Death Row Drama Keeps Dragging On

Maybe it’s nostalgia, but they don’t seem to make stays of execution like they used to. Back in the days when John Garfield was Hollywood’s favorite Death Row prisoner, a last-minute stay was always a matter of some intimacy. The warden got the call, and he delivered the good news personally to Garfield, who gripped the bars of his cell and looked upward.

The stay made Garfield’s mom happy, it made the wife happy. Otherwise, the outside world went about its business, getting and spending, more or less ignoring the small drama on Death Row.

On Friday, the stay of Robert Alton Harris’ execution was a different matter. Nothing about Harris’ upcoming demise has been ignored. This weekend was scheduled as a sort of public extravaganza preceding his death Tuesday, full of marches across the Golden Gate Bridge and fasting vigils outside San Quentin’s gates.

It was said that the pro-death-penalty forces were assembling in Marin County, where San Quentin sits nestled by the bay. They would do battle with the antis, and the threat of resulting traffic jams had persuaded the California Highway Patrol to announce that vehicle flow across the bridge would be protected at all costs. The hour of execution was changed from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. to ensure a normal commute on Harris’ last day.

In short, everyone had their plan. This included the large newspapers and television stations of California, which had staked out Harris’ every relative, his victims’ relatives, his old prosecutors, his schoolteachers. The whole state was wired for comment on Harris’ last hours. Dozens of stories had been written in advance and set in type, waiting for weekend release.

So when the stay was announced by U.S Appellate Judge John T. Noonan, there was a reaction here that was uniquely modern. First there was joy or anger, depending on one’s point of view. And then something else, a kind of disappointment. The extravaganza might not, after all, go on as scheduled. A major piece of show business had just gone down the tubes.

In the face of this disappointment, some showed defiance. The organizers of the anti-death penalty march across the Golden Gate Bridge decided to march anyway. And outside San Quentin’s gates, a group keeping vigil said they would continue to fast. It was as if, for these people, the momentum could not be turned off.

Elsewhere, a dutiful de-coupling began. Inside newspapers, editors were furiously tearing apart Harris layouts. Television stations were breaking the linkups to the homes of victims’ families.

And everywhere there was the sense of surprise. Legally, Harris had been considered a done deal. Hadn’t there been 11 years of appeals? Hadn’t he tried everything, and weren’t his lawyers grasping at the well-known straws? Wasn’t the state attorney general holding a briefing every day, showing a flowchart that documented Harris’ sure march toward death?

It was as if, in the heady momentum, everyone had forgotten about this country’s deep ambivalence toward the act of official killing. Had forgotten that there is a reason why it takes years and sometimes decades to put a person in the gas chamber.

John T. Noonan stopped the extravaganza by reminding California that the ambivalence is alive and well. He was not impressed by arguments that 11 years of previous appeals were enough, or by the attorney general’s flowcharts. He was impressed by certain rights granted the accused by the U.S. Supreme Court.

He began by pointing out some language in a lower court ruling that had referred to Harris’ “alleged” right to have psychiatric experts on his side during his trial.

“Alleged?” Noonan asked. When the Supreme Court rules that every defendant has the right to a psychiatric expert, it no longer falls in the “alleged” category, he said. It is simply a right.

So Noonan granted the stay and shattered the illusion that Harris was a done deal. As we proceed into California’s new era of executions, it may be a lesson worth remembering. As one after another of the 271 people on Death Row arrive at their time, there are going to be very few cases without this kind of agony.

The condemned are going to be left waiting and wondering when, or if, they will die as their cases twist and turn in the courts. Families of victims will be enraged when the promise of revenge is denied. This is the true horror of the death penalty and maybe it’s fortunate that Noonan showed us what it looks like.

Just in case any of us were looking forward to the next extravaganza.