SUMMARY:

Robert Lee Massie was convicted of one count of first-degree murder in the Jan. 3, 1979 death of Boris G. Naumoff. A San Francisco County jury sentenced Massie to death on May 25, 1979.

Massie shot and killed Naumoff during a liquor store robbery, and wounded Charles Harris, another store employee. This crime occurred while Massie was on parole for a murder he committed in Los Angeles County in 1965. He had been given a death sentence for that crime, but it was overturned in 1972 when the California Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was unconstitutional.

According to a witness, on the afternoon of Jan. 3, 1979, she entered a San Francisco liquor store to make a purchase and saw Massie at the counter face-to-face with Naumoff, the owner of the liquor store. Thinking Massie was a customer, the witness stood next to him and said hello to Naumoff. Naumoff then handed Massie some money, which Massie placed in his jacket pocket. Naumoff then said to the witness, "A guy can’t make a living anymore."

At that time, Chuck Harris, an employee of the store, walked in and spoke to Naumoff on his way to the back room. As Massie turned to walk out the door, Naumoff went around the counter after him. The two men started to wrestle in the aisle. Massie then fired several shots. One hit Naumoff in the neck and killed him; another wounded Harris in his right thigh. Although Massie escaped, the witness, who had ducked behind the counter when the shots were fired, was able to call the police. At 9:50 p.m. the next night, San Francisco police officers apprehended Massie driving in his car. On Massie they found a Ruger .357 magnum, fully loaded. In his coat they found a loaded .380 Mauser automatic weapon with its hammer cocked in a fireable position, and several boxes of ammunition. Massie admitted that he had been under the influence of alcohol or controlled substances when he committed the crimes.

MASSIE’S FIRST DEATH SENTENCE AND CRIMES:

Massie’s first death sentence came after he committed a series of robberies and assaults between January 7 and January 15, 1965, in Los Angeles County. On the evening of January 7, Franklin Boller was getting out of his car in front of his home in West Covina when Massie approached him, hit him in the mouth with a rifle, and demanded money. Boller gave Massie his wallet and coin purse. Massie then fired a shot at Boller, grazing the side of his head. Later that evening, Morris and Mildred Weiss were returning to their San Gabriel home. As Mrs. Weiss got out of the car, Massie approached and fatally shot her. He then jumped into a waiting car and sped off. Just after midnight that night, Massie entered a Baldwin Park bar, brandished a rifle, and said, "This is a stickup." He took money from the cash register and the wallets of the bartender and a patron. The bartender threw a beer bottle at Massie, who then fled.

On January 15, Massie encountered Frank Patti at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. The two of them agreed to go to Patti’s hotel room. There, Massie pulled a revolver, demanded money, and told Patti to take his clothes off. Patti attacked Massie, who fired three shots and fled. Two shots hit Patti in the stomach and the third grazed his neck. Massie was arrested on January 20, 1965, for the assault on Patti. He gave two tape-recorded statements in which he admitted committing all of these crimes and said he was trying to rob Mrs. Weiss when he shot and killed her. He was convicted of four counts of robbery, one count of attempted murder, and one count of murder.

EXECUTION:

At 12:20 a.m., March 27, 2001, the execution by lethal injection of Robert Lee Massie began in San Quentin State Prison’s execution chamber. Massie was pronounced dead at 12:33 a.m. Massie’s last meal included two vanilla milkshakes, extra crispy french fries, extra crispy fried oysters and soft drinks. He spent his last hours with his spiritual advisors and his attorneys. Robert Lee Massie’s last words were "Forgiveness. Giving up all hope for a better past."

ProDeathPenalty.Com

On Jan. 7, 1965, Robert Massie murdered Mildred Weiss, a mother of two married to a furniture store owner. Massie shot Weiss, 48, outside her San Gabriel home during a botched follow-home robbery. He received a stay of execution 16 hours before he was to enter the gas chamber, even though he had urged officials to carry out the sentence. Then-Gov. Ronald Reagan stayed the execution so that Massie could testify in the trial of his alleged accomplice. After testifying, he returned to prison and remained there when the California Supreme Court temporarily banned executions. Massie's death sentence was commuted to life in prison when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled capital punishment unconstitutional in 1972.

He was paroled and set free in 1978. But 8 months later he was arrested for the murder of grocery store owner Boris Naumoff during a robbery attempt. Chuck Harris, a clerk at Naumoff's liquor store who was hit by one of Massie's bullets, survived with a leg wound. After receiving a death sentence for that crime, Massie spurned appeals on his behalf and once again asked to be executed. The state Supreme Court, however, threw out his conviction on grounds he pleaded guilty over the objections of his lawyers. Massie was retried and again sentenced to die for Naumoff's killing in a 1989 retrial. Earlier this year Massie withdrew his federal appeal and instructed his lawyers not to make any further efforts to save his life, clearing the way for his long-desired execution. In his petition to end his appeals, Massie said that he would rather die than continue living on death row in San Quentin. He said life on death row is a "lingering death." Even if his death sentence is reversed or commuted by an appeal, he would remain in prison for the rest of his life for shooting Boris Naumoff to death at a San Francisco liquor store. That is why he said he wants a "swift execution." California's condemned inmates are more likely to die of old age or illness than by execution. More than 100 inmates have been on death row for more than 15 years.

In recent days, death penalty opponents tried a flurry of last-ditch efforts to save Massie. They argued in state and federal courts that Massie had long been racked by depression and other mental illness, a fact they claim was not argued strongly enough throughout Massie's time in prison. They also said Frederick Baker, a corporate lawyer who represented Massie, had abdicated his responsibility by seeking to pave the way for Massie's execution. The late moves angered both Massie and the prosecutors who had sought his execution for years. "I just find it curious that we are suddenly hearing from attorneys who have never met Massie and weren't at any of his hearings in which a judge found him competent, that he knows what he is doing," said Deputy Atty. Gen. Bruce Ortega. "I just don't understand why they are not respecting his opinion." "The hurt for my family will never stop," said Rick Naumoff, the son of one of Massie's victims. "We continue to deal with the loss of a husband, a father, a grandfather."

The Lamp of Hope (Los Angeles Times & Rick Halperin)

March 27, 2001 - CALIFORNIA - Robert Lee Massie, a convicted killer who spent 2 separate stints on death row and gained notoriety while pursuing his own demise for more than 30 years, was executed by the State of California early this morning. Massie, who killed in 1965 and again in 1979, was pronounced dead at 12:33 a.m. at San Quentin State Prison. A combination of drugs was injected into the 59-year-old murderer's veins, first rendering him unconscious, and then killing him by stopping his heart and lungs.

Bob Martinez, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections, said Massie's last words were: "Forgiveness. Giving up all hope for a better past." Witnesses described Massie as awake, alert and cooperative. He had entered the execution chamber shortly after midnight accompanied by 5 guards who placed him on a gurney and strapped his arms. He picked up his head several times after the drugs began flowing through his veins. At one point guards turned the gurney so Massie could make eye contact with his attorney, Frederick Baker, and 2 spiritual advisors. The pale, slight inmate had spent more years on San Quentin's death row than any currently condemned man.

His case was one of the most peculiar in state history. In all, Massie was convicted and sentenced to die on 3 occasions for the 2 murders. On Monday, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected efforts to stay the execution. The appeals by opponents of the death penalty were made despite Massie's objections. Outside the prison gates, several hundred protesters gathered. A dozen had walked 25 miles from San Francisco carrying signs that read "Abolish the Death Penalty" and "Executions Teach Vengeance and Violence." But prison officials said Massie, whom they described as upbeat in recent days, was preparing to die. Relatives and friends of Massie's victims also were preparing for the execution. About a dozen of them gathered for dinner at a Marin County restaurant--some meeting each other for the 1st time. Most admitted they had been nervous and got little sleep the past few days.

"The hurt for my family will never stop," said Rick Naumoff, the son of one of Massie's victims. "We continue to deal with the loss of a husband, a father, a grandfather." Over the years, Massie repeatedly said he would rather be dead than live in confinement for the rest of his days. He called his quest for death "a mission" to expose what he considered the unfair process of automatic appeals in California capital cases. Convicted killers, he said, should be allowed to stop all appeals. "I'm tired," he said in a recent telephone interview. "I just don't want to live the rest of my life in jail."

Massie's death sentence stemmed from the fatal shooting in 1979 of 61-year-old Boris Naumoff in the liquor store Naumoff owned in San Francisco. But that was not the 1st time Massie had killed. After a childhood of neglect and abuse in Virginia, Massie had drifted to California by 1965. He was 24, already a veteran of rough-and-tumble jails and well-schooled in crime.

On Jan. 7, 1965, Massie murdered Mildred Weiss, a mother of two married to a furniture store owner. Massie shot Weiss, 48, outside her San Gabriel home during a botched follow-home robbery. Massie pleaded guilty, and by 1967 was so close to being executed that he had ordered his last meal and made a will. He escaped death when then-Gov. Ronald Reagan stayed the execution so that Massie could testify in the trial of his alleged accomplice. After testifying, he returned to prison and remained there when the California Supreme Court temporarily banned executions. Along the way, Massie began decrying the conditions on death row as harsh and cruel and he repeatedly told state officials he did not want to be kept alive.

By the early 1970s, he was dubbed the "Prisoner Who Wants to Die" by the news media. He wrote magazine articles making the case for his own execution and was quoted frequently. But in 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court banned executions. Massie and more than 100 men and women on California's death row had their sentences commuted to life with the possibility of parole. Massie, a model prisoner who immersed himself in the law and became an advisor to many inmates, was given a 2nd chance when the state's parole board let him free in the summer of 1978. Only months later, on Jan. 3, 1979, he killed Naumoff. Chuck Harris, a clerk at Naumoff's liquor store who was hit by one of Massie's bullets, survived with a leg wound.

After pleading guilty, Massie was sentenced to die. Again he welcomed the verdict, openly fighting the automatic appeals process. But the state's high court, led by then-Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, overturned Massie's conviction because he had pleaded guilty against the advice of his attorney. The court ordered a retrial. In 1989, Massie was convicted of murder for a 3rd time. He temporarily sought freedom through state and federal courts, but after a while he returned to saying he wanted to die. "I just decided to step up to the plate and say enough," Massie said earlier this month. 2 months ago, a federal judge ruled him competent and decided he could drop all appeals.

In recent days, death penalty opponents tried a flurry of last-ditch efforts to save Massie. They argued in state and federal courts that Massie had long been racked by depression and other mental illness, a fact they claim was not argued strongly enough throughout Massie's time in prison. They also said Frederick Baker, a corporate lawyer who represented Massie, had abdicated his responsibility by seeking to pave the way for Massie's execution. The late moves angered both Massie and the prosecutors who had sought his execution for years. "I just find it curious that we are suddenly hearing from attorneys who have never met Massie and weren't at any of his hearings in which a judge found him competent, that he knows what he is doing," said Deputy Atty. Gen. Bruce Ortega. "I just don't understand why they are not respecting his opinion."

Massie becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in California and the 9th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1992. Massie becomes the 20th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 703rd overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Tidings Online

Friday, March 23, 2001 - Death penalty, Massie execution criticized at Justice Conference (By Jennifer C. Vergara)

"Robert Massie is tense, sharp, edgy," said Mike Farrell, describing a man the state of California has sentenced to die next week. Farrell, president of an advocacy group called Death Penalty Focus, spoke about Massie during a workshop entitled "The Campaign for a Death Penalty Moratorium" at the Justice and Peace Conference workshop held at Loyola Marymount University March 17. The impending execution of Massie (scheduled for 12:01 a.m. on March 27) is now the focus of upcoming vigils and arguments for and against the death penalty.

In 1965, Massie killed San Gabriel resident Mildred Weiss while robbing her and her husband. He received the death penalty but it was commuted to life in 1972. After six years, Massie was paroled - only to fatally shoot liquor storeowner Boris Naumoff months later. Against his lawyer's objections, Massie pled guilty and again received the death penalty, which was automatically appealed several times, despite Massie's refusal, was overturned in 1985, then was reaffirmed by another jury in 1989.

Farrell told the participants that Massie - who was abused by parents, lived in numerous abusive foster homes and was gang-raped in prison at age 17 - withdrew his federal appeal, accepting his sentence to die by lethal injection because, as Farrell quoted him, "this old, scarred body is ready to rest."

Praying for peace - At noon on March 26, Masses in petition for Massie's eternal rest will be held at St. Camillus Church and at the Archdiocesan Catholic Center, Los Angeles. In Camarillo, Padre Serra Church will be the site of an interfaith prayer service at 5:30 p.m. Another interfaith vigil will be held at 7:30 p.m. at Holy Name of Mary Church in San Dimas. Following Massie's death, a 7:30 a.m. memorial Mass will be celebrated at St. Camillus. These liturgies are planned by religious communities and private groups not just for Massie, but for all death row inmates and for the end of the death penalty. In urging people to answer the Catholic Christian call to end violence, death penalty opponents in the archdiocese quote from Cardinal Roger Mahony's statement last May, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.: "This is a time for a new ethic - justice without vengeance. We cannot restore life by taking life. We cannot practice what we condemn. We cannot contain violence by using state violence."

'Eye for an eye' - A Gallup poll, conducted from Feb. 19-21, showed that 67 percent of respondents favor the death penalty (down from a high of 80 percent in 1994). When the Gallup poll asked them why they support the death penalty, 48 percent quoted the Old Testament: "An eye for an eye." Farrell, in his workshop, said this is the rationale for the May 16 execution of Timothy McVeigh, the "Oklahoma bomber" responsible for the death of 168 people. Farrell argued against this sentence and quoted Bud Welch, whose 23-year-old daughter died in the blast, saying it will also be "an act of revenge and hate and will make [McVeigh] a martyr in the eyes of those who share his beliefs…. "Should the last thing we see of Timothy McVeigh be a raised fist and a smirk on his way to execution, he would have won. The chemicals pumped into his veins will validate his war against the United States government and justify in his mind, and in the mind of many others, the taking of 168 innocent lives."

Tough on crime - The more effective punishment for criminals like McVeigh and Massie is life without parole (LWOP), Farrell asserted. LWOP, he told his audience, "removes murderers from society but without the horrors of killing prisoners." Since 1978, more than 2,500 convicted murders have been given LWOP sentences in California and not one has been released. Life without possibility of parole, Farrell added, is a punishment so severe many inmates actually dread it: "To exit this earth with a newspaper headline and a vigil outside prison walls is preferred by many to the anonymity of the seeming eternity of life in prison." Moreover, LWOP - enacted in 42 states, the District of Columbia and the federal government - can save the government millions of dollars, stated Farrell. "Death penalty trials are estimated now to be six times higher than the cost of a regular murder trial," he stated. LWOP also prevents the execution of the innocent. Since 1992, Farrell said, 435 people were convicted of capital crimes, only to be found innocent later. The criminal justice system, Farrell said, is tainted by racism. Of the 20 people on federal death row, 18 are minorities. One thing LWOP cannot do that death penalty can, Farrell added, "is provide the pandering politicians with simple frontier-style justice, allowing them to boast of being 'tough on crime' without doing anything to stop it."

Pacific News Service

March 27, 2001 - State-Assisted Suicide: The Execution And Triumph Of Robert Massie (By Michael A. Kroll)

Good fortune and human kindness are not often seen in the story of the life and death of Robert Massie, but harm wrought by the state -- through negligence and malice -- is ever present. In the end, Massie succeeded in making the state finish the job by putting him to death. PNS associate editor Michael A. Kroll is a veteran death penalty abolitionist and founder of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

I am guilty of a homicide. I did not act alone. We, the taxpayers of California, performed the killing collectively. The man we killed was my friend. I came to know Bob Massie about 15 years ago when he wrote to tell me he admired my writings about the death penalty. Over the years we met many times and exchanged copious communication. Bob's letters were always filled with citations from capital cases, and always included an attempt to convince me of the soundness of his legal thinking. He argued that the state law mandating an automatic appeal in any case where the death penalty is imposed amounts to trying someone twice for the same crime. This -- double jeopardy -- is unconstitutional. Therefore, he insisted, he should be set free.

Massie decided he could best prove his point by refusing to appeal and demanding to be put to death. It became the singular goal of his sad life. Last January, Massie asked the court to dismiss his federal petition for review. He asked me to increase my visits and witness his execution so I could write about his death and make the citizens of California understand that he was dying for the cause of abolition. He was "on a mission." I told him I did not understand how this could end the death penalty, and that I had no desire to witness his execution. But I agreed so I could continue visiting and to try to dissuade him.

One week before his execution, I went to court as his "next friend," to try to block the execution on the grounds that he was mentally ill, unstable, profoundly depressed, and therefore not competent to waive judicial review. From that moment, I was Massie's enemy. He saved his most passionate hatred for the lawyers who continued to try to save his life, and now he cast me into that despised category. I never got around to asking my friend if he had any recollection of his mother giving him up to the care of the state when he was not yet six years old. I know he remembered -- because he told me he wanted to forget -- his years in foster homes, spread-eagled beatings, his head pushed down into the toilet bowl and held under.

In juvenile hall at age 11, he had a few new experiences. Small of stature and somewhat effeminate, he was gang raped repeatedly. But he never talked much about any of that, did not think it mattered, did not see a connection to his current mental health. "Everybody's a victim," he would say. He did share one searing memory. At 12, my friend was put on a Virginia chain gang. The boys went out in all weather, chained together, and dug trenches that they then filled. One day, one of the boys just fell over dead. A guard unchained the dead body and tossed it into the pit. The chained boys covered him over and continued working.

Massie was pleased to know that I work with young writers in juvenile hall. He told me to pass them a message of understanding and solidarity. They understood him -- not knowing that when he was their age, medical reports described him as "a very disturbed little boy who will need care outside of his home for a long period of time." The little boy got no care. Ever. At 17, beginning to fall apart, he was transferred to a prison medical facility and evaluated as having "undergone a severe personality disorganization." Outside, he began to treat his symptoms with alcohol, methamphetamines, and other drugs. In 1965, strung out on his "medicines," my friend killed a fellow human being in a robbery attempt gone bad. He pled guilty and was sent to California's death row. He tried, unsuccessfully, to waive his appeals. A prison psychologist diagnosed him with a disorder "tantamount to an acute schizophrenic reaction." Then, in 1972, the death penalty was declared unconstitutional. A few years later, after a brief period of freedom, my friend was involved in an altercation in a San Francisco liquor store. As he was leaving, the proprietor grabbed him from behind. A lifetime in prisons had conditioned him to fear above all else being held from behind. He freed one hand, drew out a revolver and aimlessly fired three times. One shot hit the proprietor and killed him. During his trial, my friend was "in and out of competence," he said. He had been taking drugs steadily, and the jail medical staff prescribed lithium to control his paranoia and depression. But he remembered that at the very time he was being tried, convicted and sentenced to death for his unplanned homicide, Dan White was being sentenced to a short term of years in a courtroom just down the hall for methodically killing the mayor of San Francisco and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Massie wanted to die. He tried to kill himself. He failed. He tried again. Another failure. By the time of his 1989 retrial, he was insanely committed to his theory of double jeopardy. But, as every attorney who had represented him or corresponded with him had warned, no court would accept his theory, and he was again sentenced to death. He saw all this as proof that the courts are corrupt and that defense lawyers were his real adversaries.

To overcome them, he decided, he had to die -- dismiss his appeals and seek to be executed. But he realized that a court would not allow him to do that if he was seen as irrational or incompetent. So he stopped seeing psychiatrists. He stopped creating a record of his mental status, so that by the time the question of his competence came up again, there was no recent record. By chance, the lawyer appointed to represent him had no experience in criminal law and would do whatever he was told by an intelligent client. My friend, Bob Massie, maneuvered the state of California into assisting in his suicide. He had his own lawyer doing the dance of death with the attorney general and managed to avoid being declared incompetent.

A brilliant performance. But brilliance is not the same as mental health. I greatly admired, and shall greatly miss, Bob Massie's intelligence. At the same time, I feel guilty relief that he no longer has to wrestle with the demons of his dark mental processes that rendered him irrational and incompetent, despite the courts' rulings. And I believe that my efforts to prevent the suicide of this mentally unstable man unwittingly gave Bob Massie a triumphant exit, proof that he could outsmart and outmaneuver any conspiracy to keep him alive. How satisfying it must have been at last to have been led into the chamber. How competent he must have felt. I hope the last thought he had before we killed him was, "Ha ha! I beat them all. I won."

Mindfully.Org (San Francisco Chronicle)

March 14, 2001 - Fixin' To Die: Let My Death Give Life to a Challenge of California's Machinery of Execution (By Robert Lee Massie)

SOON I will be dead. Early on the morning of March 27, the state of California will flood my veins with a lethal cocktail of sodium pentothal, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. Death will follow swiftly. I could live for several more years. I voluntarily abandoned federal appellate review of California's judgment of death. Many have labeled this suicide. It is not. I did not ask the district attorney to charge my case as a capital crime. I did not persuade a jury to recommend the death penalty. I did not ask the trial judge to impose the death penalty. I will not push the plunger that injects poison into my bloodstream. These are acts of the state of California on behalf of you, "The People." It is preposterous to call my death at the hands of the state - whether now or later - an act of "suicide." Even if I were to win on appeal, I will never again see the outside of prison. I have lived in prison most of my adult years, nearly 30 on Death Row. I am a rational man. I do not consider forgoing the raptures of another decade behind bars to be an irrational decision.

I knew my decision would draw attention to my case, and it has. I have something to say, and I want Californians to hear it: In your name, judges are violating their oaths to uphold the Constitution. They are disregarding their obligations to the rule of law in service of a process - the intricate machinery of extermination, constructed by the Legislature and legitimized by the courts, which exists for the sole purpose of producing a constitutionally airtight death sentence.

Take my case. When I came up for trial in 1979, my state-appointed lawyer tried to prevent me from pleading guilty. When he failed, and I was sentenced to death, another state-appointed lawyer appealed my conviction to the state Supreme Court against my wishes. The Rose Bird court reversed my conviction because my state-appointed lawyer didn't agree with my guilty plea. It sent the case back for a retrial that I never asked for and didn't want. The second trial should have been barred by the double jeopardy clause, because a defendant cannot be tried twice for the same crime unless he - not the state - appeals. In my case, it was the state's appeal, taken against my wishes, that led to the second trial. But I was again tried, convicted and sentenced to death. The state Supreme Court refused to enforce my constitutional right, which would have led to freedom, to be free from double jeopardy.

The court considered and rejected arguments I never wanted to make (because they would have resulted in yet another trial that I didn't want) to make the decision appear to meet constitutional requirements. It affirmed my conviction on such blatantly specious grounds that the court's opinion can only be viewed as a deliberate effort to skirt the Constitution. This was a transparent violation of each justice's oath to uphold the Constitution, and my execution will therefore be unconstitutional. I have devoted more than a decade to studying the law in capital cases. Many men on Death Row have asked me to help them evaluate the work of their state-appointed attorneys - purportedly on their behalf. Time and time again, I have seen solid constitutional arguments superficially asserted (if at all) and buried under a mountain of frivolous arguments that have no chance of winning. This allows the court to write lengthy opinions, rejecting issue after issue, without ever coming to grips with the serious constitutional issues which should have been the heart of the case.

Death penalty litigation is the state's process from beginning to end: state prosecutors, state-agency lawyers appointed to represent defendants, an intricate scheme created by state legislators geared toward one inevitable result, and a court whose complicity constitutes a repudiation of the justices' obligation to honor and uphold the Constitution. I hope my death will give life to a challenge to California's machinery of death. Not simply because I got a raw deal, but because I see dishonesty and incompetence leading to unnecessary death all around me, every day. The state's need for a well-oiled machine has assumed a position of superiority over the constitutional rights of defendants. The machine must be dismantled and replaced with attorneys who truly represent their clients and judges who enforce and uphold the Constitution.

Robert Lee Massie is scheduled to be executed on March 27 at San Quentin State Prison.