Joy and Anger Clash Outside San Quentin

“The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind . . . “ sang 150 suddenly hopeful opponents of the death penalty as the sun set on San Quentin prison and a surprise legal ruling appeared to temporarily spare Robert Alton Harris.

All this was too much for Claudette Baumgardner, who had come to wait for Harris to die, and to celebrate when he did.

“The answer is the gas chamber!” she bellowed over the soft, impassioned singing of the death penalty opponents standing 20 feet away.

What had been a small, somber vigil outside the prison’s main gate turned into an emotional roller-coaster ride Monday night, triggering bitter exchanges between death penalty opponents and a smaller group who prayed just as fervently for Harris’ death.

Harris’ supporters had awaked Monday morning to the news that a federal judge’s stay had been lifted after most of them went to sleep. Dozens of them spent the day marching 21 miles from San Francisco to the prison, arriving near suppertime hungry, weary and discouraged, morosely expecting California’s first execution in a quarter-century.

“Let us ask God for forgiveness because we have not done our job in stopping this (execution), even though we have tried,” prayed the Rev. Joe Morris Doss, founder of Death Penalty Focus, a major anti-capital punishment group, and a lawyer who once handled Death Row cases.

A surprising number of death penalty proponents--hardly seen at all the last time Harris came close to being executed--trickled into San Quentin Village in better spirits, expecting the execution to be carried out.

As darkness fell, the two sides exchanged few words, keeping to themselves. Any communication came through the self-righteous messages that members of both sides scrawled on homemade signs: “If it worked, I’d be for it” was countered by “Die like a man.” Offset against “Ritual sacrifice sucks” was “God says you shall not pity him.”

Then, suddenly, Janice Gay, the wife of a Death Row inmate, exploded with a yell of triumph.

“A stay!” she screamed.

Reporters, who for most of the day outnumbered demonstrators, swarmed around her. The word spread: A U. S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judge had granted a temporary stay to allow the court’s 28 judges to vote on whether to hear an appeal by Harris.

Opponents of the death penalty hugged each other wildly. “We did it!” several of them yelled.

Those who had come to cheer Harris’ death watched in shock.

“It shows that the law doesn’t protect nobody but the people behind bars!” said Baumgardner, 34, a bus driver from Richmond.

Suddenly, members of both sides, whose only contact earlier had been a near-squabble between a dog owned by a death penalty supporter and one owned by an opponent, began to trade slogans and epithets. Pent-up emotions spilled out.

“Go ahead, LET him out!” challenged Chris Hawk, a rock ‘n’ roll composer who rents a home on San Quentin’s Main Street and had taken the side of the proponents of execution. “Let him out, take him home and let him kill your children!”

At a minute after 7 p.m.--as they had at one minute after every hour--death penalty opponents formed their prayer circle. Pat Clark, executive director of Death Penalty Focus, cautioned her allies against growing too confident. What had been granted Monday night could be taken away in hours by a ruling by the full 9th Circuit Court of Appeals or a Supreme Court justice.

“It’s not over yet,” she said. “Right now, I’m thinking about the proponents of the death penalty. It’s been hard on them. It’s been hard on us all. It shows what a brutalizing process this is.”

She also mentioned the relatives of Harris’ victims. “I think about the Bakers and the Mayeskis, too. They’re another element in the roller-coaster ride. I’m hopeful that one day we won’t have to come out to the gate of San Quentin.”

On a small platform, the unlikeliest of allies hugged. David Magris, now an assistant manager of a design firm, was once on San Quentin’s Death Row for murdering one person during a robbery and leaving another partially paralyzed. Dennis Tapp, who now lives in Oregon, was the man Magris left crippled.

Over the years they have reconciled. Magris was spared from execution when California’s death penalty law was ruled unconstitutional in 1972. He was paroled in 1985. In 1987, a network television show brought the two men together. Tapp forgave Magris. He says he holds no grudge.

On Monday night, Tapp called Magris “my friend,” and Magris told the crowd that death penalty opponents must fight on “until this beast is gone.”