Death Row Inmate Is Executed

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. (AP) -- A killer who spent 28 years on death row and finally dropped all appeals after tiring of ``thischarade'' was executed by injection early Tuesday, obliginglyhelping his executioner find a vein for the needle.Robert Lee Massie, 59, had spent two stretches in prison as acondemned man, longer than any other inmate now on California'sdeath row.Massie pumped his fist to help his executioners find a vein, and told the warden at San Quentin he was ready to die. His last words were: ``Forgiveness: giving up all hope for a better past.'' Massie was the ninth inmate executed since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978. The state's last execution was in March 2000.Massie killed Mildred Weiss in 1965 during a Los Angeles-area crime spree. At one point he came so close to execution for that killing that he ordered his last meal, but in 1972 that sentence was commuted to life.He was paroled in 1978, and the next year he killed San Francisco liquor store owner Bob Naumoff during a robbery and was sent back to death row.``This event was supposed to happen in April of 1965,'' said Weiss' son, Ron, one of the witnesses at the execution. ``If that had happened, the Naumoff family would not have had to go through this.''Massie said he finally gave up his appeals to protest the slow pace of California's death penalty system.`I don't see any use in continuing this charade,'' he said in a recent interview.Hours before the execution, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch plea from death penalty opponents and affirmed that Massie was mentally competent to decide to die.The high court also let stand a federal judge's order letting witnesses see more of the execution process. The Associated Press and other news organizations had asserted the public's right to know about such details. That meant that Massie's execution was the first in California since 1996 in which witnesses were allowed to see the prisoner being strapped down and the needle being inserted.Warden Jeanne Woodford said the process had been hidden to protect the executioners' identities. The five staff members who strapped Massie down and inserted the needles removed their identification badges but otherwise made no efforts to conceal themselves.California's death row holds nearly 600 prisoners. Hundreds stillhave not been provided an attorney for their mandatory first appealto the California Supreme Court.In comparison, Texas has executed 244 people since the deathpenalty was reinstated in 1976. Its death row holds 447 inmates,and the longest-serving inmate has been there almost 26 years.