Second death row inmate has died within a week of ‘unknown’ causes

SAN QUENTIN >> For the second time in seven days, a man imprisoned on San Quentin’s death row has died, authorities announced Tuesday.

Royce Lyn Scott, 62, who had been on death row since 1997, died Sunday of “unknown” causes that still are being investigated. Six days earlier, 45 - year- old Noel Plata died at San Quentin under mysterious circumstances. A news release by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says Plata’s death doesn’t appear to be foul play but is still under investigation.

Neither news release says whether COVID-19 is suspected in Scott or Plata’s death. In prior news releases involving a virus-related death at San Quentin this year — of which there have been several — CDCR has disclosed that the person died of COVID-19 complications.

A CDCR spokeswoman declined to comment on either man’s death, pending the result of autopsies by the Marin County coroner.

Scott was sentenced to death in 1997 in the sexual assault and murder of 78-year- old Della Morris in Palm Springs, court records show. Plata, along with Ronald Tran, were convicted in 2008 of the 1995 murder of Linda Park in Orange County, a CDCR news release says.

Scott and Plata are the second and third death row inmates to die in California prisons this week; two days before Scott’s death, at a prison in Corcoran, 7 1- year- old James Odle died of natural causes. He had been sentenced to death in 1983 in the Contra Costa County murders of Rena Aguilar and Pinole police Officer Floyd “Bernie” Swartz, the father of Pinole kidnapping victim Amber Swartz.

This year, at least a dozen California death row prisoners have died of COVID-19, which matches the number of executions the state had performed from 1993 to 2006, when the last California execution took place.

In 2019, Gov. Gav in Newsom effectively halted executions throughout the state, though more than 700 California prisoners are technically on death row.