Harris Dies After Judicial Duel : 4 Stays Quashed; ‘I’m Sorry,’ Murderer Says : Execution: California invokes the death penalty for the first time in 25 years after a night of delays. The event is videotaped for possible future hearings.

After an extraordinary bicoastal judicial duel kept his fate in doubt throughout the night, Robert Alton Harris died in San Quentin’s gas chamber at sunrise Tuesday, becoming the first person executed in California in 25 years.

Harris, 39, was pronounced dead at 6:21 a.m., just 36 minutes after the U. S. Supreme Court overturned the last of four overnight reprieves that delayed his execution by more than six hours.

Earlier Tuesday, a seemingly jaunty Harris came within seconds of death but was rescued by a federal judge, who halted the execution even as the acid used to form the lethal gas flowed into a vat beneath the prisoner’s seat.

That final stay was quickly tossed out by the U. S. Supreme Court, which clearly had had its fill of the Harris case. In an unprecedented ruling that capped a night of coast-to-coast faxes and deliberations, the justices voted 7 to 2 to forbid any federal court from meddling further in the execution.

Moments later, a decidedly more solemn Harris was led a second time through the door of the mint-green gas chamber and strapped without resistance into his metal death chair.

Scanning the faces of 48 witnesses peering through windows just steps away, Harris saw Steve Baker--the father of one of his teen-age murder victims. Harris, his voice inaudible through the thick steel walls, slowly mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.” Baker, a San Diego police detective, nodded in return.

Shortly after 6 a.m., a mist of cyanide vapors enveloped the ponytailed convict. Over the next two minutes, Harris twitched, gave five quick gasps that puffed his flushed cheeks, and slumped forward. Prison doctors said it took him 14 minutes to die.

Harris’ relatives and friends--five of whom were witnesses--embraced and turned away as he fell unconscious. Sharron Mankins, the mother of one of his murder victims, smiled broadly and looked up as if to thank God. Her daughter, Linda Herring, wept in relief.

With that gripping episode, California joined the expanding league of states that have resumed executions since they were upheld as constitutional by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1976.

On orders from a federal judge, Harris’ death was videotaped by authorities--a first in California history. The footage may be used in a future court hearing to determine whether death by gas is cruel and unusual punishment under the U. S. Constitution.

Marking the historic moment, state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren called the execution a “solemn act” that proves the state has begun to “respond to the true needs and concerns of (crime) victims.”

“I’ve been with the people involved in this process . . . and I can tell you there’s no glee here,” said Lungren, who watched Harris’ aborted first visit to the gas chamber but left San Quentin before the execution. “There is a feeling that they had a job to carry out and that was done.”

Death penalty opponents, meanwhile, said they would redouble their efforts to abolish capital punishment in California.

“We’re not giving up,” vowed Magdaleno Rose-Avila, western regional director of Amnesty International, a human rights group.

“We view this as a very serious miscarriage of justice,” added Dorothy Ehrlich of the American Civil Liberties Union, which had joined in pressing one of Harris’ final appeals.

Harris was convicted and sentenced to die in 1979 after he gunned down Michael Baker and John Mayeski in San Diego. The 16-year-old boys were on their way to a lake for an afternoon of fishing when Harris abducted and murdered them to use their car in a bank robbery.

As Harris’ appeals ping-ponged through the state and federal courts, the balding, mustachioed convict came to personify the wrenching battle over capital punishment in this state.

The condemned man spent Monday visiting with two sisters, a brother, friends, a lawyer, and psychologist Craig Haney, who completed a study of Harris for the defense in an effort to win him a new trial. When they said their goodbys Monday evening, Haney said everyone understood the visit was their last.

At nightfall, Harris was given a change of clothes and moved to a special death cell near the gas chamber. He did not sleep and was in telephone contact with two lawyers throughout the night.

Haney, who witnessed the execution, said Harris “was very remorseful about the pain of the (victims’) families and the pain his execution was causing his family and his friends.” He said Harris was “trying to be brave and . . . dignified” as death drew near.

“There was this public image of this man as a animal,” Haney said. “He wanted people to see in the last moments that he was a human being who had dignity and strength.”

Before he took his final breath, Harris issued a statement. It was read by Warden Daniel Vasquez moments after the murderer was declared dead:

“You can be a king or a street-sweeper,” Harris said, “but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper.” A friend said Harris had been crafting this parting philosophy for two weeks. His remark bears a close resemblance to a line from the popular movie, “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.”

As Harris’ life ended in the gas chamber, dawn was breaking in Marin County, where the aging San Quentin prison sits on the scenic northeastern shore of San Francisco Bay.

While more than 200 journalists awaited word on the killer’s fate, a team of rowers in three narrow racing shells glided elegantly by offshore. Soon after, a ferry followed, carrying a load of commuters across the bay to their jobs in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, the prison’s 5,605 inmates were awakening on schedule. A San Quentin spokesman, Lt. Vernell Crittendon, said the prisoners were “uncustomarily quiet” after learning that Harris’ execution had gone forward.

Many condemned men stayed up through the night and tracked the minute-to-minute developments on television, said Robert Massie, a longtime Death Row inmate interviewed by The Times.

“I’d like to know how Mr. Justice Rehnquist feels now,” Massie said, referring the chief justice of the U. S. Supreme Court. “I feel as if he’s a damned murderer.”

Outside the prison gates, the dozen death penalty foes who kept a nightlong vigil formed a circle and joined in a mass hug when news of the execution reached them.

Reporters and cameramen--whose lights illuminated the streets of tiny San Quentin Village throughout the night--quickly recorded the somber moment.

Charles M. Sevilla, Harris’ longtime defense attorney, said he felt both “furious and devastated” by the execution.

“It’s awful,” Sevilla said from his home in San Diego. Harris was “so courageous. It was unbelievable. To put him in there for (12) minutes--to strap him in and then tell him to walk out of there--what a cruel thing to do.”

Baker, the father of Harris victim Michael Baker, went to Sacramento after witnessing Harris’ death. There, he attended a rally for victims’ rights and lunched with Lungren.

Reflecting on the execution, Baker said he was satisfied that punishment had been exacted. He added that Harris’ actions surprised him. “I thought he’d be much more defiant,” Baker said. “I’ve got to say that the man died with dignity, he really did.”

Asked about the apology Harris delivered soundlessly seconds before he was gassed, Baker said it came “about 14 years too late.” He added, “Sorry’s not enough to make me forgive him for what he did.”

Harris died after a decade of appeals that snaked in and out of dozens of courtrooms. In 1990, he came within 12 hours of death but was spared when the U. S. Supreme Court refused to overturn a stay issued by U. S. 9th Circuit Judge John T. Noonan.

Last week, Gov. Pete Wilson denied clemency for Harris, rejecting arguments that the killer--who endured a nightmarish childhood of beatings and neglect--suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and was once found to suffer from schizophrenia.

Desperately trying to keep their client alive, Harris’ attorneys returned to the courts. On Saturday night, their fortunes rose when U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel issued an order that could have delayed the execution until June or later.

Patel said the lawyers raised “serious questions” about whether death by lethal gas was cruel and unusual punishment. She ordered the stay to conduct a hearing on their claims, contained in a class-action suit filed on behalf of Harris and 330 other Californians facing death.

The attorney general’s office appealed the stay on grounds that Patel had overstepped her authority. The stay was lifted Sunday night by a three-judge panel of the U. S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Lawyers for Harris then asked the full 28-member 9th Circuit to review their contentions. On Monday evening, the court responded with a stay of execution. Three more stays came later as the execution countdown progressed.

The U. S. Supreme court, however, rejected each effort to block the execution. Its final order overturned a stay was phoned in by 9th Circuit Justice Harry Pregerson of Los Angeles. In overturning that one, the high court made clear its impatience with the lower court and called the delays “abusive” and evidence of “manipulation” by Harris.

Harris became the first Californian to win a reprieve after being strapped into the San Quentin gas chamber. In 1955, Barbara Graham came close. The celebrated murderer--whose saga was featured in a Susan Hayward movie called “I Want to Live”--was walking toward the chamber when she received one of several last-minute stays.

Before Harris, the last man put to death at San Quentin was Aaron Mitchell, who was executed in 1967 for the murder of a Sacramento police officer. Unlike Harris, Mitchell did not go quietly. After slashing his wrists in a suicide attempted, the man screamed “I am Jesus Christ” until he succumbed to the cyanide gas.

Times staff writers Jenifer Warren, Philip Hager, John Hurst, Bob Baker and Paul Feldman contributed to this story.

The Final Hours

Here is the sequence of events that led to Tuesday’s execution of Robert Alton Harris:

MONDAY

6:30 p.m.: A stay of execution is announced by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in an appeal involving a claim of new evidence. The state appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.

8:15 p.m.: Harris is served his last meal.

10:30 p.m.: 9th Circuit announces a second stay, in a suit that claims gas executions are unconstitutional.

11:25 p.m.: First stay is dissolved by the U.S. Supreme Court.

11:45 p.m.: A third stay is issued by a 9th Circuit judge, also on the gas issue.

TUESDAY

2:30 a.m.: One of the stays on the gas issue is dissolved by Supreme Court.

3 a.m.: Final stay in effect is dissolved by Supreme Court.

3:49 a.m.: Harris is strapped into the gas chamber and the door is shut. The acid that reacts with cyanide tablets to create the gas is released into a chamber below the chair where Harris is held.

3:51 a.m.: Phone next to the gas chamber rings with news of a fourth stay of execution. The execution process is halted, with Harris still inside the gas chamber, looking quizzically at witnesses.

4:01 a.m.: Harris is removed from the gas chamber and returned to his ready cell, a short distance away.

5:49 a.m.: Supreme Court vacates the stay.

5:53 a.m.: Witnesses are called in, and Harris is taken into gas chamber again and strapped down on seat.

6:10 a.m.: Cyanide pellets are dropped into the acid, releasing the poison fumes.

6:21 a.m.: Harris is declared dead.