U.S. Judge Is Urged to Reject Latest Plea by Killer Harris : Death penalty: State contends that the appeal offers no valid reason to delay the condemned killer’s scheduled Tuesday execution.

The state’s lawyers urged a San Diego federal judge Tuesday to deny Robert Alton Harris’ latest appeal, saying there is no valid legal reason to postpone next Tuesday’s scheduled execution of the condemned killer.

The state attorney general’s office claims that Harris failed to offer anything in his new appeal that would suggest he was not fairly sentenced to die for the 1978 killings of two San Diego teen-agers.

“Payment for crimes is long overdue,” the state’s lawyers said in legal papers filed late Tuesday asking U. S. District Judge William B. Enright in San Diego to “put an end to this case.”

Enright is scheduled to preside today at a hearing on Harris’ new appeal. If Enright denies the appeal--he has turned down Harris twice--Harris must turn to the U. S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the San Francisco-based appellate court that serves nine Western states and Guam.

Harris’ case has progressed further through the court system than any of the other more than 270 prisoners’ cases on Death Row. His execution would be the first in California in 23 years.

Harris’ sole hope for reprieve lies with the federal courts because last week he withdrew a request that Gov. George Deukmejian consider clemency--that is, commuting his death sentence to life in prison. The state courts repeatedly have denied his pleas for mercy.

The U. S. Supreme Court has rejected Harris’ appeals four times, most recently Jan. 16.

The California Supreme Court affirmed Harris’ death sentence in 1981. On March 16, the state Supreme Court turned down a new appeal that Harris’ San Diego attorneys, Charles Sevilla and Michael McCabe, filed Jan. 5.

The federal appeal, filed Monday, essentially sets forth the same arguments that failed to persuade the state Supreme Court to spare the 37-year-old Harris.

In the latest appeal, defense attorneys contend that new psychiatric evidence shows that Harris suffered from a variety of mental disorders that played a part in the killings. It would be unfair to execute Harris because those conditions were not taken into account when he was sentenced, the defense attorneys said.

Among the ailments, defense attorneys said, is post-traumatic stress disorder, the condition usually associated with combat.

The effect of the disorders is that Harris is driven by impulses that, on July 5, 1978, fed on one another uncontrollably, driving each sequence in the killings of Michael Baker and John Mayeski, defense attorneys said.

Harris killed both 16-year-old boys after stealing their car for use in a bank robbery. He abducted them from a fast-food parking lot where they had just ordered lunch. Later, he ate their half-finished hamburgers.

Responding Tuesday to the defense claims, the state attorney general’s office said Harris “knew precisely what he was doing when he kidnaped, robbed and killed those boys and when he robbed the bank.”

Harris killed the teen-agers because he couldn’t afford witnesses, the state’s lawyers said. When he robbed the bank, he pointed his gun at the teller and told him not to call security or he would be killed, they said.

In addition, the prosecutors said, the evidence was not newly discovered.

Harris’ mental state in 1978 has been available for study since 1978, they said. No one knows if the labels placed on Harris’ mental state now are any different from those attached at the time of the 1979 trial because there are no reports from the defense psychiatrists, they said.

Perhaps, they added, the doctors who examined Harris 11 years ago considered whether Harris exhibited symptoms of conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, but rejected those diagnoses and, instead, concluded--as the state’s expert did--that Harris was a psychopath.

As for Harris’ “supposed inability” to control his impulsive and violent behavior, that contention is inconsistent with some 20 sworn statements recently filed in his appeal by friends, prison guards and other inmates, the state’s lawyers said.

All those statements attest to Harris’ “warm and caring nature as well as his ability to control himself,” the prosecutors said.

The danger in Harris’ new appeal, the prosecutors said, is that it represents nothing more than an abuse of the legal processes and is bound to cause disrespect for the courts among a frustrated public.

This new appeal is Harris’ “19th bite at the apple,” they said, meaning it was the 19th time--not counting pretrial review--that state or federal courts have considered Harris’ claims. “The apple is long since consumed and justice long overdue,” they said.