EXECUTION JOURNAL : Countdown to Death Is Talk of the Town

For days, the talk has been of suffering--of cruelty and regret, of brutal abuse and wasted lives.

The awful stories--of Robert Alton Harris’ violent childhood and of the two boys who begged for mercy before he shot them dead--are public memories now, called up as easily as if they were our own.

Many people near here have grown weary of the pain they are forced to keep hearing about. If asked their views on the death penalty--and, given the preponderance of reporters here, many people have been asked--most Bay Area residents will answer. But they would rather be left alone.

“Executions,” one San Francisco man explained with a sigh, “are not fun to talk about.”

There are people, however, in whom the countdown to death has inspired a ghastly glee--people such as Curt Bartholow and Jeff McNew.

The other day, the two Marin County residents drove their pickup truck to the gates of San Quentin prison and unveiled a huge hand-painted sign depicting a cyanide tablet dropping into a vat of acid.

“Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is,” said the sign, which brought smiles to the faces of the correctional officers at the gate.

“I don’t care if it’s a deterrent to crime,” Bartholow said. “It’s as simple as meting out justice.”

Lt. Vernel Crittendon, a San Quentin spokesman, said that in recent weeks he has received telephone calls from people who are impatient for Harris to die.

“They want to know if we’re going to do it,” he said. “Some want to send things.”

One man inquired if it would be possible to mail Harris a hamburger--a reference to the fast-food meal, purchased by Harris’ victims, that the condemned man is said to have eaten after he killed them.

The answer was no--such a package would not make it through inspection in the prison mail room, Crittendon said. But regular mail does, such as the taunting card Harris received recently that reminded him that the world record for holding one’s breath is counted in minutes.

“Can you do better?” asked the card, which was passed around among other Death Row inmates during visiting hours. “You should’ve been offed 14 years ago.”

Earlier in the week, an AM talk-radio station asked its listeners if they would support the switch from lethal gas to lethal injection for Harris.

By a margin of 5 to 1, listeners said no.

“Death by injection would not satisfy you,” the announcer concluded. “You want the torture of the gas chamber.”

Mary Ruth Gross was one of only a few crime victims who stood up and said she wanted no such thing.

Speaking at a demonstration in San Francisco over the weekend, Gross, a UC Berkeley educator, told of her refusal to testify at a murderer’s sentencing hearing because she did not want to contribute to a possible death sentence--even that of the man who had raped her several years earlier.

She told the judge she would testify only if she could comment about her objections to the death penalty. The judge said she could not.

“Killing doesn’t do any good--to them or to us,” she said. “A hundred years from now people will look back and be amazed we killed anybody.”

Lisa Christensen-Adamu, a local bookkeeper, told a similar story at a rally in Palo Alto. Sixteen years after she reported being raped by a Nevada man, she was called to testify when the man was accused of raping and murdering another woman. She refused, and spent two days in jail.

“I would not help them with another murder of a human being,” she said. “I don’t need revenge . . . where somebody gets killed.”

On Easter Sunday, one day after Harris won at least a temporary reprieve, celebrations of survival and rebirth filled the editorial pages of the local newspapers.

“Death has been vanquished. Life is eternal,” proclaimed the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. “Regardless of your philosophical persuasion, today is a day to celebrate life, to appreciate the beauty and mystery of our world, to reflect on our place in it.”

In the news pages, however, articles about Harris’ last-minute appeal described the opposite: the “air hunger,” the feeling of strangulation and the sometimes lengthy gasping for breath that precedes death in the gas chamber.

Cyanide is a slow killer, defense lawyers had argued, more excruciating than a noose or an electrical charge.

To administer it at San Quentin, they said, would be to follow in the footsteps of the Nazis, who used the same poison to exterminate more than a million of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust.

It could still happen. As prosecutors scramble to overturn the reprieve before Harris’ death warrant expires, locals are still bracing for death.