"The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco put the execution on hold yesterday [in the four hours immediately prior to the execution], based on a claim that Harris' brother shot one of the boys."

[after that stay was vacated by SCOTUS, the 9th] "issued three more stays based on a claim that death by gas is cruel and unusual punishment. Then the U.S. Supreme Court ordered no more stays."

"This claim could have been brought more than a decade ago," the court said in a 7-2 ruling. "There is no good reason for this abusive delay, which has been compounded by last-minute attempts to manipulate the judicial process. No further stays of Robert Alton Harris' execution shall be entered by the federal courts except upon order of this court."

Justices John Paul Stevens and Harry A. Blackmun dissented. "The barbaric use of cyanide gas in the Holocaust, the development of cyanide agents as chemical weapons, our contemporary understanding of execution by lethal gas, and the development of less cruel methods of execution all demonstrate that execution by cyanide gas is unnecessarily cruel," Stevens wrote.

U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ordered that Harris' execution be videotaped as evidence for the gas issue. A video camera was seen in the gas chamber today.

(The Union Democrat - Apr 21, 1992)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3863773&forum_id=2#35184558)