excerpt
...piece on the Harris execution won the 1993 ASNE distinguished writing award...
By
Sam Stanton
Sacramento Bee senior writer Sam Stanton won the
1993 ASNE distinguished writing award for deadline writing for his piece
on the Harris execution. Here's the top of it.:
In the end, Robert Alton Harris seemed determined
to go peacefully, a trait that had eluded him in the 39 violent and abusive
years he spent on Earth.
As the cyanide fumes rose up to his face in
the San Quentin gas chamber, he inhaled deeply and stared straight ahead,
barely moving until death throes convulsed his body.
His trademark smirk was gone, replaced by a
haunting look of sadness spawned by a last hellish night of fighting for
his life and two predawn journeys to the gas chamber.
Harris, the murderer of two 16-year-old boys,
made his first trip at 3:49 a.m., when he was strapped in a chair for 12
minutes. But with barely a minute to spare before the cyanide pellets were
to be dropped, a surprise court order was called in, delaying the execution.
Within two hours he was walked back to the
chamber and hurriedly subjected to cyanide gas poisoning that killed him
at 6:21 a.m.
His final night was spent in a small metal
cell with only a bare mattress, a minister and a constant stream of updates
on the legal battles that appeared to have drained him by dawn.
When he entered the chamber for the second
and final time at 6:01 a.m., Harris looked meekly at the four dozen witnesses
and appeared to accept that after so long, he was going to die for the
1978 murders of Michael Baker and John Mayeski.
He went almost peacefully, mouthing the message
to one guard watching, "It's all right."
He then craned his neck backward and to the
side until he caught the eye of San Diego Police Detective Steve Baker,
whose son he had murdered. "I'm sorry," Harris mouthed.
Behind the thick windows, Baker nodded back
but remained expressionless. The time for remorse had passed, he said.
...Within a minute of Harris' silent apology,
the gas had begun to rise about him, and he sucked it deeply into his lungs.
Within minutes, he gasped, moaned and drooled
until his head eased forward into his chest and he died. ###
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