Wilson Denounces ‘Macabre Circus’ of Execution

An angry Gov. Pete Wilson on Wednesday denounced the “manipulative lawyers and indulgent judges” who created a “macabre legal circus” Monday night as double murderer Robert Alton Harris awaited execution.

“The behavior of individual judges of the 9th Circuit (Court of Appeal) has excited new meaning for the phrase ‘contempt of court,’ ” the governor asserted in a lengthy written statement he personally fashioned at a friend’s house, where he had gone to unwind after the execution.

Later, in a brief interview, Wilson said he “probably” would sign a bill--if one were to pass--giving condemned murderers the choice of being executed by lethal injection or the gas chamber. Such a measure was introduced Tuesday in the Legislature.

Wilson’s written statement marked his first public comment since Harris’ death at dawn Tuesday in the San Quentin gas chamber. Indeed, it was the governor’s first statement on the matter since he had denied Harris’ plea for clemency last Thursday.

Wilson’s tone and words were unusually tough and aides said the statement reflected Wilson’s intense anger, which began Saturday with one judge’s stay of execution and grew hotter Monday night as more stays were added.

The one proposal Wilson offered “to prevent such lapses of responsibility by individual judges” in the future was to abolish a U.S. 9th Circuit rule that allows a single judge “to entertain . . . last-minute defense tactics.” If the appellate court refuses to abolish the rule, Wilson said, the U.S. Supreme Court should strip individual 9th Circuit judges of this authority.

Later, Wilson elaborated that he thinks last-minute stays should be permitted only from a panel of appellate judges, and that individual jurists should be barred from taking such action.

The governor noted that an impatient U.S. Supreme Court finally early Tuesday morning ordered the 9th Circuit to stop issuing stays in the Harris case. Reciting the Supreme Court’s language in calling the delays of execution “abusive” and “obvious attempts at manipulation,” Wilson said that for the nation’s highest court, this was its “equivalent of four-letter words” and amounted to “a judicial reprimand and chastisement.”

In his statement, which he telephoned late Tuesday night to his office and touched up on Wednesday, Wilson also used such strong language as “legal gamesmanship,” “travesty of justice,” “excesses by certain (judges)” and “mockery of justice.”

“Monday night, the game was judicial Ping-Pong,” he said.

“It was itself both a travesty of justice and cruel and unusual punishment--for Harris’ family and certainly the families of the two boys who were Harris’ victims.”

He concluded, “Harris deserved his day in court. Instead of a day, he got 14 years and millions of tax dollars worth of legal delays. There is an old maxim of criminal law, taught to every first-year law student: ‘Justice delayed is justice denied.’ It is sadly the best epitaph for the 14-year history of outrageous delay in the case. . . . “