Warden Denies Any Effort to Rush Execution : San Quentin: He says that Harris suffered in his final hours because of ‘macabre’ legal machinations.

Warden Daniel Vasquez said Thursday that Robert Alton Harris suffered in his final hours because of “macabre” legal machinations, and denied that the prison staff tried to rush the execution to avoid more late-coming reprieves.

When the telephone beside the gas chamber rang with word of a fourth stay shortly before 4 a.m. Tuesday, Vasquez said, he was only seconds from issuing the final command that would have caused cyanide pellets to fall into reservoirs of acid, creating the lethal gas.

Harris remained strapped inside the sealed gas chamber until the stay could be verified and the acid could be pumped out of the chamber.

“My feeling was for Harris, what he must have been going through,” Vasquez said, speaking in detail for the first time since he presided over California’s only execution in 25 years. “It was stressful on everybody. We were just sort of victims of it. So was Harris.”

Harris had steeled himself to die, Vasquez said, and had asked that he be allowed to walk unassisted into the gas chamber. For the second and final trip into the chamber, the warden agreed to let Harris walk unassisted.

“It was clear to me that Harris had resigned himself to be executed,” Vasquez said. “He had resigned himself to die. . . . He said there would be no problem. He wanted to walk in on his own, and he did.”

Vasquez labeled as a “cruel lie” a charge by one of Harris’ lawyers that San Quentin officials rushed Harris into the gas chamber knowing that a stay either had been issued or would be coming.

“We were not going to execute a person with any kind of stay in place,” Vasquez said. “We’re not animals. . . . I have no reason to rush, especially something that is irreversible.”

In San Francisco, one of Harris’ brothers criticized the prison Thursday for forcing him to undergo a strip search before being allowed to witness the execution.

Randy Harris said he thought the prison tried to make his brother’s final moments that much worse by keeping him from the witness room.

“I know they wanted to take me out of there and try to hurt him a little bit more having me not there at his last moment,” said Randy Harris, who lives in Colorado and is 13 months older than Robert Harris.

Randy Harris said he hopes the families of the boys his brother killed in 1978 “can rest and take comfort this happened. They have suffered enough.” But he also noted that he is a victim, too. “I lost my brother,” he said.

Authorities released the body on Thursday, Randy Harris said. A memorial was scheduled today at a San Francisco church. The remains were to be cremated and spread in mountains.

Vasquez said he had a quiet, private conversation with Robert Harris when the condemned double-murderer arrived Monday evening at the final holding cell, near the gas chamber.

“There were things said--conversations between two human beings. They were good,” Vasquez said.

All through the night, Vasquez said, the state attorney general’s office was in contact with courts and defense lawyers, and relayed word of the various legal actions to the warden.

In the moments before he ordered that Harris be taken into the gas chamber the first time, Vasquez was on the telephone to the California Supreme Court to make sure no stays had been issued, he said.

The warden said he hung up only after being given assurances that court involvement in the Harris case was over. Vasquez said he had turned to walk across a small room by the gas chamber and was only seconds from ordering the cyanide pellets dropped when the telephone rang with a call informing him that federal appellate Judge Harry Pregerson had stopped the execution.

“Believe me, I was very much aware that Harris was sitting in the chamber,” Vasquez said. “I wanted to move him, but I couldn’t.”

Vasquez hurried to empty the acid from the vats underneath the seat where Harris sat. Once that was done, guards were able to enter the chamber safely and take Harris out. Harris seemed surprised, but said nothing other than to acknowledge he understood that he had received a stay, the warden said.

“They made him suffer more,” Vasquez said of Harris’ attorneys. “There was nothing we did. It wasn’t the Department of Corrections. It wasn’t his fault.”

WILSON CRITICIZED: A judge who tried to stop Robert Alton Harris’ execution chides Gov. Pete Wilson. A23