WAITING ON DEATH ROW : Inmates’ Cellblock Ordeals Have Been Dragging On, but the State’s New Supreme Court Justices May Shorten Them : James Melton Still Says He’s Innocent of Newport Slaying

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.

San Quentin State Prison sits on a 432-acre point that juts into the choppy waters along the northern edge of San Francisco Bay. The Richmond-San Rafael Bridge arches off into the foggy distance.

It’s a view James A. Melton never sees.

Melton’s world is a cell, roughly 4 1/2 feet by 10 feet, with three solid walls and a set of bars, on San Quentin’s Death Row.

From inside his cell, Melton can see out through the bars onto a 12-foot-wide open area extending the length of the 34-cell block--the tier, it is called. Beyond that is a wall of steel screen that separates the guards from the inmates when they are on the tier.

Melton can get a brief glimpse of the main, walled-in yard at San Quentin as he passes between his cellblock and the visitors’ room next door. Above his cell is the concrete exercise roof, where he gets fresh air and sunlight--but where an imposing wall on all sides blocks any view of the outside world.

For Melton, it’s an existence of “madness and chaos.”

Yet, the strict, physical confines are not the hard part, he said. It’s the combination of constant tension and “knowing that this time I’m up against the ultimate.”

Many Death Row inmates fill the endless hours with cards or dominoes, lift weights or play tag football, Melton said.

“Some do nothing but drink coffee and watch TV 24 hours a day,” he said.

Some inmates talk a lot. Sometimes they even laugh.

“But none of it’s real,” he said.

Mostly, Melton said, the inmates wait.

But no matter how long they wait, death never seems far away. At the end of the tier, the inmates can look through a barred window and see the red light above the gas chamber in the building next to them.

Everyone on Death Row has heard the speculation that a new, more conservative state Supreme Court could mean a rash of executions at San Quentin for the first time in 20 years.

But Melton is not ready to give up.

“I honestly believe in my heart that one day I will get out,” Melton said. “But the road is not just uphill--it’s straight up. It’s going to be a battle. It will probably be a battle until the day I die.”

Melton, 35, has spent most of his adult life in jails or prisons. He has been on Death Row 4 1/2 years. He was convicted of murder during a robbery at 77-year-old Tony DeSousa’s Newport Beach home on Oct. 10, 1981. Evidence showed Melton had planned to befriend someone who advertised for companionship in a Los Angeles gay newspaper. DeSousa, found nude, had been beaten and strangled, and his hands were tied in front of him.

Before the killing, Melton had been convicted of a string of rapes involving two brutal beatings--and he once nearly slashed to death a man who had taken it upon himself to become Melton’s mentor. All of that was considered by the jury that returned his death verdict.

Melton, at 6 feet, 1 inch, is a large, muscular black man with broad shoulders. His shaved head and cold stare make him appear menacing. But he is polite, articulate and likable. Even Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald, who sentenced Melton to death, told him in court that he liked him.

Melton blames his troubles on no one but himself.

“I could be bitter,” he said. “But bitter at who?”

Melton’s day begins between 6:30 a.m. and 7:45 a.m., with breakfast in his cell. The cell doors open after that and the 34 inmates in his cellblock are allowed to mingle on the tier. There are showers, a corner where they can lift weights and a couple of tables. Except when they are escorted to the roof for recreation, they are on the tier until 2:30 p.m.

That’s lockdown time, and the inmates then are confined to their cells until after breakfast the next day.

Right after lockdown, when it’s noisy, is when Melton sleeps. He awakes an hour or so before midnight and stays up until 3 or 4 a.m.

“The noise is just so bad, I try to sleep through it,” he explained. It’s nothing special. Just the constant clatter of too many people in a small place. “I get up late at night, when it’s more quiet. Then I can read, or listen to my music, or just have time to think.”

What he thinks about, Melton said, is “what a damn fool I am.”

Melton still maintains his innocence in the Newport Beach slaying, but he does admit to a lifetime of crime.

“It’s hard to explain to my mother; she wants to know where she went wrong,” Melton said. “I tell her, ‘No, it wasn’t you.’ It was just me.”

A fellow Death Row inmate, William C. Payton, persuaded Melton to read the Bible.

But, Melton said, that does not mean he is religious.

“I’m not asking God to open these doors and let me walk out of here,” Melton said. “But there are some things I want to know--inside of me--and I’m searching for the answers to them.”

That search for inner peace, he said, is not easy in a place like San Quentin.

He still carries bird shot in his lower lip, which he said he got when the guards settled an inmate dispute during his first week at San Quentin and he happened to be close by.

“That woke me up to San Quentin real fast,” he said.

Much of the pressure, he said, comes from the other inmates. He is bothered, he said, by the fact that he must live with a bunch of killers.

“I’ll be honest with you: There are some people here who deserve to die, or at least be put away where they never see daylight,” Melton said. “It’s really getting sick. They’ll laugh about their crimes, or talk about things they’re going to do to someone when they get out.”

Melton is also bothered by racial tension and what he calls the gang influence in prison.

“You are either with them or against them; they don’t allow anything else,” Melton said. “They don’t want any individuality. So I choose to be against them.”

Physical violence on his cellblock, with inmates using fists or crudely made knives, is a constant presence, he said.

“There might be two fights in a week. There might not be a fight for several weeks. But you always know it’s there, always a possibility.”

Then there is the added pressure, he said, from the system.

“It’s hard to make people understand what’s it’s like. We have lockdown all the time. You wake up and you don’t know if you’re going to be let out of your cell that morning. How do you explain what that does to your mind?”

Melton has married since coming to Death Row. He met his wife by phone, through a friend, and they began to write to each other. They were married about a year ago in a ceremony in the visitors’ room in front of a mountain stream painting done by another inmate. Death Row inmates get no conjugal visits, but Melton said he and his wife are close.

“We decided to get married so that we would both be stronger to face whatever it is that’s ahead of us.”

What’s ahead for Melton may not be easy. His appellate lawyer, Robert F. Kane of San Francisco, believes he has a good chance of winning a new penalty trial. But Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Patrick S. Geary isn’t worried.

“If he gets a new trial, he will get the death sentence again, no question,” Geary said. “He may be likable, but he’s the most dangerous man I’ve ever prosecuted.”

And what if Melton learns, with finality, that he is going to die in the gas chamber?

“Then I’ll just have to deal with it,” he said. “There ain’t no running from it. You can’t change these people’s minds. But if it’s a choice between prison for the rest of my life, or death, I’ll take death. . . . I can do life without parole but not at San Quentin. Not like this.”