SAN QUENTIN, Calif. (AP) – A 69-year-old inmate has died while awaiting execution at San Quentin State Prison for a 1989 murder in Riverside County.
The state corrections department says Ronald Harold Seaton died at an outside hospital of natural causes Friday.
It says the announcement of his death was withheld until Wednesday pending next-of-kin notification.
Seaton was sentenced to death in 1989 by a Riverside County jury for the 1986 first-degree murder of Willis Paul Jones during a robbery at Jones’ home.
The department says a cause of death will be determined by the coroner.
Fourteen California inmates have been executed since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978, while 69 inmates have died from natural causes and 24 by suicide.