A triple murderer made an obscene gesture as he was put to death in
the gas chamber Monday in Arizona's first execution in 29 years.Donald Eugene Harding, 43, was executed just after midnight following a flurry of appeals. He was pronounced dead 101/2 minutes after cyanide pellets were dropped into a bowl of sulfuric acid beneath his chair to release the gas.
As he waited, Harding gestured as if to urge the executioner to get started. At least twice - once while in the throes of death - Harding extended his middle finger. At the time, he had straps across his forearms and wrists.
Harding was sentenced to die for the 1980 murders of businessmen Robert Wise of Mesa and Martin Concannon of Tucson, who were robbed, hogtied, beaten and shot in a Tucson hotel.
He also was convicted of killing a man in similar fashion a day earlier in a Phoenix motel and was linked to at least three other slayings, one in Arkansas and two in California.
It was the first execution in Arizona since 1963, when Manuel Silvas died in the gas chamber for fatally shooting his estranged pregnant girlfriend.
Harding became the 168th person put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to resume use of capital punishment in 1976.
Arizona becomes the 19th state to make use of the death penalty since then. Delaware had its first execution in nearly 46 years on March 14. On April 21, California is scheduled to carry out its first in 25 years.
Late Sunday, the state Board of Pardons and Paroles refused to recommend Gov. Fife Symington grant Harding a reprieve or commute his sentence.
Late-hour appeals were rejected in turn by the state Supreme Court, a federal judge in Tucson, a federal appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court.