Execution Follows Night Of Delays -- Harris Taken To Gas Chamber Twice Before Death Comes

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. - Double murderer Robert Alton Harris went to his death in the gas chamber today after an extraordinary night in which courts alternately stayed and cleared the way for his execution.

In an unusual move, the Supreme Court overturned the fourth and final stay, issued by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and ordered lower courts to file no more stays without the high court's permission. The fourth stay was issued after Harris had earlier been strapped in the gas chamber.

After the Supreme Court's ruling, he was hastily returned to the chamber, looking somber but winking at one guard. He mouthed, "all right."

The gas was introduced at about 6:05 a.m., and shortly afterward Harris' head jerked from left to right before falling slowly to his chest. He appeared to be unconscious about 6:12 a.m., and was pronounced dead at 6:21 a.m.

Harris, 39, died 14 years after he shot to death two San Diego teen-agers so he could use their car for a bank robbery. It was the first execution in California since 1967.

It was a long and emotionally draining night as courts battled and Harris waited out his fate.

The first stay came less than 30 minutes after Harris was moved to San Quentin State Prison's death-watch cell at 6:22 p.m. Harris learned of it like most other people did - while watching television coverage of his execution.

The second stay came around 10:30 p.m., after Harris had feasted on his final meal: two Domino's pizzas with everything but anchovies, a 21-piece bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pepsi and jelly beans.

The two other stays followed as Harris' scheduled midnight execution time came and went and the courts wrestled with a claim that Harris' brother shot one of the victims and with arguments that death by gas is cruel and unusual punishment.

While the lawyers were fighting over his fate, Harris spent the evening in his cell within sight of the gas chamber. He read his mail, including hate letters, and talked with his spiritual adviser - and second cousin - Leon Harris, a Southern Baptist minister from Alabama who was locked in an adjacent cell.

After the third stay was overturned, witnesses were led into the room outside the chamber. Harris was brought in and strapped into the chair by three guards at 3:49 a.m.

At 3:51 a.m., the telephone in the witness room rang. A member of Harris' family was heard to say, "Oh, God." Guards re-entered the chamber and unstrapped Harris, and he was returned to a holding area to await the Supreme Court's final decision on the fourth stay.

The Supreme Court acted to overturn the various stays by a 7-2 vote. Justices John Paul Stevens and Harry Blackmun dissented.

Throughout the night, while Harris awaited his execution, media mingled with protesters outside in a byzantine scene in San Quentin village. Microwave towers sprouted among flowers. Helicopters circled. Protesters for and against capital punishment did verbal battle.

A lone woman rubbed her rosaries and prayed. An entrepreneur sold "Save Robert Harris" buttons for $2. Two young women carried hand-drawn signs asking: "What about the victims?"

"I don't have any doubt in my mind that Jesus Christ would pull that one switch," said the Rev. Bill Fling, an Orangevale, Calif., evangelist. "One aspect of Jesus most people don't think of is he is coming back to Earth to judge the world and send people to hell. He would have no trouble with Alton Harris, I promise you that."

Twenty feet across the village's Main Street, which leads up to the prison's east entrance, Episcopal priest Bill Rankin led a circle of 20 people in prayer. "I'm against this lunacy of killing people to prove people are wrong when they kill other people," he said. "If we live in this society at the mercy of others, it is best to be merciful."

Harris was the 169th person put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to resume capital punishment in 1976.

Harris had appealed to the Supreme Court six times, received five execution dates and came within 12 hours of death in 1990 as the case made its way through the courts, becoming a test of several death penalty issues.

Mother Teresa, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning nun who met Harris in 1987, had appealed to California Gov. Pete Wilson to spare his life.

According to testimony at his trial, Harris and his brother Danny were looking for a getaway car for an intended bank robbery when they came upon John Mayeski and Michael Baker eating hamburgers in a parking lot. Harris forced the 16-year-olds to drive to a rural area, ordered them out of the car and shot them.

Danny Harris, who took the stand against his brother and received a 3 1/2-year sentence for kidnapping under a plea bargain, testified that Robert Harris taunted one of the boys to "quit crying and die like a man," then shot them.

At the time, Harris was on parole for a 1975 manslaughter conviction.

Baker's father, San Diego Detective Steven Baker, asked to be a witness to the execution. Baker arrested Harris after the robbery in 1978 without knowing that his son had been slain earlier in the day and that Harris was the killer.

"It was a cop's nightmare," Baker had said.

-- Compiled from Associated Press, Knight-Ridder Newspapers and Reuters.