James Thompson, who was convicted of
murder in Riverside County in 1996, also
complains about the slowness of the appeals
process as well as the difficulty of getting a good
attorney. He says he sat in solitary confinement in county jail for five years after getting
arrested in 1991 while on parole for another
murder in Texas he did plead guilty to. After
brief meetings with an attorney he didn’t think
was fighting hard enough for him, Thompson
was found guilty in just three hours.
“I have been fighting this since 1991 and
am no closer to getting a decision,” he says
through a fence in a yard for small groups of
condemned men. “I’m in limbo and the limbo
is indefinite. We need to speed up the appeals
process — it’s job security for prison guards.”
San Quentin’s death row, where all male
condemned are housed, holds infamous
criminals like Scott Peterson from Modesto
(convicted of murdering his pregnant wife),
Douglas Clark (who with an accomplice was
one of the Sunset Strip Killers), Richard Allen
Davis (whose crimes fueled passage of the
three strikes law) and David Carpenter (the
Trailside Killer). This list also includes Joseph
Naso, convicted of serial murder in Marin in
2013. Judge Andrew Sweet called Naso “an
evil and disturbed man” who “inflicted abhor-
rent and repugnant levels of suffering and
cruelty” on victims.
When asked his thoughts on being exe-
cuted, Naso says, “I don’t know what to
make of it; nobody wants to be executed. But
it’s a one-time thing, you can’t reflect on it
after it happens.”
The 82-year-old confirms that there is a
lot of talk among prisoners about the ballot
propositions and the death penalty, adding
that whatever the result, it’s not likely to have
much impact on him at his age. “California is a
little behind the times. But whatever happens,
it will be too late for me.” m
An eye for an eye is teaching
the wrong lesson. I’ve
never heard anyone say they
won’t do a crime because of
the death penalty.
