Gas Chamber

In response to "Judge Bars Use of Gas Chamber in Executions," Oct. 5: The State of California clearly has a difficult time dealing with the issue of ridding itself of certain degenerates who have shown through their past and, often, repeated behavior that they are either unwilling or unable to coexist peaceably with their neighbors. This is not entirely surprising, though. Personally, I don't believe that anyone obtains any real or lasting satisfaction from the execution of a criminal, no matter what the crime.

The director of the controversial new production of Wagner's "Tannhauser" that made ample use of Nazi imagery -- including swastikas on costumes and a set that featured a pseudo-gas chamber -- has expressed bafflement over the decision to cancel the staging earlier this month in Germany and said it was a form of censorship. In an interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel published this week, Burkhard Kosminski said he is "shocked and speechless and cannot understand" the decision made by leaders at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Dusseldorf, Germany, to call off all remaining performances.

Robert Alton Harris, who in 1978 killed two San Diego teenagers, John Mayeski and Michael Baker, then coolly and memorably ate their fast-food burgers, was convicted of two counts of murder and sentenced to die in the gas chamber at San Quentin. In 1992, after spending more than 13 years on death row, he became the first person executed in California in 25 years.

A new production of Richard Wagner's opera "Tannhauser" in Germany was reportedly booed by members of the audience who were apparently upset over the use of Nazi imagery in the staging. The opera opened Saturday at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Dusseldorf. The German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that audience members started booing about 30 minutes into the production. The staging of Wagner's mythical opera portrays certain characters wearing uniforms of the Third Reich and features a scene reminiscent of a gas chamber.

Gov. Pete Wilson's reelection campaign Wednesday quickly moved to exploit a court decision outlawing California's gas chamber by linking the judge who made the ruling to Democratic challenger Kathleen Brown's brother, former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. George Gorton, Wilson's campaign manager, branded U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, who issued the gas chamber ruling, "a dangerously lenient judge" and noted that former Gov.

The same jury that found Roland Norman Comtois guilty of murdering a 14-year-old Chatsworth girl and shooting and sexually assaulting her best friend recommended Thursday that the 60-year-old transient die in the gas chamber. The gray-bearded Comtois trembled as the clerk read the jury's recommendation of death, then wiped his eyes as he was led from the crowded courtroom by sheriff's deputies. Comtois will return to San Fernando Superior Court on July 31 for formal sentencing by Judge Ronald S.

Possibly putting the death penalty on hold in California, a federal judge in San Francisco declared Tuesday that the state's gas chamber "is inhumane and has no place in civilized society," and deemed it unconstitutional. If upheld, the ruling by U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel would require the state to execute prisoners solely by lethal injection, a method added as an option by state law in 1992.

Death penalty foes contended Wednesday that support for California's gas chamber executions is far softer than many believe, citing a poll showing 67% of state residents prefer that murderers receive a guaranteed life sentence and make cash restitution to the victim's family. Amnesty International and the ACLU released the poll results to kick off their final protests of the scheduled April 3 execution of convicted murderer Robert Alton Harris.

A while back, we discussed in this space the scheduled execution of Robert Alton Harris at San Quentin prison. Harris is the man who abducted two teen-age boys from a Jack-in-the-Box in San Diego, drove them to a secluded spot and shot them to death as they begged for their lives. His crime was topped off with a gesture that would make Harris infamous across the land: As the boys lay dead, he ate their still-warm hamburgers.

The jury foreman in the penalty phase of the Laura Troiani murder trial said Tuesday that the evidence was "overwhelming" that the 26-year-old mother of two murdered her husband, but that she could not vote for Troiani's execution because "there was some redeeming value in the individual." "Some people may feel, 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' But even though it was a tragic and cold deed, we cannot bring back (murder victim) Carlo Troiani," said Linda Mathis of Oceanside.

SACRAMENTO - There's a strange atmosphere in Sacramento. It's as if there has just been a gubernatorial election and the incumbent has decisively won another term. All hail the governor. The people have reaffirmed their confidence in his leadership. His contract has been renewed. That's only the mind playing tricks, of course. Gov. Jerry Brown merely won passage of a tax increase - and one that was about the easiest imaginable for voters to swallow. Only the top 1% or so will be nailed with the higher income tax rates.

The 12 men and women featured in Susan Polis Schutz's documentary "Seeds of Resiliency" have all worked awfully hard at overcoming tragedy, even if Schutz herself hasn't done a whole lot to make her film little more than a strung-together collection of interviews set to piano muzak. More like something you'd see at a seminar on perseverance than a movie, the featured interviewees are nevertheless remarkable examples of triumph: a young man born with spina bifida who can do flips in his wheelchair, an escapee of Idi Amin's regime who now helps African refugees, a Korean professor who quickly returned to teaching after becoming a quadriplegic.

MUSIC Taking on the role that won Susan Hayward an Oscar, Nellie McKay in her latest musical project gives voice to the lying, scheming Barbara Graham, the third woman to die in the gas chamber in California at San Quentin in 1955. "I Want to Live!" is a noir bad-girl tale, replete with prison lesbianism, so prepare to be scandalized. Catalina Bar & Grill, 6725 Sunset Blvd. 8 p.m. Sat. $20. (323) 466-2210.

Pistachio vinyl covers the gurney in the state's new lethal injection chamber, the only splash of color in a sterile white room where corrections officials intend to put to death rapist-murderer Albert Greenwood Brown next week. An Elgin clock, the only other furnishing, ticks above the death bed, tracking the time to the first execution to be carried out in California in nearly five years — unless a judge moves to stop it. The hexagonal room surrounded by viewing compartments and a holding cell where Brown is expected to spend his last six hours were built to comply with a federal court order that state officials correct deficiencies in the execution regimen.

Her name was Irene. She was a 40-year-old secretary at an ad agency, divorced with two sons. The younger boy was visiting his grandparents that summer in 1958. The 10-year-old son, Craig, was living with her at their apartment, 4569 Edgewood Place, near Olympic and Crenshaw boulevards. Irene's ex-husband was in Miami. Irene hadn't shown up for work Monday or Tuesday, so two men from the office went to check on her. She and her son had been lying there dead for two days, apparently.

Henryk Mandelbaum, a member of the Sonderkommando -- Jewish prisoners who were forced to empty the gas chambers at Auschwitz after fellow Jews were gassed and burned -- died Tuesday. He was 85. Mandelbaum died at a hospital in the southern Polish city of Bytom several days after undergoing heart surgery, said Igor Bartosik, a historian at the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum who has co-written an upcoming book on Mandelbaum.

Here we are in "the Cindy Room," surrounded by remnants of her violent past and, possibly, her deadly future. From this cubbyhole, two Orange County public defenders are marshaling their arguments to save Cynthia Lynn Coffman, the first woman sentenced to California's gas chamber since the Manson followers.

Robert Alton Harris, who in 1978 killed two San Diego teenagers, John Mayeski and Michael Baker, then coolly and memorably ate their fast-food burgers, was convicted of two counts of murder and sentenced to die in the gas chamber at San Quentin. In 1992, after spending more than 13 years on death row, he became the first person executed in California in 25 years.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- As authorities pared down the case against suspected "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui, a defiant Moussaoui on Tuesday challenged the authority of the U.S. judicial system to put him on trial for terrorism in a case he deemed "nonsense." "You are just preparing me for the gas chamber. That is what you are doing," Moussaoui told a federal judge. U.S.