A Solitary Symbol in a Deadly Tug of War : Execution: For politicians and lawyers on both sides, Robert Alton Harris’ fate is of critical significance.

Robert Alton Harris moved a step closer to the California history books this month when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the fourth appeal of his death sentence. If Harris’ further appeals fail to win him a significant delay, he could be executed by this summer for killing two teen-agers in San Diego 12 years ago. His would be the first execution in California in 23 years. It would also probably be the last in the state through the first term of its next governor.

That Harris is likely to be the first person executed in California in more than two decades is more widely known than the fact that his execution will be an isolated event. Yet it is Harris’ distance from our next execution as well as from our last one that makes this case statistically and politically special.

Harris’ lonely path to the threshold of the gas chamber is a mix of misadventure and chance. He was convicted of a double murder committed soon after a new death-penalty law came into effect. The killing of more than one victim is considered an aggravating circumstance that generates eligibility for a death sentence.

Yet these facts hardly guarantee either a death sentence or an execution. More than 2,500 Californians were victims of criminal homicide during the year of Harris’ crime, and hundreds of these killings qualified for the death sentence. But nine out of 10 killers who could be tried on a capital charge do not stand trial for their lives. Instead, they plead guilty to lesser charges, as Robert Harris’ co-defendant--his brother--did in this case. Prosecutors who strongly support the death penalty engage in, rather than disapprove of, this kind of bargain justice. So perhaps one out of every 100 California killers receives a death sentence.

Next, a death sentence and an execution are two different things. More than 350 Californians have spent time under death sentences since 1979, yet only Harris stands any immediate risk of execution.

Why? His murder trial was more carefully conducted than the error-filled extravaganzas that occur in many death cases, and an appeal was promptly heard and decided by the California Supreme Court before a glut of death cases inundated that court. The Harris case left the state courts to begin its labyrinthine progress through the federal appeals process nine years ago. Later convictions, caught in the glut of death-penalty appeals, are years behind Harris’.

That is why the Harris case is of critical significance to politicians and to lawyers on both sides. If Harris is reprieved, it may be four or five years before another execution is at hand.

For many of the death penalty’s staunchest supporters, including Gov. George Deukmejian, Harris must die soon if the death penalty is to make a comeback on their political watch.

For the next round of gubernatorial hopefuls, Harris may be less trouble if he is dead than if he is alive, because his execution this year could provide a full term without execution pressure. More delay in the Harris case might put terrible pressure on the next governor. It might not qualify as a chapter in “Profiles in Courage,” but candidates Pete Wilson, Dianne Feinstein and John Van de Kamp may be wishing Deukmejian speedy success in this matter for rather selfish reasons.

The Harris case is also of special significance to a group of lawyers that has grown middle-aged together in the tug-of-war surrounding capital punishment in California. Death-penalty cases are the Super Bowl of criminal litigation, so it is no surprise that many of the lawyers who have spent years in the district attorney’s and state attorney general’s offices view an actual execution as the only victory that can compensate their efforts. There really is a “death penalty team” at work in California, as well as a “no-executions team.” Each side takes the outcome in the Harris case very seriously. It is, oddly, as much their war as the defendants’.

So if an execution comes to California in People vs. Robert Harris, at center stage will be issues of the symbolism of capital punishment and of lawyerly competition far removed from the moral turpitude of this defendant. There is a curious sense in which one could say that if the execution comes to pass, Mr. Harris should not take it personally.