The Arizona Daily Star Saturday June 08 04:47 AM EDT
                From:  http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/azstar/20020608/lo/prisoner_longs_to_hurry_death_1.html

                         Prisoner longs to hurry death
                               By Rhonda Bodfield, ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Robert Comer has been called the most dangerous man in the Arizona prison system.

His death row cell in Florence is 7 feet by 11.5 feet. An expert psychiatrist concludes it is one of the most physically isolating places he's seen.

Comer, 45, who murdered a man in 1987, wants to drop his appeals and die as soon as possible.

His attorneys say he's not qualified to make that decision. The lawyers convinced the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (news - web sites) that prison conditions may be part of the reason he's now
embracing death after years of fighting it. That panel ordered the U.S.District Court in Phoenix to determine his mental competency and then to answer whether he's making a voluntary decision or whether conditions are so harsh that he feels he has no choice. The ruling is expected later this month.
 
The question, really, is whether the human brain is wired to survive intact in the absence of nearly all stimulation and personal interaction.

While the case hinges on Comer alone, it could affect the fate of others. If the state loses, it may be forced to change how it deals with difficult inmates or risk similar court battles. Meanwhile, prisoner-rights advocates are contemplating a legal challenge to the way Arizona runs its "supermax" prisons.

Supermax prisons operate on the theory that locating problem inmates in one highly controlled facility makes the rest of the system more manageable.

Arizona's two supermax facilities can house 1,700 prisoners, 127 of them death row inmates. They're
there for the duration, as are prison gang members, juveniles tried as adults and mentally ill prisoners
with behavioral disorders.

Then there are the temporary boarders: Those who continually act out are sent there for at least six
months but can go back to the general prison population if they behave.

Comer is in a particularly sterile place. It doesn't help that he's had about 40 violations since entering
prison in Arizona in 1988, some for setting his cell on fire. He's known for his knack for manufacturing
crude knives.

His cell has no bars and no view of the outside world. Instead, he looks out at a concrete wall through
a metal grid punctuated by half-inch holes. Over that - because he has thrown liquid at officers and
assaulted an inmate walking past his cell with a sharpened metal tip on a tightly rolled paper pole - is a
layer of transparent Plexiglass through which he has to yell to be heard. It muffles sounds coming in,
like earplugs.

Correctional officers in the unit wear visors and body armor. Inmates can't see each other, because
they all face the same way. Comer has no furniture but a bed and toilet. His desk was taken away
because he cut a 22-inch piece of metal off of it last year with a lighter wheel. It wasn't until the past
few months that he's had a radio and a television.

With few exceptions, this is where he lives every hour. Every week, he is allowed three showers, one
five-minute phone call and three hours in a stark, only modestly larger recreation cell, with no athletic
equipment and a metal mesh ceiling. On the rare occasions when he leaves his pod, he is transported
shackled, face down on a gurney.

In its decision, the 9th Circuit noted Comer's habit of pacing morning to night, 12 to 20 hours at a time,
to keep from becoming, in his words, "a veggie." He has calculated that 300 laps is a mile. He does 30
to 50 miles a day. He punched a wall a year ago because he wanted "to feel something somewhere
other than inside my head."

Death row "volunteers," as such prisoners as Comer are called, are nothing new. Oklahoma City
bomber Timothy McVeigh (news - web sites) was only the latest and most celebrated. Defense
attorneys are often in the uncomfortable position of arguing that the state should not assist in
government-sanctioned suicide, even in the face of criticism that they are using their clients to advance
their own anti-death-penalty views.

Three groups of attorneys are involved in Comer's case, including his original attorneys Pete
Eckerstrom and Julie Hall, of Tucson. Comer has appointed a new counsel who is siding with state
attorneys who say he should be allowed to make the decision.

Of the 38 states that have reinstated the death penalty, most have a supermax prison. Texas alone has
16. Florida in 2000 made its push to join the ranks. Its corrections commission cautioned that while
there has been little assessment of the effects of locking someone in such a cell for 23 hours a day,
some studies have found it can lead to depression, uncontrollable rage, delusion and paranoia. But
prison officials also say it is needed for security.

"As far as the allegation that it makes them worse, do you understand how ludicrous that is?" asked
Department of Corrections Director Terry Stewart. "Here we're dealing with a human being who either
won't behave in prison or he is a predator and you can't leave him in the general population. What else
are we going to do with him?

"Where he is is a function of who and what he is."

If it's safe, said attorney Eckerstrom, it's also "extremely creepy." On one tour, he said, a man howled
in a nearby cell. One paced. Another was curled into a fetal position, sleeping, in midafternoon.

"The people were behaving the way you would see animals behaving at a bad zoo," he said.

It's difficult to determine what shaped Comer. He apparently wasn't abused by his middle-class
parents. He went fishing, got average grades and was one badge away from Eagle Scout. A
psychiatrist who evaluated him suspects he was twisted in part by the California penal system, where
he served a five-year stint in 1978 for rape and kidnapping.

He did part of that time in Folsom's segregated housing unit, which would later be declared "cruel and
unusual punishment" by a U.S. District Court. Inmates there spent 24 hours a day in windowless cells,
5 feet by 8 feet, infested with rats and the stench of human excrement. The usual term was 30 days.
Comer spent five months.

In a 1987 letter to a friend, Comer recalled fearing that Folsom's gray walls were going to close in and
squash the life out of him. He wrote that he could feel his mind shut down, piece by piece.

"I used to mess with the rats," he wrote. "I never could figure out how they got in. At night they would
crawl on you. . . . I used to talk to the rats at first. After four months, they talked back."

Later he would write it was in those cells he "learned about the Bible and found there is no God." He
saw four knifings on Folsom's main yard and started making shanks. In a court affidavit, he said that at
first he thought he could put it behind him, but "I now know that once they take your humanity, you
never get it back."

In 1987, only three years after getting out of the California prison, Comer murdered a stranger at a
campground near Apache Lake, then kidnapped and raped a woman camping nearby. She escaped
and he was captured.

He didn't attend his trial. He tried not to attend his sentencing. Angered because guards had made his
handcuffs too tight earlier, he tried to stab them with a handmade shank. He was flushed out of his cell
with a high-powered hose and attended the hearing, bruised and shackled to a wheelchair, naked but
for a cloth over his lap, his head drooping toward his shoulder.

Comer refused to comment for this story, but details of his life are outlined in court records and in 10
hours of testimony during a three-day hearing in March before a federal judge, asking that his appeals
be waived. He comes across as an articulate man who prides himself on doing crossword puzzles in
ink without a dictionary.

Two expert psychiatrists disagree on whether he's competent.

Dr. Sally Johnson, a North Carolina psychiatrist who has worked on celebrity cases including the
Unabomber and John Hinckley, said she believes he is competent.

Dr. Terry Kupers, a California expert brought in by Eckerstrom who has written a book about
abysmal mental health care in prison, says Comer suffers from depression and post-traumatic stress
syndrome, which could distort his reasoning. Kupers says Comer's testimony during the hearing was a
180-degree turn, adding he believes Comer is saying what he thinks the court wants to hear. While he
once said that "waking up every day is worse than dying" and that he doesn't believe in the death
penalty, he now says he wants to pay his debt to society and could do more time "standing on my
head."

Prisoner advocates have suggested basic changes such as more rehabilitation services, more windows
and an outdoor recreation yard.

"It might be nice, but is it realistic?" asked Director Stewart. "Absolutely not."

The Arizona Attorney General's Office agreed in court filings: "This case is not a forum to evaluate
alternative methods of running a prison."

That forum, though, may be coming.

Eleanor Eisenberg, director of the Arizona Civil Liberties Union, said her organization is weighing a
range of prison issues for possible litigation, from supermax facilities to health care and discipline
policies.

That's no idle threat. In March, a federal court approved a settlement between the ACLU and
Wisconsin's Corrections Department. The settlement forces improved medical coverage, better
recreational facilities and vocational training. Under the agreement, prison officials can no longer call the
unit "supermax" or refer to the inmates as "the worst of the worst."

"There's a lot of support in the literature that the mental health of anybody in those conditions for any
period of time is going to deteriorate," Eisenberg said. "Most people who are in prison are going to get
out of prison. It seems to me our interest should be to have people come out of prison not worse than
when they went in, and ideally better prepared. They aren't getting there in complete isolation and in the
absence of any rehabilitation, psychological counseling or jobs skills development."

In his writings to the court, Comer said that unlike his victim, he can still think and hope and dream.
"I will say it's just time to end it," he wrote. "I've a lot of hate in me, that is what those lawyers mean
about the incarceration. But that's for somebody else to worry about, how to quit creating monsters." 

                    Soon after Robert "Gypsy" Comer awakes each morning, he starts walking.
                    Comer knows that 300 laps around his cell makes one mile, and he keeps track
                    of how far he's gone. He walks for hours on end, doing his time with a kind of Zen
                    focus, trying not to indulge in fantasies about life on the outside.

                    Comer calls it keeping his head in the box. The "box" is on death row, located at
                    Special Management Unit II (SMU II), a super-maximum institution at the Arizona
                    State Prison in Florence.

                    Except for a few hours a week, he is locked in this box around the clock.

                    Authorities have dubbed Comer the most dangerous inmate of the 28,000 in the
                    state's prison system, something the 45-year-old murderer and rapist doesn't
                    deny. He's a legendary bad boy among staffers and inmates, partly for his
                    uncanny knack of shaping shanks -- prison talk for knives -- and other weapons.

                    Comer exists in a harsh and desolate netherworld, where some of the most
                    vicious people that society has spawned are doomed to spend their remaining days.

                    In April 1988, a Maricopa County judge sentenced Comer to death, a year after
                    the California native committed one of this state's most horrifying and
                    high-profile crimes of the era.

                    On February 3, 1987, Comer murdered a stranger at a campground near Apache
                    Lake. He then raped a woman who'd been camping with her boyfriend at an
                    adjacent site, kidnapped her, and continued to sexually assault her. The
                    woman escaped into the rugged wilderness, and made her way to safety
                    after almost 24 harrowing hours. Police captured Comer and a female companion
                    after an extensive search that ended atop a hill in remote Gila County.

                    Comer fit the stereotype of a madman killer, in part because he looked like
                    a larger, even more feral version of Charles Manson -- long, wild hair,
                    bulging eyes, heavily tattooed. Trial prosecutor K.C. Scull told jurors that
                    Comer was the "reincarnation of the Devil on earth." The panel responded
                    with guilty verdicts on all counts.

                    These days, Robert Comer appears as presentable as a con with four
                    teardrop tattoos etched into the left side of his face possibly can. He keeps
                    his hair short, he's clean-shaven, and he's generally polite with strangers.
                    He even has a girlfriend, a nurse named Amy Young, who visits him once
                    a week.

                    Even more surprising, he's articulate, intelligent and chillingly unsparing
                    about the evil acts he has committed.

                    "I killed for no good reason and screwed up the lives of many innocent
                    people," Comer told New Times in an April 15 interview, the first time he's
                    ever spoken to the media. "I think it's just time for me to pay the price."

                    By "price," he means his execution by lethal injection, and as soon as
                    possible. For more than two years, Comer has sought permission from a
                    federal court to drop his criminal appeals, which would expedite his trip to
                    the death house.

But it's uncertain if Comer will get his wish, because of a cutting-edge legal question raised in June 2000 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. That court instructed U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver to determine "whether Mr. Comer's conditions of confinement [at SMU II] constitute punishment so harsh that he has been forced to abandon a natural desire to live."

In other words, has Comer's life at SMU II -- as unrelentingly secure as any penal facility in the nation -- so twisted his thinking that he's incapable of making a rational decision about his own survival?

"We have grave concerns that a mentally disturbed man may be seeking the court's assistance in ending his life . . ." the appellate court wrote.

Comer's appellate attorneys agree he's incompetent to drop his own appeals, mostly because of years in isolation at SMU II. They claim Comer is trying to commit suicide at the state's hands.

The inmate counters that attorneys Peter Eckerstrom and Julie Hall have put their own opposition to the death penalty ahead of his interests. "They never said anything about my competence until they found out I want to be executed," he says. "All of a sudden, I'm just nuts, incompetent."

In late 2000, Judge Silver appointed a second set of attorneys to represent Comer on the competency issue, because of the inmate's disenchantment with Eckerstrom and Hall. Those attorneys say he's eminently qualified to discontinuehis appeals.

Silver held a three-day evidentiary hearing at her Phoenix courtroom in late March to help with her decision. The session drew remarkable testimony from the killer himself, who explained why he wants to die.

"A couple years ago, I'd have chopped your head off just for looking crossways at me," Comer told the judge. "For no reason at all. I'm still the same guy as I was back then. But a lot of things have meaning for me now, like my victims. It's just time to end it."

Legal experts around the nation anxiously are awaiting Silver's ruling. If she decides Comer's years of isolation at SMU II have rendered him incompetent, and appellate courts uphold her ruling, other death row inmates being held in super-max units are likely to be affected.

The judge is expected to rule in a few weeks.

Robert Comer historically has been a defense's attorney's nightmare --
uncommunicative, unsympathetic and guilty of the crimes with which he's
been charged.

Records show Comer spent little time with his court-appointed attorney
after his 1987 arrest for murder and rape and other offenses. He chose not
to attend his seven-day jury trial, though, in hindsight, it wouldn't have mattered much.

Comer had the same chance at his trial as he'd allowed his victims at Apache Lake -- none.

                    His murder victim, Larry Pritchard, was a drifter whose fatal mistake was
                    settling down for the night at the same campground as Comer. He died from
                    a bullet fired at close range, after which Comer cut his throat.

                    The motive seems to have been a combination of robbery and an intense
                    desire to kill.

                    Tracy Andrews was spending the evening with her boyfriend, Richard
                    Brough, at a nearby campsite. Comer hog-tied Andrews to a vehicle, and
                    forced Brough to watch as he raped her the first time.

                    Andrews made an especially compelling witness, telling a rapt jury
                    how she'd later escaped Comer's clutches and fled into the wild.

                    It didn't help matters when she described how Comer had shot
                    Pritchard's purebred beagle after murdering the man. (Comer has
                    denied shooting the dog.)

                    His attorneys presented little by way of defense or mitigation. After the
                    conviction on all counts, Judge Ronald Reinstein demanded Comer's presence
                    at sentencing, a memorable event.

                    First, Maricopa County jailers rooted Comer from his cell with
                    high-powered water hoses, truncheons and fists. Comer tried to stab them
                    with a nine-inch-long shank during the clash. Finally, he was strapped to a
                    wheelchair, and pushed into Reinstein's court.

                    Naked except for a towel draped over his genitals, he sat before Reinstein
                    slumped and mute, his face bloodied from the jailhouse struggle, his body a
                    mélange of indecipherable tattoos, the very image of a modern-day monster.

                    The judge sentenced Comer to death, and added more than 300 years on
                    the rape-related convictions. Later that day, April 11, 1988, authorities
                    delivered Comer to death row in Florence, then located on Cellblock 6
                    at the main prison complex.

                    It wasn't his first incarceration in a maximum-security institution
 

                    Robert Charles Comer's mother wrote the following in her journal,
                    shortly before giving birth to him in San Jose, California.

                    "I feel that it will be a boy because only a boy can kick like this baby,"
                    Patricia Comer wrote on November 29, 1956.

                    Comer's history of violence and crime is told in thousands of pages of legal
                    documents, psychiatric reports and other paperwork that have become public
                    record over the years. Still, it remains something of a puzzle how Comer
                    evolved from a personable kid who finished one badge short of being an
                    Eagle Scout into a stone-cold killer.

                    He was raised in a middle-class family, the oldest of Patricia and Charles
                    Comer's four children, all boys. His father was an engineer for a technology firm,
                    and his mother worked as a quality-control inspector in Silicon Valley.

                    Photos of a youthful Comer depict a good-looking kid with an impish -- some
                    might say devilish -- grin. He loved to fish and was a member of the school safety
                    patrol, and played football for a time.

                    Comer's journey to death row started when he was detained as a juvenile in the
                    early 1970s on charges of assault, burglary and trespassing. He quit high
                    school during his senior year, and enlisted in the U.S. Army in January 1975.
                    (Comer later earned his diploma by passing a GED test.)

                                                
                                              Robert Comer In the Army - 1975

                    He was training to become a military policeman when his past caught up with
                    him. In July 1975, Army officials issued the 18-year-old an honorable discharge
                    after learning of his juvenile record. The next year, Comer served four months in a
                    California youth facility on a burglary rap, during which he became a member of an
                    offshoot of the Aryan Brotherhood.

                    After that, his crimes escalated. In December 1978, police arrested Comer
                    on charges of kidnapping, rape, assault with a deadly weapon, and other counts.
                    He plea-bargained to a relatively soft prison term of seven years, and was
                    sent for the first time to an adult prison.

                    Comer later admitted to having been involved in several stabbings during
                    his prison stint, some as perpetrator and others as recipient. Still in his early
                    20s, he spent months in solitary confinement at the prison in Folsom,
                    California, a profoundly violent institution.

                    Years later, Comer wrote about Folsom from Maricopa County Jail while
                    awaiting his trial for murder and rape:

                    "I remember feeling my mind shut down, one piece at a time. I used to
                    mess with the rats. I never could figure how they got in. At night, they
                    would crawl on you. At first, it bugged you. But just like love, or the girl
                    you left behind, you turned them all off. You live like a robot. . . . I used to
                    talk to the rats at first. After four months, they talked back. You think
                    you're going crazy, so you don't talk with the rats no more. . . . After 6 or 7
                    months, all your mind could say was, 'Fuck you.'"

                    Comer was released in August 1984 after he'd served less than six years,
                    and found sporadic work as a carpenter. He tells New Times he used
                    methamphetamines heavily during his 30 months of freedom after being
                    paroled, and became increasingly determined to seek revenge against
                    society for evils perpetrated against him at Folsom.

                                              
                                                Photo taken April 15, 2002

                    In February 1987, that revenge would take the form of murdering a
                    stranger, then repeatedly raping a young woman.
 
                    On April 11, 1988, Arizona State Prison authorities put Robert Comer in a death
                    row cell near its most infamous convict of the day, Robert Wayne Vickers.

                    "Bonzai," as Vickers had dubbed himself, already was a mythical character in the
                    Arizona prison system. He'd murdered two fellow inmates who allegedly had
                    "disrespected" him, and had carved his misspelled nickname into the back of his
                    first victim.

                    Inmates in proximity to Vickers feared him like no other, and kept their distance.
                    But he and Comer soon realized they were kindred spirits.

                    "He was not just a friend, he was my brother," Comer testified at his March
                    hearing. "We spilled blood together. We kept each other going, watched each
                    other's back, survived day to day. . . . Everybody knew if they messed with one
                    of us, they had to take both of us. You don't find that in prison. I would give my
                    life for him, as he would for me. We shared loyalty, honor, tribe, brotherhood,
                    friendship and kinship."

                    Authorities found Comer and Vickers so problematic that they yanked the pair off
                    death row, and put them in a segregated pod, a precursor to Arizona's
                    super-maximum units.

                    Super-max prisons came to the fore in the early 1990s as officials struggled to
                    deal with increasingly violent offenders. Now, SMU II houses about 720 inmates,
                    including those on death row. The facility also is home to the most uncontrollably
                    violent, the seriously mentally ill, and those designated as "STGs," or members
                    of the Security Threat Groups -- gangs.

                    In May 1996, officials placed Comer and Vickers in the Violence Control
                    Unit at the new SMU II, an even more secure facility. A year later,
                    authorities moved the pair and the other men on death row into a wing of
                    SMU II. (As of last week, 127 condemned men are incarcerated in that
                    wing. The two women on death row are at the Perryville prison west of
                    Phoenix.)

                    All the while, Comer's automatic appeals of his criminal convictions
                    continued to grind through the state legal system, then through federal
                    court.

                    The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed Comer's convictions in July 1990. In
                    1994, the State of Arizona issued a warrant of execution, another step on
                    the inmate's circuitous road toward death by lethal injection.

                    That year, Comer signed paperwork requesting the appointment of
                    so-called "habeas counsel." Such attorneys dissect the record for any
                    possible flaws that might lead a federal court to reconsider the death
                    sentence.

                    Tucson attorney Peter Eckerstrom became lead habeas counsel, and he
                    quickly won a stay of Comer's execution as he pursued the appeal. He was
                    joined several years later by co-counsel Julie Hall.

                    Comer tells New Times he'd basically forgotten about his appeal until
                    after he officially decided to seek execution in early 2000. "Surprised the
                    hell out of me," he says. "Then I thought, 'Oh, well. I'll just have to get the courts
                    up to speed about where I'm at on this.' But it hasn't quite worked out that way."

                    Robert Vickers was executed by lethal injection in May 1999. Bonzai's death
                    sent Comer into a months-long funk, and he vowed revenge. That August, he
                    fashioned yet another shank, on which he inscribed his late friend's nickname.
                    Comer sneaked the weapon into the recreation area, but corrections officers
                    subdued him with tear gas before anyone got hurt.

                    Months later, the inmate decided to get on with something he says he'd long been
                    contemplating. "I wanted to let them know they didn't have to play any more
                    games with Comer no more, that I wanted to pull my appeals," Comer tells
                    New Times. "It wasn't about my life in my box, because I can take that or leave
                    that. I can live in that box just fine. It's just the right thing to do."

                    In March 2000, he mailed several handwritten letters to judges and
                    prosecutors that repeated those sentiments. Comer's habeas lawyers say
                    they were stunned by Comer's letters, and tried to talk him out of it.

                    On April 15, 2000, attorney Julie Hall sent a 17-page handwritten letter to Comer --
                    whom she'd never met. The missive was a deeply personal plea to her client.

                    "Dear Gypsy," the letter started, "The things I am going to say are sincere and
                    from my heart, and not some line of bullshit from a lawyer."

                    Hall told Comer how much she hates SMU II, and how bad she feels after
                    speaking to her clients through the Plexiglas there.

                    "A glass wall that tries to tell people, this person you are looking at is not a person;
                    it is a specimen of evil that we removed from society. But I know the glass wall is lying,
                    because when I look through it, I am looking at a friend."

                    Hall -- whose sole legal focus is appealing death-penalty convictions -- said
                    she understood how Comer's destructive experiences at the Folsom prison
                    had affected him: "The story that needs to be told in your case is that
                    society has to share in the responsibility for the death of the man you were
                    convicted of killing. That society helped pull the trigger that night."

                    Even that overwrought plea didn't work. Comer remained determined to
                    die by lethal injection.

                    Volunteering for execution isn't as rare as it might seem. Since the U.S.
                    Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that capital punishment is constitutional, more
                    than 90 convicted murderers have asked to be put to death -- including 60
                    since 1996.

                    When the Ninth Circuit received Comer's letter, it already had been
                    considering his criminal appeal -- the one written by Peter Eckerstrom. The
                    court expressed concerns about Comer's mental state, and how that may
                    intersect with his life on SMU II. That took on added significance when
                    Judge Warren Ferguson noted that the inmate's request to die came amid
                    "serious questions about the constitutionality of his conviction and
                    sentence."

                    That comment strongly suggests the panel -- known in legal circles for its
                    civil libertarian bent -- is considering overturning Comer's death sentence,
                    maybe even his murder conviction. But the court in June 2000 put the
                    Comer case on hold until it hears from Judge Silver on two critical issues:

                    If Comer is legally competent to waive his appeals.

                    • If his decision to speed up his execution truly is voluntary.

                    In late 2000, Silver appointed Phoenix attorneys Mike Kimerer and Holly
                    Gieszl to represent Comer's desire to expedite his execution. Kimerer is one
                    of Arizona's most respected criminal-defense attorneys. Gieszl
                    mostly does health-care litigation, not criminal-defense work.

                    But she slowly won Comer's confidence -- no small feat -- by
                    visiting him almost every week at SMU II, sorting out his complex, often
                    mercurial moods, listening to his point of view.

                    Kimerer and Gieszl say they're anti-death penalty, but have had no
                    problem pursuing their unorthodox mission -- to help Comer convince the
                    courts that he should be allowed to die by lethal injection.

                    On the other side, habeas attorney Peter Eckerstrom felt compelled to
                    explain that the fact he and Julie Hall also are strongly opposed to the death
                    penalty has little to do with their trying to stave off Comer's execution.

                    "While it is true that we possess a moral opposition to the premeditated
                    and unnecessary taking of any human life, those personal views are entirely
                    irrelevant to these proceedings," he wrote Judge Silver last November.
                    "We have an overriding duty to represent the interests of our client.
                    Our view of the phenomenon of the death row volunteer is that it
                    represents a form of suicide that we would never endorse, encourage or assist."

                    Even though Comer doesn't want them as his legal advocates, Eckerstrom
                    indicates he and Hall will resign from the case only if Silver agrees to let the
                    inmate drop his appeals and the Ninth Circuit upholds her ruling.

                    To bolster their contention that Comer is not mentally competent to
                    decide to die, Eckerstrom and Hall hired California super-max expert
                    Terry Kupers to examine Comer and his cell at SMU II.

                    The California psychiatrist concluded that Comer has been rendered
                    incompetent. He wrote in a report to Silver that Comer's thinking stems
                    from a deep depression and other psychological maladies caused by the
                    extremely harsh living conditions.

                    "I have never seen a cell that is more physically alienating and isolating
                    than the . . . cell where Mr. Comer has been confined for years,"
                    Kupers wrote, after spending about 20 hours with Comer over several
                    sessions. "The conditions of confinement where Mr. Comer presently
                    resides are far beneath what human decency requires, and as a result
                    these conditions are aggravating the mental disorder that compels Mr.
                    Comer's rule-breaking and threatening behavior. In these difficult straits,
                    and as result of a mental disorder, Mr. Comer is not able to make an
                    intelligent and rational decision to waive his appeals and be executed."
 

                    Kupers also contends that Comer suffers from posttraumatic stress
                    syndrome, from the time he spent in solitary confinement 20 years ago at the
                    prison in Folsom.

                    "Mr. Comer is very proud of the fact that he has not 'gone off his rocker' after 14
                    years in isolated confinement," he wrote. "And I concur -- that is an impressive
                    accomplishment.

                    "A significant proportion of reasonable adults, were they subjected to the harsh
                    conditions and treatment that Mr. Comer has endured for so many years, would
                    certainly have lost their minds. But the absence of frank psychosis and being
                    free of mental disorder are two very different things."

                    Judge Silver appointed North Carolina's Dr. Sally Johnson to also examine
                    Comer. Johnson is a government psychiatrist who has conducted forensic
                    examinations of such superstar criminals as Theodore "The Unabomber"
                    Kaczynski, televangelist Jim Bakker, and would-be presidential assassin John
                    Hinckley Jr. (Hinckley once wrote her a poem, titled "A Poem for My Favorite
                    Pregnant Psychiatrist.")

                    Johnson spent 52 hours interviewing Comer before concluding he is competent
                    to waive his criminal appeals. She agreed with Kupers that the conditions of
                    Comer's incarceration are extremely severe, probably overly so. But Johnson
                    said the super-max hasn't made Comer incapable of making a rational decision to die.

                    "The question in regard to whether Mr. Comer's decision is voluntary is a
                    complex one," Dr. Johnson wrote. "Society has mandated through its jury
                    system that Mr. Comer be put to death.  The implication is that the normal position
                    for Mr. Comer would be to disagree with society's mandate. Mr. Comer, on the
                    other hand, states he accepts the jury's decision. . . . He explains that his current
                    conditions of confinement are not the motivating factor for his decision [to drop
                    his appeals]."

                    She added: "Mr. Comer expressed remorse for his behavior, and felt it was
                    just that he be punished for his behavior within our society. He does not
                    appear to have any irrational or delusional thinking regarding death. He
                    does not believe he is able to be rehabilitated, and does not wish to have
                    continued involvement with anti-death penalty attorneys."

                    Security was extremely tight at the federal courthouse on March 27, the
                    day Robert Comer was to testify before Judge Silver.

                    Spectators had to sign in outside the courtroom, then step through a metal
                    detector. Comer's girlfriend, Amy Young, was there, along with no fewer
                    than a dozen prison officials. Some were in plainclothes, some in uniform.
                    They sat and stood near every door in the expansive courtroom.

                    Four bulky men wearing bulletproof jackets and safety goggles flanked
                    Comer.

                    The inmate sat attentively at a table in an orange jumpsuit between his
                    pro-execution attorneys Kimerer and Gieszl. He was handcuffed, shackled,
                    and wearing a belly chain. Attorneys Pete Eckerstrom and Julie Hall sat
                    directly across the room at another table.

                    It was the first time Comer had been in a courtroom since his bizarre
                    wheelchair-bound sentencing in 1988. More remarkably, it was the first
                    time he'd ever testified in court.

                    Silver started the proceedings by asking Comer, "How are you
                    feeling today mentally?"

                    "All right."

                    "Physically?"

                    "Pretty good."

                    Doctors Kupers and Johnson reiterated their opinions that Comer is,
                    respectively, incompetent and competent to drop his appeals.

                    Straight-talking deputy warden Blaine Marshall, who oversees death row at
                    SMU II, testified that Comer is coherent and bluntly honest with him,
                    and has consistently expressed a wish to be executed.

                    Corrections sergeant Wendy Hackney said Comer often has spoken with her
                    about wanting to speed up his execution. "I've never doubted that he
                    understands everything going on," she testified.

                    Finally, it was Comer's turn. During questioning by Holly Gieszl, he came
                    across as a man who has spent many hours contemplating his past, his
                    present and his future:

                    "I ended a whole bunch of innocent people's lives, and changed their lives
                    forever. I was sentenced to death.  That's the legal sentence. I pulled my
                    appeal. I owe that to them. I owe it to myself, man. I was totally wrong. . . .
                    God, you guys are a lot more humane to me than I ever was to Larry
                    [Pritchard]. Remember I stuck a gun in this guy's ear and pulled the trigger,
                    scrambled his brains, right?"

                    What came next was an extraordinary dialogue between a jurist and a killer.
                    A no-nonsense former prosecutor, Silver asked Comer direct questions,
                    and he answered them thoughtfully and, by any definition of the word, competently.

                    "This has to do with me being tired," he told the judge. "Has to do with
                    me paying my debt to society. Let's do it. I don't know what
                    everybody's so scared about. Death is not that damned bad. Living ain't
                    that damned bad. But I killed Larry . . ."

                    Comer agreed that his life on SMU II is no joy ride. However,
                    contrary to Dr. Kupers' conclusions, he testified he's been able to survive it intact:

                    "I don't believe I have a life that will make me jump up and down and clap
                    my hands and go to a party or nothing.  Within the limits that I have, I try to
                    live it fully . . . I mean, I can't get a weekend pass to go to the bowling
                    alley, and I love to bowl. But I don't live dead in that cell."

                    Comer said he should be locked up at SMU II because of his violent streak:
                    "I'm the guy who they invented super-maxes for. They let me out and
                    walk around the halls, I'll get along just like everybody else. Except I have this
                    problem. Someone runs their mouth at me, I deal with it."

                    Silver continued to grill Comer about that life.

                    "It seems Dr. Kupers is saying that your traumatic experiences in prison --
                    and elsewhere -- has been so bad that you're unable to cope now, and that
                    this has affected your decision to voluntarily decide the most
                    fundamental decision in life, which is to live or die. You understand?"

                    "Yes."

                    "Why should I think, and why should any court who reviews my decision, if
                    I should agree with you, believe that you're not just saying that in order to
                    end your life now, because it's so bad?"

                    "Ma'am, I've spent 15 years in an isolation cell. Already. And look at me.
                    What is wrong with me that I'm hiding? What am I hiding?"

                    "I don't think anybody would question that you have enormous capacity for
                    human endurance, enormous capacity," Silver responded. "But I
                    have heard you say a number of times that you're tired."

                    "I am tired. I'm not depressed, but tired."

                    Comer had indicated earlier that he's against the death penalty, which
                    led the judge to ask him, "If you don't believe in the death penalty, how
                    can you voluntarily decide to take your life, unless you're being
                    overwhelmed by your conditions such that you just want to take your
                    life?"

                    "It's the law," Comer said, sounding more like a prosecutor than a
                    convict. "Just because I say the law's wrong doesn't make the law wrong. I
                    just don't believe in it. I was sentenced to die, legally sentenced to die here."

                    Silver noted that Comer may yet win a new trial in his murder case.

                    "Yeah," Comer replied, "it's a good appeal, but it's for you all, not for me. I
                    killed Larry Pritchard. There is no doubt about that. So [prosecutor] K.C.
                    Scull called me a monster. What was I trying to make him call me? Sure didn't
                    want to be called Goldilocks."

                    "Do you understand you could be found not guilty?" the judge asked.

                    "Yes, ma'am."

                    "And I presume that you don't believe  that that's really much of a possibility,
                    am I right?"

                    "No, ma'am."

                    "And why?"

                    "I did it."

                    On April 6, Judge Silver drove to Florence to see for herself how inmate
                    Comer lives. What she saw was this:

                    Comer's cell measures about eight feet by 11 and a half feet. A narrow bed is
                    attached to the back wall, with a thin, baby-blue blanket neatly tucked under
                    its mattress. At the foot of the bed is a television, which prison officials
                    recently provided as a reward for Comer's staying out of trouble for almost a year.

                    Prison officials won't allow him to hang photographs or memorabilia of
                    any kind on his walls. Beneath the bed are boxes of legal and other reading
                    materials. Near the front of the cell is a metal toilet and small wash basin,
                    with a few other sanitary items lined up above it. A tiny mirror is attached
                    to the wall above the basin.

The four other cells in Comer's pod also have a small stool and metal "desk" attached to the wall near the sink. But a few years ago, prison officials removed those items from Comer's cell because he somehow was fashioning shanks from them. (He's apparently put his shank-making on hold since last May, when he made the one in tribute to the anniversary of Robert Vickers' 1999 execution.)

                    Comer and the others in his pod wear headphones when listening to the radio or
                    watching television. That makes for an eerie silence, punctuated only by the
                    occasional clanging of the metal doors.

                    To add to the isolation, the front of Comer's cell is metal mesh with a small
                    slot that opens and closes for food and other deliveries. Another inmate on SMU