Store Manager’s Killer Sentenced to Death

SANTA ANA —  Declaring that the man who fatally shot his brother is “just bad,” 41-year-old Kirk Wilson said Friday that he has every intention of being there the day Daniel Carl Frederickson is executed.

“It won’t be over until I go to San Quentin,” the brother of murder victim Scott Wilson said after Frederickson was sentenced to die by a Superior Court judge. “I want to press the button if they’ll let me.”

Moments earlier, Judge William R. Froeberg had asked Frederickson to stand as Froeberg imposed the sentence, making the 34-year-old man the first Orange County defendant to be condemned to die in 1998.

Froeberg’s decision came one month after a jury had recommended death for Frederickson. The same panel had convicted him of killing Wilson, 30, of Costa Mesa, during a foiled robbery at a HomeBase store in Santa Ana. The victim, who managed the store, had refused to hand over cash during the robbery. Frederickson got angry and shot him in the temple.

Citing Frederickson’s lengthy criminal record, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Tanizaki said a death sentence is “a lifetime achievement award” for the murderer, who said he had initially planned the robbery as a way to be returned to prison.

“He’s been in prison for most of his adult life because of his past felony conduct,” the prosecutor said. “This [murder] is another in a series of acts, and he never learned his lesson. He wanted to go back to prison, and he is going back--but not on his terms, on justice’s terms.”

For a death penalty case, Frederickson’s was unusual because he acted as his own attorney. He had represented himself in previous cases and had been convicted four times in the past 15 years of a variety of felonies including burglary, robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.

Frederickson wore a suit and tie during the trial, but he reluctantly appeared for sentencing Friday handcuffed and wearing a jail jumpsuit.

“I feel that my creativity and the decorum of this courtroom is diminished by having me appear in restraints and a jail outfit,” Frederickson said to the judge, who denied his request to change clothes.

During the penalty phase of his trial, Frederickson pleaded with jurors to recommend that he receive the death penalty. But during his closing arguments last month, he backed away from that. He argued instead that mental problems have plagued him since childhood and blamed the murder on his “explosive personality disorder.”

The jury rejected the argument and found that he was sane when he pulled the trigger.

On Friday, one of the jurors, Diana Derry of Garden Grove, showed up for the sentencing “because I think he deserves not to live,” she said.

“It wasn’t hard to make a decision, and I wanted to see it finished,” she said.

Because Frederickson represented himself during the trial, Derry said, jurors got to know him more than they anticipated they would. She found him to be “egotistical, arrogant but intelligent and very articulate.”

Still, she said, his decision to represent himself “hurt him big-time. He was claiming insanity, but he wanted to make his own defense. That was ridiculous from the start.”

Kirk Wilson said that if Frederickson had received the lesser penalty of life in prison without parole, he essentially would have been rewarded for murdering his brother.

“He was cavalier about the whole incident of murdering my brother,” he said. “At no point during the trial did he show remorse.”

Wilson said his brother had been planning a career in sports television production and had gotten himself together in the last four years of his life after being directionless for some time.

He said his brother’s murder represented yet another family tragedy. One older brother died in an auto accident, and another died of a drug overdose.

“I’m the only one left,” he said.

Wilson said in court that he had been holding his brother’s hand when he was pronounced dead in the hospital.

“The only thing that will be justice for my family is when I can stand in a room and [Frederickson] is pronounced dead,” he said.