City Awakes to Mixed Emotions After Delayed Execution

Much of San Diego went to sleep believing that Robert Alton Harris had once again dodged a date with the gas chamber, but the city awoke Tuesday to learn that he had not.

After 14 years of legal flip-flops and one night of agonizing uncertainty, Harris’ death slipped past the sleeping city where the murderer had killed his two teen-age victims, causing ripples of conflicting emotions: jubilation and revulsion.

A disc jockey read out a San Diego newspaper headline--”Harris Is Dead”--and then played a vintage Rolling Stones song whose chorus runs: “But it’s all right now, in fact it’s a gas. . . . I’m Jumping Jack Flash, it’s a gas, gas, gas.”

One outraged listener called to say she would never listen to the station again. Then another called and cheered.

Even though 80% of Californians favor the death penalty, Harris’ execution seemed to stir the city in a way few current events do.

“I’m glad they fried him. He deserved to die,” said John Owens, a 39-year-old owner of an Escondido auto repair shop. “It took way too long--14 years is ridiculous. You should be allowed only so many appeals and no more, and it should take no more than five years.”

Many reacted with enthusiasm, almost with the kind of righteous rowdiness that sports fans reserve for tight calls during championship games.

“It was right. It was fair. If you take someone’s life, they should pay with their own life,” said Jesus Rodriguez, an 18-year-old Oceanside resident and a clerk at a Vista grocery store.

But opponents of the death penalty were equally adamant, and many said they felt genuine sorrow--as though Harris’ case became increasingly real in its final, excruciating hours.

“I don’t think people should kill people. They should have just punished him by putting him in for life or something, but not by killing him,” said Roxanne Perez, 20, as she worked behind the counter in a Mexican bakery in Logan Heights.

James Nemish sipped a cup of coffee and chewed on his fingernails as he talked about the “sick” feeling he got when he woke up to hear the news of the execution.

“I went to bed last night and just sort of said a little prayer” for Harris, said Nemish, 49, who owns the Metaphor Coffee House in Escondido.

“If it were my child, I’m sure I would have been vengeful, too. . . . Thank God that the choice wasn’t mine.”

Perhaps the most disquieting aspect of the night for capital punishment proponents--as well as opponents--were the accounts of Harris’ final hours before his death at 6:21 a.m.

Ironically, as Harris’ lawyers attempted to rescue him, they ended up prolonging his agony. Radio and television reporters described how Harris had been strapped in a gas chamber chair, gazing down between his legs with no expression on his face, when the phone rang with one last stay. The stay was overturned within two hours.

For some, the uncertainty was a cruel prelude to death.

Jacinth Elaine Williams, 43, cried--both for the two murdered boys and for the man responsible. Later, dishing up curry patties in her Southeast San Diego Jamaican restaurant, she said: “I’m for the death penalty, but . . . when they put him in the gas chamber and then pulled him out at the last minute, well, that was inhumane to me. I don’t know whether the delay was pay-back for the way those kids died or what, but it was like torture.”

Bob Buckingham, a 29-year-old UC San Diego chemical engineering student, said the judicial system had inadvertently played painful mind games with Harris, batting him back and forth like a cat does before killing its prey.

“It was mental torture to take someone in and out (of the gas chamber), and the continual back and forth is cruel and unusual punishment,” said Buckingham, an opponent of the death penalty. “I mean, he was a bad guy, but he’s still a person. It’s been one big fiasco. I think all of this shows the ambivalence over the death penalty. This shows that people aren’t ready to take that step.”

Many were simply glad that the 14-year ordeal, waged in the courts and in the media, was over. At last, they said, the city could move on. At last, the families of the victims could heal.

“I am glad that it’s over. It has cost taxpayers beaucoup bucks,” said Don Leeds, a 31-year-old San Diego resident.

Others were incredulous that the legal process had wended its way over a 14-year course.

“Why should we have to pay for the length of time it took to bring him to execution?” said Carol Ranger, a 65-year-old Dana Point resident who was sunning herself in Mission Beach on Tuesday. She said she was glad that “we have gotten rid of a bad character.”

Indeed, the 14 years it took to send Harris to the gas chamber seemed to irk many. Why did it take so long? What kind of system is it when justice is meted out so slowly?

“What is sad is how many times this was delayed,” said Adele Cunningham, 38, who cleans offices in Escondido. “I don’t think they should have waited this long. I think that’s more inhumane than the actual execution.”

That sentiment echoed repeatedly Tuesday, even among those, like Mike Knapp, who oppose the death penalty.

“I was really annoyed with all the appeals going on. The law is on the books, and I think it should be enforced,” said Knapp, a 21-year-old UCSD biochemistry student. “It annoyed me that the judges were trying to legislate. . . . They were trying to take the power away from the people.”

For some, Harris’ death changed how they view capital punishment. Christine Haywood, a 23-year-old UCSD student, was in favor of the death penalty--until Tuesday, that is.

“I was very much for it until it actually happened,” said Haywood, an animal physiology and neuroscience major. “Even though he’s a horrible person, we don’t have the right to take a life. . . . Who are we to say who lives or dies?”

Others, however, weren’t sure how they felt.

“I felt a little numb about the whole thing when I heard about it this morning,” said Kathleen Stafford, 39, an Escondido housewife who was making brown-bag lunches for her two sons when she heard the news on the radio.

“I’m very frightened about the violence in society today,” she said. “When I walk around, and I’m afraid for my life in a shopping mall, it just makes you wonder.”

Times staff writers Jonathan Gaw, David A. Avila, Lisa R. Omphroy and Julie Tamaki contributed to this story. It was written by staff writer Nora Zamichow.