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SAN QUENTIN — The “Dean of California’s Death Row” spent what he hoped would be his last day alive Monday as a small group of lawyers tried against his wishes to block his looming execution. 

At about 6 p.m. PST, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an application to stay the execution of Robert Lee Massie, the man who killed in 1965 and 1979 and has spent more time on death row than any other currently condemned man in the state. 

Massie said he gave up 21 years of appeals to protest the snail’s pace at which California’s death penalty system moves. 

California is home to the nation’s most clogged death row, incarcerating nearly 600 condemned prisoners. Massie is the only inmate eligible to die – the others are still challenging their sentences. 

Massie was scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday at San Quentin State Prison. 

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday declined to revisit its ruling that said a lower court was correct to decide Massie was competent to drop his appeals. 

Other litigation regarding Massie’s execution concerned just what witnesses to the execution – including media representatives – are allowed to see. The state wanted to open the death chamber’s curtain only after Massie has been strapped to a gurney and had the needles inserted into his arms. 

The state calls this a security measure, saying the executioners’ identity must be protected. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled otherwise, saying the state must show the entire process. The 9th Circuit appeals court Monday rejected a state challenge to that ruling. 

Late Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court backed Walker’s decision and denied a motion to stay his ruling. 

Massie is to become only the ninth inmate to be executed at San Quentin State Prison since California voters overwhelmingly voted to reinstate the death penalty in 1978. 

Hundreds of others still haven’t been provided an attorney for their mandatory first appeal to the California Supreme Court, the initial stop in a maze of state and federal appeals. 

“I don’t see any use in continuing this charade,” Massie, 59, said in a recent interview. 

But a pen-pal of Massie has had other ideas. Michael Kroll, a freelance journalist in Oakland who is opposed to the death penalty and who befriended Massie while interviewing him, said he believes the killer isn’t mentally fit to give up his appeals. Kroll hired the lawyers pursuing the last-ditch plea. 

In California, local district attorneys choose whether to seek the death penalty or a life sentence in capital trials. San Francisco’s current district attorney, Terence Hallinan, opposes capital punishment and sided with Kroll’s petition. 

Massie’s first murder was during a Los Angeles-area crime spree on Jan. 7, 1965. He shot Mildred Weiss of San Gabriel while robbing or assaulting a total of five people. 

At one point, Massie came so close to execution he had ordered his last meal. But in 1972 – the same year the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the death penalty – his sentence was commuted to life. 

He was paroled in 1978, and on Jan. 3, 1979, Massie killed San Francisco liquor store owner Bob Naumoff during a robbery. 

Victims of his terror say it’s now time for him to die. Once such man is Charles Harris, who survived a bullet from Massie’s gun, but saw his friend Naumoff die. 

“I want an end of this, and that’s that,” Harris said.