously sentenced to death in 1981 Newport Beach strangling

The second retrial for a man whose conviction in the 1981 killing of a Newport Beach retiree was overturned by a federal judge is expected to begin next week with opening statements.

During jury selection this week, James Andrew Melton, 65, clad in a brown sport coat and slacks, occasionally turned around to assess the pool of 135 potential jurors who had filed into a courtroom at Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana.

Judge Gregg Prickett gave the potential jurors limited information about the case on Tuesday, telling them only that it’s a criminal trial estimated to last about five weeks.

In 1982, Melton, of Los Angeles, was convicted and sentenced to death after being accused of seducing 77-year-old Anthony DeSousa and then strangling him in his Newport Beach condominium in a plot to steal from him.

Melton was awaiting execution at San Quentin State Prison when a federal judge threw out his conviction in 2007.

U.S. District Judge Robert Takasugi ruled Melton was too heavily medicated on psychiatric drugs during his trial to understand the proceedings or participate in his defense.

According to court filings, Melton had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from violence and sexual abuse as a child and had a history of alcohol and drug abuse that began when he was a boy.

After a new trial was ordered, the Orange County district attorney’s office decided not to seek the death penalty.

In the 2014 retrial, a jury deadlocked 10-2 in favor of convicting Melton of murder.

Jurors in that trial did not hear testimony from Melton’s former lover Johnny Boyd, to whom prosecutors said Melton confessed shortly after DeSousa’s death.

But Prickett ruled this year that prosecutors will be able to present testimony from Boyd that was given during the original trial. Boyd died in 1992.

Prosecutors allege that Melton and Boyd, while serving prison sentences in San Luis Obispo in 1980, concocted a plan to make money by finding older gay men through ads in newspapers. The plan, prosecutors say, was to contact the men, go to their homes and take items of value “through any means necessary,” according to court filings.

According to prosecutors, Boyd set up a meeting between DeSousa and Melton but was not present when DeSousa was killed.

DeSousa, a widower who frequently solicited for male companions in newspapers geared toward gay men, was found dead and nude on his bed by police performing a check on his welfare at the behest of a neighbor in October 1981.

DeSousa’s hands were bound in front of his body with an electrical cord. A pillow covered his face and a cord was tightly wound around his neck. He had been severely beaten before his death, police said.

DeSousa’s condominium had been ransacked and blood was spattered throughout the bedroom. On the dining table were two used dinner settings and two uneaten servings of pie, according to court filings.

Authorities said Melton had DeSousa’s car, watch, gold chain and other items at the time of his arrest.

Melton’s lawyers argued in his 2014 re-trial that authorities arrested the wrong person. They contended Melton was home when DeSousa was killed.

Court filings by Melton’s lawyers allege that Boyd set up Melton to take the fall for the killing because Melton had ended their romantic relationship.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN