WAITING ON DEATH ROW : Inmates’ Cellblock Ordeals Have Been Dragging On, but the State’s New Supreme Court Justices May Shorten Them : Brash and Cocky Killer John Visciotti Blames Others for ‘Raw Deal’

No one has been executed by the State of California in 20 years. Yet the two-seat gas chamber at San Quentin Prison, where 190 men and four women were put to death between 1937 and 1967, is still in operating order.

Just a short walk away, in three cell blocks known as Death Row, 198 men, including 16 from Orange County, await the outcomes of their court appeals. All of them are aware that the new, more conservative state Supreme Court could increase the chances that they will die in the gas chamber.

Since George Deukmejian, a strong advocate of the death penalty, was elected governor, he has appointed five justices to the seven-member court. Three of those were appointed to replace Rose Elizabeth Bird, Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso, who were ousted by voters last November. Now, most criminal lawyers believe a resumption of executions is inevitable. The only question is when.

To determine how that has affected the tenor of life on Death Row, The Times tried to arrange interviews with all 16 inmates sent there by Orange County courts. However, San Quentin requires that interviews conducted in person with Death Row inmates be approved by their attorneys, and approval was obtained for only two of the prisoners, James P. Melton and John L. Visciotti.

At San Quentin, those two inmates, sentenced by the same judge, discussed the death penalty, life on Death Row and the paths that led them there.

John Louis Visciotti has a farewell speech planned if he is one day executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison.

“When they strap me into that chair, I’ve got some things to say to that D.A. that put me here,” Visciotti said in a recent interview. “I won’t say it now. I’ll wait. But people are going to know I’ve got something to say.”

Visciotti, 30, is an angry man.

While some Death Row inmates are introspective and take responsibility for their fates, Visciotti is brash, cocky and blames others.

He doesn’t deny he killed 22-year-old Timothy Dykstra of Westminster during a robbery in a remote area of south Orange County on Nov. 8, 1982. But he calls his death sentence “a raw deal.”

‘Worse Than Me’

“There’s lots of guys here who did things a lot worse than me, and they’re Mainline (part of the general prison population), not Death Row,” he said.

Visciotti’s language is violent. But don’t worry, he says, he’s not dangerous. He boasts that after four years on Death Row he does not have a single complaint on his record for fighting or breaking the rules. His talk, he says, is his escape valve.

Some of his talk is pretty tough.

He talks about rapists on Death Row: “I’ve got six sisters. If someone raped one of them, I’d kill him.”

He talks about the violence on Death Row: “I almost wish someone would come at me. It would give me a chance to let off a little of this steam I’ve got built up.”

Tough Talk

Maybe he is still just talking tough, but Visciotti says he realizes there is a good chance he will be executed.

“I say the chances are 60-40 that I’ll go,” he said.

It is no secret on Death Row that the state Supreme Court has new justices who might be more inclined to uphold death sentences.

Much of the talk, from cell to cell, is quite literally gallows humor.

“Stuff like, ‘If you get executed, can I have your TV?’ ” he said.

Visciotti kids a lot about it with Robert A. Harris of San Diego. Harris has been on Death Row nearly nine years, and his sentence has been upheld by the state Supreme Court and is now on appeal in federal court. Prosecutors generally believe that Harris will be among the first to go to the gas chamber when executions resume in California.

“The other day, I said, ‘Hey, Harris, why don’t you tell them you won’t go unless they take me with you?’ ” Visciotti said, chuckling. “He says, ‘You better watch out. They just might do it.’ That Harris--he’s something else.”

But Visciotti stops chuckling when he talks about how Gov. George Deukmejian’s Supreme Court appointments might affect his case.

“If they follow the law, then I’ve got a chance,” he said of the Supreme Court justices. “If they just do what the public wants--hell, we’ll all be executed.”

But Visciotti claims that execution is not the ultimate penalty.

Death Row, he said, is a punishment worse than death.

“Try putting bars in front of your closet and living there the rest of your life,” he said. “That’s what it’s like.”

Small-Boned Man

Visciotti, 5 feet, 8 inches tall, is a small-boned man with pale skin. He wears a mustache, and his hair is short, in contrast to the mass of black curls that covered his head when he was arrested at an Anaheim motel the morning after the Dykstra killing.

He is housed in the Northside section of what is called North Segregation, a prison by itself atop a five-story building called North Block. Northside is a long row of 34 individual cells. Southside, another set of 34 cells on the other side of a concrete wall, looks just like it.

During the day, Visciotti spends time on the exercise roof and on the 12-foot-wide tier outside his cell row, playing dominoes or cards or just talking to some of the other 33 inmates who share his world.

“You don’t make friends, just acquaintances,” he said. “There’s not a guy in here I would associate with on the outside.”

At 2:30 p.m., the inmates are locked into their cells, which they call their “houses.” In his, Visciotti watches television--a lot of television. Game shows, sitcoms, even nature films.

“I watch stuff where they show animals out in the woods, and it makes me realize how much I just took for granted every day,” he said.

He hates to read. So if he’s not watching television, he’s strumming a guitar, or drawing.

“I ain’t that good, but it’s something to do,” he said.

Then there are those long hours he spends sitting on his bunk, just thinking.

There are bitter memories about his arrest. Whatever remorse he has for the man he killed appears clouded by his own self-pity.

Yes, he said, he thinks about Dykstra all the time:

“I think about what a stupid idiot his friend was. If his friend had just gotten back in the car like I told him. But no. He had to play the big shot. No one was going to make him get into the car. So I panicked. I started shooting.”

Visciotti and Brian Hefner, 18, had been fired that day from their jobs at a burglar alarm sales company. It was payday, and they invited two co-workers, Dykstra and Michael Wolbert, then 21, to a party.

But there was no party. They drove in Wolbert’s car to the foothills in Santiago Canyon, where they robbed the two men. Visciotti shot Dykstra once at close range, and he died instantly. He shot Wolbert three times. Visciotti claims he was high on drugs at the time.

Wolbert somehow survived, though he lost the sight in his right eye, and testified against Visciotti and Hefner.

Hefner was sentenced to life without parole; Visciotti received the death sentence.

Visciotti said that Wolbert lied about Visciotti not trying to call the robbery off by telling the victims to get back into the car and that Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas M. Goethals put him up to lying.

“Sure I feel bad about Dykstra,” Visciotti said. “I feel bad that he’s the one who ended up dead over it.”

‘Vicious Killing’

Said Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald, the judge who sentenced Visciotti: “It was just a cold, vicious killing. Visciotti is a little liar trying to save his own skin.”

Goethals, who prosecuted Visciotti, seems unfazed.

“Nothing that Mr. Visciotti says surprises me,” he said.

Visciotti, whose parents lived in Fullerton when was convicted, has been in trouble with the law since he was 12. Records show he appeared 43 times in Juvenile Court.

He went to prison for a three-year term in 1978 after pleading guilty to stabbing a man. Charges that he stabbed the man’s pregnant girlfriend were dismissed in a plea bargain.

Still, he said, he was not prepared for Death Row.

The worst part, he said, is the uncertainty. It would be easier, he said, if he had a specific execution date or knew he would be behind bars for life. But not knowing what the future holds, coupled with the strict confinement, is too much, he said.

“I ain’t seen nothing like this,” he said. “Sometimes I just walk around in deep bouts of depression. I really, really don’t think I belong on Death Row.”

Linda Gilbert of Garden Grove agrees. Where he belongs, she said, is the gas chamber. Gilbert is Timothy Dykstra’s sister.

“What John Visciotti has right now is a luxury hotel,” she said. “He can talk about how bad it is, but he’s got his television. His family can come see him. If I want to visit my brother I have to go to his grave. John Visciotti can’t talk to me about how bad it is on Death Row.”