Relatives of Harris Seek Right to Visit During Final Hours : Punishment: Suit aims to overturn state law that cuts off visitation of family and friends of condemned prisoners six hours before execution.

Robert Alton Harris, another Death Row inmate and their relatives are suing the state for prohibiting visits by family members and spiritual counselors in the final hours before execution.

The suit, filed Thursday in Marin County Superior Court, was joined by Harris’ criminal lawyer and psychiatrist, both of whom would also be prevented from seeing him in his last hours.

Harris is scheduled to die shortly after midnight April 21 in the San Quentin gas chamber, the state’s first execution since 1967. Gov. Pete Wilson, who was mayor of San Diego when Harris killed two 16-year-old boys in 1978, plans to hold a clemency hearing April 15.

According to the suit, the state Department of Corrections cuts off all visits from family members, religious counselors and mental health practitioners nine hours before the execution and stops lawyers’ visits three hours later, allowing the lawyer to remain in touch by telephone. The only person to meet with the prisoner after that will be a prison chaplain, the suit said.

A San Quentin spokesman said Friday that the cutoff of visits actually applies to everyone six hours before the execution.

Nearly every major state with a death penalty law allows contact visits until shortly before the execution, the suit said. It said California’s policy is unnecessary for security, violates the prisoner’s religious freedom and access to a lawyer, and is cruel and unusual punishment.

Beyond the prospect of execution itself, the state “seeks to impose inhuman torture” by forcing Harris to spend his final hours, “when he will undoubtedly be overwhelmed with anxiety and despair, with absolutely no contact from any significant person in his life,” wrote Linda Shostak, a lawyer in a firm that is handling the suit without charge.

Two of Harris’ relatives, one of them a minister, submitted statements supporting the suit. Harris offered no statement, but he knows about the suit and has authorized it, another lawyer in the case, Jack Londen, said Friday.

Vernell Crittendon, a San Quentin spokesman, said the prison’s policy was upheld in a similar suit in 1990, when Harris was last scheduled to be executed. He said one reason for the ban is to protect the identities of the guards who attend the prisoner at the cell where he is taken hours before execution.

Allowing visits by relatives of the prisoner would subject those guards to harassment by other prisoners as well as members of the public who oppose capital punishment, Crittendon said. He acknowledged that witnesses to the execution see the same guards but said the view is much briefer than during a cell visit.

Londen plans to ask Superior Court Judge William Stephens on April 17 to strike down the restrictions on visits. The lawyer said the state, in response to inquiries, has offered no justification for its policy and has indicated it would oppose attempts to question prison officials.

The only valid justification for any such restrictions is security, and “that’s not something they’re entitled to ask others to accept on faith,” Londen said.

Attached to the suit were declarations by relatives of condemned prisoners, in California and elsewhere, about the effect of allowing or forbidding visits during the final hours. One was by Ronald Bell, the son of Aaron Mitchell, the last person executed in California.

Bell, who was 16 at the time of the execution in 1967, said having to leave his father hours before his death “has caused me incredible anguish and has haunted me to this day.” He said there was some solace in knowing Mitchell was being visited by a minister during the final hours, under the policy of the time.

Harris’ sister Brenda said she has been making frequent visits to her brother, who had always tried to take care of her in the past. She said she could thank him only by being with him to the end, knowing that “I did everything possible to offer him comfort.”

The Rev. Leon Harris, a Southern Baptist minister in Alabama and second cousin to Robert Harris, said he has been the prisoner’s spiritual guide for a year and a half, speaking to him weekly by telephone. He said Robert has asked him to be there during the final hours, looking to him for “the strength to ask the Lord’s forgiveness and face his own death.”

Michael Laurence, one of Harris’ criminal lawyers, said Harris has told him he wants his family and friends, including Brenda and Leon Harris, and his lawyers by his side. Laurence also said the presence of a lawyer was vital for any last-minute issues, such as mental incompetence or new evidence.

Also submitting a statement was Alejandro Ruiz, who was convicted of murdering two successive wives and a stepson in Ventura County in 1975 and 1978. Now appealing his death sentence, Ruiz said that, if his execution were imminent, he would want to be with his elderly parents at the final hours. Both parents also made statements, saying they want to give Ruiz their love and comfort when he needs it most.

Marjorie Hodge, who was allowed to visit with her son, Dennis Adams, until just before he was electrocuted in Florida in 1989, said the visit was a solace to both of them. “If I had not been able to see Dennis in his final hours, I believe I would have died with him,” she said.