Final Legal War Troubling to Both Sides : Reaction: Most remain firm in views on capital punishment. But many agree that chaotic court wrangling added an aura of inhumanity to the proceedings.

When the probable came to pass, when the abstract became real, it still took a while to sink in.

The people of California, in whose name the case against Robert Alton Harris was prosecuted for nearly 14 years, went to bed thinking that the murderer’s midnight walk to the gas chamber had once again been put off, for who knew how long.

Early Tuesday morning, at the same real-time moment that many of them were climbing out of bed or stirring their coffee or inching along in snarls of traffic, they heard that Harris was about to die . . . was dying . . . had died, at 6:21 a.m.

They learned, as well, that two hours before, Harris had been put through a ghastly dress rehearsal: Strapped into the gas chamber’s lefthand chair, he was looking down between his legs, watching the sulfuric acid flow into the pan beneath his seat, when the phone rang with one last stay.

By almost anyone’s reckoning, a majority of Californians believe the death penalty to be a fitting punishment. Yet along both sides of the cleavage was the queasy feeling that Tuesday’s grotesque tug of war lent an edge of barbarity to a procedure that had been thoroughly sanitized.

“I think it must have been agonizing to go through what he did,” said Tammy Membreno, 33, executive director of an El Sereno continuation high school for problem teens. Her “mixed feelings” about capital punishment were even more mixed now. “It’s like they had a rope around his neck, and slowly pulled it and then loosened it, all through the night.”

Wrenched by the same conflicts, Jacinth Elaine Williams cried--for the two murdered boys, and for the man who murdered them. Later, dishing up curry patties in her San Diego Jamaican restaurant, she said: “I’m for the death penalty, but. . . . When they put him in the gas chamber and then pulled him out at the last minute, well, that was inhumane to me. I don’t know whether the delay was pay back for the way those kids died or what, but it was like torture.”

Even the stalwarts holding vigil at the gates of San Quentin Prison were taken by surprise by the yo-yoing of court orders throughout the night. “Four times tonight we thought his life was going to be saved,” one said bitterly. “If this is a civilized society, I’d like to know what a barbaric one is.”

Where 500 anti-death penalty protesters had gathered a few hours before, only a couple of dozen remained at 3 a.m. The rest had headed home, thinking that two different stays would keep Harris alive for at least another day.

Hundreds of miles south, in an Alhambra coffee shop, Patricia Lomeli, 32, heard from a reporter what had happened as she slept. She gasped. “I feel like a murderer myself,” she said, her voice trembling. “I went to bed last night thinking he will be saved. I honestly thought he would be alive this morning. I feel awful to live in this state and be a part of it.”

In the Ventura County courthouse, Betsey Williams--reading “Rage of Angels”--had a little rage of her own, and the same equivocation that so many struggled with Tuesday. “I’m glad they did it; I think he deserved it.” But the fitful process, the last-minute part, “I don’t think that was fair. It was too nerve-racking for him, and the victims’ families.”

Even dead--especially dead--Harris generated hard words.

A radio disc jockey read out a San Diego newspaper headline--”Harris Is Dead”--and put on a vintage Rolling Stones song, whose chorus runs, “But it’s all right now, in fact it’s a gas. . . . I’m Jumping Jack Flash, it’s a gas gas gas.” One outraged listener called to say she would never listen to the station again. Then another called and cheered.

Lori Milas slept badly, then drove to her Garden Grove medical billing office and put up a sign: closed “due to personal convictions of the owner.” She left the same message on her answering machine. After an event of this magnitude, “Everyone picks up and keeps on going. But an execution is a very final thing. I needed some time to think about it and pray.”

San Diego electrical contractor Roy Vaughn is a black man who “used to go for the death penalty. But now, with all the people they have been finding innocent after they have been convicted”--notably two black Los Angeles men freed 17 years after their conviction on tainted evidence--he is having second thoughts. “Blacks and minorities actually get executed more often than any other race.” Even the execution of Harris, a young white man who killed white teen-agers, gave him pause.

In the Van Nuys police division, it was not forgotten that one of Harris’ victims was the son of a cop who watched flint-eyed Tuesday morning as his son’s killer died.

Motorcycle Officer Doug Gallaher gave a gloved thumbs-up when the man at the station’s gas pumps told him the “good news.” And the part about the first walk to the gas chamber, the brief reprieve, then coming back to die--”That’s even better.”

In language just as blunt, the students at the El Sereno continuation school took up the matter. Should it be on TV? their teacher asked. Sure, said one boy. “Gang members are dying on the streets and that is on TV. What the difference?”

That won’t stop anyone, shrugged a 16-year-old with knowing cynicism. “When you’re busted and in jail you say you’re sorry and going to do different. But when you come back, nothing changes.”

At its height, the San Quentin vigil blended Socratic discourse and bumper-sticker dialogue worthy of the Wally George show.

As several Marin County college students streamed by with signs reading “Kill All Killers,” anti-death penalty attorney Robert D. Bryan shook his head. “Their brains have been terminized by all the ‘Terminator’ movies,” he mused.

An ex-San Quentin inmate (“Most of the guys they got in there oughta go to the gas chamber”) wrangled with an Oakland computer programmer (“That’s just a cathartic solution.”). A Los Angeles preacher in a cowboy hat (“Harris is going to hell!”) took on a UC Santa Barbara history professor (“Continue the stay!”).

In Hollywood at Sunset Newsstand, Ron Katz shoved a finger toward the street-corner squalor. Harris got room, board and TV at public expense for 14 years, he said--”Maybe if you want to get out of these streets, what you need to do is kill somebody.”

At 6:21 a.m., outside San Quentin, the only sound was the birds--and the somber voice of ACLU spokesman David Hinkley. “As a child,” he intoned, “Robert Harris was beaten within an inch of his life. Now California has taken the last inch.”

Six hours later, at the Capitol in Sacramento, the fourth annual crime victims’ rally was proceeding on what had become a day of jubilation. The only senseless killings they knew of were their loved ones--whose mock-up coffins, 700 of them, lay white and shining on the lawn. Not some “dirtbag” on Death Row.

Don Novey, president of the Correctional Peace Officers Assn., witnessed the execution, “which is difficult,” yet “the only thing I (felt) sorry for is that we had an open chair, and I damn well would have liked to have Charlie Manson sitting in it alongside Robert Harris.”

And, to the laughter of the crowd, Novey added, “Extra crispy.”

Also contributing to this report were Times staff writers David Avila, Bob Baker, Stephanie Chavez, Michael Connelly, Maura Dolan, Paul Feldman, Jonathan Gaw, Gary Gorman, Jim Newton, Nieson Himmel, John Hurst, Rose Kim and Lisa Omphroy.