Death Row Inmate Said to Beat and Kick Another to Death in New Jersey Prison

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One was on death row for raping and killing a young artist after a carjacking. The other was there for shooting a police officer to death.

When they were left together briefly this morning at the New Jersey State Prison, prison officials said, Ambrose Harris beat to death Robert (Mudman) Simon after a bloody fistfight in a fenced recreation pen, where prisoners are allowed to play chess and read from a library that includes the Bible and a Dean Koontz novel, ''Mr. Murder.''

National death penalty opponents said the incident was believed to be the first instance of one death row inmate's killing another since the Supreme Court ended its four-year moratorium on capital punishment in 1976.

Mr. Simon, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of a Franklin Township police officer, Sgt. Ippolito Gonzalez, was killed about 10:55 A.M. after being beaten by Mr. Harris, 47, who received his death sentence for the 1992 kidnapping and murder of Kristin Higgins, 22. Mr. Harris has a long history of assaulting guards and inmates.

Mr. Simon, 48, became the first death row inmate to die in the prison since New Jersey reinstituted the death penalty in 1982. Legal appeals and New Jersey's historically liberal Supreme Court have so far prevented the state from carrying out an execution.

Some prisoners' rights groups were shocked that Mr. Simon, Mr. Harris and three other death row prisoners were allowed to congregate together in the recreation area while their cells were treated by an insect exterminator. They also complained that corrections officers took more than 90 seconds to arm themselves with riot gear, assemble a response team and try to break up the fight.

But prisoners' advocates have long lobbied in favor of allowing inmates limited amounts of group recreation because they fear that long periods of total isolation can cause or exacerbate psychiatric problems.

John Cunningham, vice president of the corrections officers' union, said that prison regulations forbade guards from entering the caged recreation unit without riot gear and backup officers because inmates could stage a fight and use it as a ruse to ambush a guard.

''Prison is a violent place,'' Mr. Cunningham said. ''Instead of it being inmate-on-staff violence, this time it turned out to be inmate on inmate. The department did everything it could to prevent this from happening.''

The State Corrections Commissioner, Jack Terhune, ordered a lock down of the unit as the prison officials and the Mercer County Prosecutor's office began investigating a killing in which the suspect, victim and three eyewitnesses were all convicted murders.

Corrections officials released a brief written statement stating that there was no indication that any weapon had been used in the attack but declined to answer questions or provide further details.

But investigators said eyewitnesses have reported that the altercation began as Mr. Harris was led into the recreation pen and Mr. Simon lunged at him from behind. Mr. Harris apparently heard Mr. Simon approaching and threw him into a table, which is bolted to the floor of the recreation area.

As the men exchanged punches, a corrections officer screamed at them to stop and he sounded an alarm, Code 33, that requires guards to arm themselves with riot helmets, shields and batons to quell a disturbance.

''Harris apparently beat Simon down with his fists, then kicked him until he was unconscious,'' an investigator said. ''Then he climbed on a table and stomped on his head.''

Witnesses gave varying accounts about the response time of corrections officers, ranging from 90 seconds to five minutes.

When officers arrived, Mr. Harris was still kicking Mr. Simon's head. The supervising corrections officer then ordered Mr. Harris to leave the recreation area, and he complied without argument, the investigator said.

Although Mr. Simon and Mr. Harris were known as the most combative of the 15 death row inmates, there is no indication that they had clashed in the past, according to Mr. Simon's lawyer, Paul Klein.

Corrections officials released a brief written statement stating that there was no indication that any weapon was used in the attack but declined to answer questions or provide further details of the attack.

In 1997, Mr. Simon, a member of a motorcycle gang known as the Warlocks, threatened to attack Jesse Timmendequas, a sex offender who was on death row for killing 7-year-old Megan Kanka.

Mr. Harris assaulted a guard last year, according to prison records, and once suffered facial injuries during a fistfight with another death row inmate in the outside recreation yard.

It was unclear what started the dispute that ended in Mr. Simon's death, corrections officials and defense lawyers said today.

The three inmates who witnessed the killing said no words were exchanged, investigators said. Mr. Harris has not made statements to corrections officers or his lawyers, according to Dale Jones, head of the public defenders' office.

Mr. Harris is black, and although Mr. Simon was white and a member of a motorcycle gang hostile toward minority group members, corrections officials said there was no indication that race played a role in their dispute.

Relatives of Sergeant Gonzalez, who stopped Mr. Simon for a traffic violation and was killed before he could write the ticket, said they considered the death row killing an appropriate end to Mr. Simon's violent life.

''It's hard to rejoice about it, even though he did take a loved one from me,'' said Louis Gonzalez of Franklin, the slain officer's brother. ''But I always believed an eye for an eye. I hope he suffered just like my brother did.''

Mr. Simon was first imprisoned at 15, and after his release joined the Warlocks to escape an abusive family. By 1982, he was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison for killing his 19-year-old girlfriend because she refused to have sex with gang members. Behind bars, Mr. Simon took the life of another prisoner during a jail yard fight and spent six years in solitary confinement. A jury acquitted Mr. Simon after he pleaded self-defense and in 1995 he was paroled.

Several weeks later, Mr. Simon killed Sergeant Gonzalez when the officer made a routine traffic stop, unaware that Mr. Simon and an accomplice had just burglarized a business.

John L. Call, a lawyer who represented Mr. Simon during his capital trial, said he thought his former client probably would have preferred a violent death to execution.

''I think Robert Simon would have rather died on the floor fighting rather than to be strapped to a gurney and take his lethal injection,'' Mr. Call said. ''That was his life style.''

Even opponents of the death penalty conceded today that the incident was unlikely to reopen the debate over capital punishment in New Jersey. A solid majority of voters support the death penalty, according to various public opinion polls and Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and a several key legislators have been pushing to shorten the delays between sentencing and execution.

But Ed Martone, director of the New Jersey Association on Corrections, said he hoped the killing would force prison officials to revise their policies and offer better supervision for inmates during recreation periods.

''If the policy is to stand there and watch an assault going on while waiting 15 minutes for officers in riot gear, it gives inmates license to do whatever they want,'' Mr. Martone said. ''Because they know they have a certain amount of lead time before a response.''

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A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 5 of the National edition with the headline: Death Row Inmate Said to Beat and Kick Another to Death in New Jersey Prison. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe