LOS ANGELES, CA – Daniel C. Frederickson, a California death row inmate convicted of fatally shooting a Santa Ana home improvement store manager during an attempted robbery nearly 30 years ago, has died in prison, state corrections officials said.
Frederickson, 63, died Aug. 19 while incarcerated at the California Institution for Men in Chino, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
A physician pronounced him dead at approximately 12:25 p.m. inside the institution.
The San Bernardino County Coroner will determine his official cause of death, CDCR said. The department’s current list of condemned prisoners who have died since 1978 lists Frederickson’s cause of death as pending.
Frederickson had been under a death sentence since January 1998 for the murder of 30-year-old Scott Wilson, a customer service manager at a HomeBase home improvement store in Santa Ana.
According to the California Supreme Court’s record in People v. Frederickson, Wilson was working at the store on June 13, 1996, when Frederickson entered with what prosecutors described as a plan to commit robbery.
The store was crowded because of a relocation sale.
At about 11:30 a.m., a cashier asked Wilson to make change for a customer. Wilson walked toward a safe behind the customer service area while Frederickson followed him.
Court records show Frederickson approached Wilson as he accessed the safe and ordered him to put money into a box.
Wilson did not comply.
Frederickson then shot Wilson once in the head at close range and fled the store with a firearm, according to the Supreme Court’s opinion in the case.
Wilson was still holding ten $5 bills when he was found after the shooting.
Witnesses saw Frederickson run from the store and enter the passenger side of a white van.
A loss-prevention employee followed him outside and memorized the van’s license plate number, providing investigators with an important lead.
Frederickson was arrested the following day.
The evidence against him included statements he made shortly after the killing.
According to the Supreme Court opinion, Frederickson telephoned the HomeBase store after the shooting and unknowingly spoke with a Santa Ana police officer.
During that call, he said the employee should not have resisted and acknowledged that the victim died after refusing to hand over the money.
Frederickson later admitted during a police interview that he had entered the store with what he called a “game plan” and had identified Wilson as the manager before following him to the safe.
He told investigators he became angry when Wilson refused to comply.
He also acknowledged having committed robberies for years before the killing, according to the court record.
The Orange County District Attorney formally charged Frederickson in February 1997 with murder and attempted robbery.
Prosecutors also alleged the special circumstance that the murder occurred during the attempted robbery and alleged that Frederickson personally used a firearm.
His jury trial began in October 1997.
After six days of testimony, jurors convicted Frederickson of first-degree murder and found true both the robbery special circumstance and firearm-use allegation.
A separate sanity phase followed.
On Nov. 20, 1997, jurors found that Frederickson was legally sane at the time he killed Wilson.
The case then moved into the penalty phase.
Frederickson represented himself at trial with the assistance of advisory counsel, an unusual decision in a capital case.
Court records show that his mental health history became a substantial issue during the proceedings.
He had previously spent time in state institutions and had been committed to Atascadero State Hospital before his release in 1995.
During the penalty phase, Frederickson at one point asked jurors to recommend death.
He later argued that his mental health history and other circumstances should be considered in deciding whether he should be executed.
The jury ultimately returned a death verdict on Dec. 3, 1997.
The trial court formally sentenced him to death on Jan. 9, 1998.
CDCR records show Frederickson was received from Orange County on Jan. 14, 1998, and placed on condemned status for first-degree murder with a firearm enhancement.
His capital conviction automatically went before the California Supreme Court.
That appeal remained pending for more than two decades before the court issued its ruling in February 2020.
In People v. Frederickson, the California Supreme Court unanimously upheld the murder conviction, the jury’s sanity finding and the death sentence.
The court found no reversible error affecting the judgment.
It did, however, strike a $10,000 restitution fine that had appeared in the written judgment because the trial judge had never imposed that fine orally in Frederickson’s presence at sentencing.
Apart from that modification, the judgment was affirmed.
The Supreme Court opinion also provides a detailed account of Wilson’s life and the effect of his death on his family.
Wilson’s coworkers described him as friendly, outgoing and hardworking.
His brother testified that Wilson enjoyed working at HomeBase because he liked being around people but was also pursuing a career in sports broadcasting.
Before his death, he had recently become an intern at a local television network and had produced a sports promotional segment.
Frederickson’s death ends almost three decades of incarceration under a capital sentence.
California has not carried out an execution since 2006.
Executions have remained halted under a gubernatorial moratorium first imposed in 2019, while condemned prisoners continue serving their sentences within the state prison system.
CDCR currently reports 564 condemned people in California custody.
The department has also been moving condemned prisoners away from a single centralized death-row housing model under its broader Condemned Inmate Transfer Program.
Frederickson was being held at the California Institution for Men rather than San Quentin when he died.
The California Institution for Men opened in 1941 and houses minimum-, medium- and maximum-security prisoners.
CDCR said approximately 3,075 incarcerated people were housed there at the time of its announcement, with roughly 1,500 employees working at the institution.
The prison is located in Chino, placing Frederickson’s death under the jurisdiction of the San Bernardino County Coroner for the official determination of cause.
CDCR has not indicated that Frederickson’s death is considered suspicious.
The department’s official condemned-inmate death list continues to show the cause as pending while the coroner’s investigation is completed.
Frederickson is listed as the 202nd condemned prisoner to die in California custody since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1978, according to CDCR’s historical record.
His death does not alter the underlying judgment in Wilson’s murder.
The first-degree murder conviction, robbery special circumstance and death sentence had remained intact following the California Supreme Court’s 2020 decision.
Nearly 30 years after Wilson was killed inside the Santa Ana store, the criminal case now closes with Frederickson’s death in state custody.
His official cause of death remains pending.
