He would not have defended it with such exasperation had he not been moved to question it. Michael would have turned 30 this year, and only in the last year has his mother found the emotional strength to talk with reporters about him, she said. In 1985, having become a model prisoner who earned an associate of arts degree from the College of Marin and talked often to youth groups outside the prison, he was released from San Quentin. He seemed to be making a great effort to die well, said Wade Douglas, a media witness from KSDO radio in San Diego. This story was originally published in The San Diego Union-Tribune on April 21, 1992. He was arrested on July 5th 1978, when him and his brother hijacked a car with two teenage boys in it and they ordered them to drive to a remote location where the brothers brutally murdered them. A full seven minutes passed -- pierced by intermittent moans, gasps and convulsions -- before it seemed that Robert Harris mind and his body had fully passed into unconsciousness, Hearn said. He and his older brother Kenneth decided to show a neighbor, James Wheeler, how to fight. "We'll be doing fine, and then there's the footage of Harris on TV with that smirk he always has on his face. His execution was the first in the state of California since 1967.[1]. He claimed that hed only watched others do it. [7] In 1975 while living in a trailer park in Imperial County,[2] Harris beat his brother Kens roommate, James Wheeler, to death, claiming he did so to protect the victim's wife; however, it was later determined that he beat the victim without provocation. The month that Robert turned 10, his father was deemed a sex offender and sent to Atascadero State Hospital for a year and a half. [2] The Harris family moved to Visalia, California in 1962 following Kenneth Harris' discharge from the Army. Murderers are our whipping boys and girls for the metaphysical insult of mortality. Thus, forgiveness is an inherently paradoxical spiritual path. After thinking about his creation, the old man demanded to know: How could that bastard do that?, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. The execution order was given at 6:07a.m. and Harris died at 6:21a.m. His body was removed from the chamber at 7:00a.m. and was taken to a funeral home at 8:15a.m.[citation needed], Harris's execution is specifically remembered for his choice of final words (recorded by Warden Daniel Vasquez): "You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the grim reaper. It was a serious act. I am deeply troubled by several aspects of the decision you rendered, wrote Friedman. [2][3][5] After making his way to Oklahoma to live with his brother and sister, he stole a car and was subsequently arrested in Florida. WebRobert A Harris Collection: U.S. Social Security Death Index (SSDI) Birth: May 18 1909 Death: June 1 1990 Last residence: Haskell, Texas 79521, USA View the Record view all Immediate Family Holland Harris mother Fletcher Harris father J. Lester Harris brother Loyd B. Harris brother Julia L. Harris sister Jerold L. Harris brother It explains that we can begin to perceive the real world by making a simple but very radical choice: Salvation does not ask that you behold the spirit and perceive the body not. Harris pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served 2 1/2 years in the state prison at San Luis Obispo. He married Peggy Joy Grabin on June 22, 1957 in Strawn. [6] In June 1973 Harris married, and the couple had a son, Robert, Jr., born in October 1974. His death cant bring those boys back, he said. If it costs fifty thousand dollars a year to secure a prisoner, thats one million dollars over twenty years. And another thing: any criminal who advises crime victims to forgive yourself for all the pain youve gone through should be punched in the nose. (Michael Franklin/San Diego Union-Tribune 1992 file photo). Rather than interpret this irony as another example of the fallibility of human justice, I interpret it as another example of the perfection of divine justice. I was determined to be a star. Robert Alton Harris Staff writers David Hasemyer, Jim OConnell, Dana Wilkie and Dori Meinert of Copley News Service contributed to this story. He left the house early the next morning with John Mayeski, also 16, one of his closest friends, to look for summer work. The state attorney generals office immediately took the second matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned it, as it did the last stay by Pregerson. I couldnt forgive him. Harris' Final Appeals Stress Brother's Role - Los Angeles Times [14], Harris was scheduled to die on April 21, 1992. SAN DIEGO -- The last time Sharron Mankins saw her son, Michael Baker, she was piling him and her five other children into the family car for the drive to the local high school where they watched the neighborhood's Fourth of July fireworks in 1978. Mankins, 48, remains haunted by a vision of her son's death and unable, she said, to carry on with her life until "justice is served and Harris is executed.". Millers example of the child who died of leukemia certainly is a different kind of death from the one that Robert Alton Harris dealt his victims. He joined the Marines in his senior year of high school and narrowly avoided service in Vietnam because of his aged parents health and the pregnancy of his young wife. I, too, hope the time will come when humanity attains a state of spiritual realization in which capital punishment is unnecessary, but that is an end to be achieved through education and the great assumption of responsibility by individual citizens. For the simple fact that we cannot: God seems unreachable, unpunishable, the ultimate, invulnerable Boss in an unassailable Heaven. By denying blacks justice, we live with an uneasy armed peace in our inner cities. The alternative is to maintain our belief in vengeance, making our time in this world seem so long and painful that death becomes attractive. spiritual way, and tell him I could forgive him because he was giving his life like that, accepting it like a man., When Harriss head rolled down to his chest, Clark reported feeling this rush of being at peace with myself. Miller also suggests that since violence begets violence, nonviolence must beget nonviolence. It never has. But the way the state now practices capital punishment is as inept and insane as the rest of our criminal justice system: its impersonal, inefficient, and expensive. D. Patrick Millers essay A Brutal Sadness [August 1993] challenges the often-heard but indefensible view that vengeance is justice. THE EXECUTION THAT WAS FILM - Robert Alton HARRIS - YouTube The Course asserts that the world we see veils the answer: You do not understand how what you see arose to meet your sight. If you did not believe that you deserved attack, it never would occur to you to give attack to anyone at all. Times staff writers Jenifer Warren and Bob Baker in San Francisco, Paul Feldman in Los Angeles and Alan Abrahamson in San Diego contributed to this story. Gloomy, counselors said of his prospects. Margarito Angeles Vargas, 46, is accused of hitting 19-month-old Annaleeh Rodarte the evening of Sept. 24, 2022 on Redwood Street near 40th Street, Robin McPherson, now 68, was slated to appear for a March 2001 sentencing hearing following his convictions for tax evasion and conspiracy, but instead fled the country, according to the Department of Justice, No charges were ever filed by South Dakota authorities against T. Denny Sanford, who has donated nearly $1 billion to San Diego institutions. Respondent Harris was convicted of a capital crime in a California court and was sentenced to death. Last month, the Supreme Court rejected another appeal by Harris's lawyers, declining to review claims that he suffers from mental problems. Our sense of civilization requires that this someone be guilty of murder. That is, we have this five-million-year-old instinct to resist predators, but Helen Schucman, author of the Course, got a message from Jesus, or whomever, that its no good and we should throw it out. Miller concluded in A Brutal Sadness that to demonstrate or legislate with full force against the death penalty is to acknowledge that we are actually campaigning to change human nature. I have scarcely read a more arrogant sentence in print. steve-baker Attempting to punish nature for causing death would seem equally ludicrous to anyone, while punishing people for causing death is considered a rational form of justice. . As a teen-ager, she was picking cotton to pay for her booze. . To his lawyers and closest friend, he is the product of a violently abusive childhood who, during a decade on death row, has grown into a Harris was bound in handcuffs and a waist chain. Think of the students in Tiananmen Square. Or is the most humane action for them and for the citizens who pay for their trials, attorneys, medical care, food, and clothes to kill them as quickly as possible after their conviction and cease this argument that a Chikatilo is somehow like us? Ive never experienced anything like it in my 10 years here, said Toni House, the high courts public-information officer. At 6:01a.m., Harris was escorted into the gas chamber. ROBERT ALTON HARRIS In asking for a stay of Tuesdays 12:01 a.m. execution, the defense charged that prosecutors withheld evidence about Daniel that may have helped save Robert Harris from a death sentence at the 1979 trial. He is the son of Kenneth and Evelyn Harris. Harris nodded, winking at one officer who stood outside waiting to witness his death. They also dropped by to visit their father, who clubbed Robert in the head with a wrench. WebRobert Alton Harris (January 15, 1953 April 21, 1992) was an American car thief, burglar, kidnapper and murderer who was executed at San Quentin State Prison in 1992 for the 1978 murders of two teenage boys in San Diego. He was somewhat distracted and, at times, seemed depressed, Kroll said. He just slowly started looking around the gallery, and the minute he saw me he stopped, and he didnt look anymore, said Baker, a San Diego police detective. Privacy PolicyTerms of ServiceSign Up For Our NewslettersSite Map, Copyright 2023, The San Diego Union-Tribune |. She soon found a solution to her problems with Robert. Harris pleaded guilty to a federal charge of bank robbery and received a 25-year sentence.[9]. What if you were governor and you had to make this real, immediate choice? Schizophrenia was diagnosed. Robert Alton Harris Within twenty minutes Harris was dead, his asphyxiation videotaped to help authorities determine whether execution by gas constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.. Harris had been held since Thursday in a cell on death row. Acts like rape, robbery, extortion, and murder are odious and repulsive, quite apart from the background of the criminal; they destroy the social consensus that makes civilization possible, and we are completely justified in restoring it at the criminals expense. He said he decided he would be more useful by a phone outside the chamber after the first execution attempt was abruptly stopped. Mankins recalled that her friend's primary wish was to stay alive long enough to see Harris executed. We know what justice is, unless we are philosophers or lawyers. [2] During his time at the juvenile detention centre, Harris was repeatedly raped. But by denying them justice, we affect our own access to it. His younger brother, Daniel, 18, was willing to help. To demonstrate or legislate with full force against the death penalty is to acknowledge that we are actually campaigning to change human nature. Part of the answer is certainly that his upbringing, however chaotic and confused, was nowhere near as cruel as Harriss. "Understanding and Blaming: Problems in the Attribution of Moral Responsibility". In recent years, the assignation of guilt in capital murder cases has often hinged on the linked definitions of sanity and responsibility. Arrested on a drug charge, he managed to avoid additional prosecution for running a burglary ring only because there was insufficient evidence to convict him. But the most effective political stance against capital punishment will be firmly grounded in an ongoing process of self-forgiveness. Who would call a man sane who casually kills two teenagers for their car, and then finishes their lunch before going about his criminal business? I doubt we have the collective imagination to implement anything so radical. We seem studiously to avoid many other choices: to forgive without condoning or committing further violence ourselves; to lay down our arms; to turn the other cheek or even to try to love our perceived enemies. Reentry programs would enable prisoners to return to society more smoothly, says Magris, instead of creating the current mind-set that the only way I can make it is in prison, because thats the only place where they get three meals, a cot, and a monthly pittance to buy cigarettes, potato chips, and drugs. And what they see upholds their freedom from imprisonment and death. Robert Alton Harris Later divorced, Magris ended up in a crash pad where drugs were sold to subsidize the rent. The lawsuit raised the issue of whether California should switch to lethal injection as a form of execution. David Magris is the son of an Italian father and Puerto Rican mother who were unmarried at the time of his birth in 1948 in Vallejo, California. If death is an illusion, then executions are illusions.