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Robert Alton
HARRIS
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Kidnapping - Robbery
Number of victims: 2
Date of murders:
July 5,
1978
Date of arrest:
Same day
Date of birth: January 15,
1953
Victims profile: John Mayeski (male, 16) and
Michael Naker (male, 16)
Method of murder:
Shooting
(9mm Luger pistol)
Location: San Diego County, California, USA
Status: Executed by asphyxiation-gas in California on April 21, 1992
Robert Alton Harris and his brother, Daniel Marcus Harris,
abducted two teenage boys from a fast food restaurant, forcing
them to drive to an isolated area. After Robert shot and killed
both boys, they drove home, then later used the stolen car to
rob a bank. A witness followed the car from the robbery, and
police arrested both men.
Both Robert and Daniel Harris
admitted the abduction and killing of the teenagers to police.
At trial Robert Harris admitted robbing the bank but denied
kidnapping the youths or being responsible for their murders. He
was nevertheless convicted and sentenced to death. Accomplice
Daniel Marcus Harris testified at his brother's trial and was
sentenced to six years in state prison for kidnapping. He was
discharged in 1983.
Harris became the first person executed in
California since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.
At the time of the execution, the U.S. Supreme Court was forced
to take the unprecedented step of not allowing any stays through
lower courts, after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals repeatedly
granted last-minute stays.
Name: Harris,
Robert Alton
CDC# B66883
Sex: M
Alias:
None.
Race:
White
Date
Received:
03/14/1979
DOB:
01/15/1953
Education:
Unknown
Location:
San
Quentin State Prison
Married:
No
Sentence:
County of
Trial:
San Diego
Sentence
Date:
03/09/1979
County of
Residence:
San Diego
County of
Offense:
San Diego
Offense
Date:
07/05/1978
Court
Action:
Affirmed
Court
Date:
02/11/1981
Case #:
CR44135
Victims:
John Mayeski (male,
16),
Michael Baker (male, 16)
Co-Defendant:
Daniel Marcus
Harris, CDC# C03005
Summary:
The defendant, Robert Alton Harris, and his brother, co-defendant
Daniel Marcus Harris, abducted two teenage boys. The defendant
brutally murdered the boys, and then stole their car.
The investigation revealed that at 10:30 a.m. on July 5, 1978,
the defendant and co-defendant left their residence, and drove
to a fast food restaurant. Once at the restaurant, the two men
abducted two 16-years-old boys, John Mayeski and Michael Baker.
The defendant held the victims at gunpoint with a 9mm Luger
pistol and forced them to drive until they reached an isolated
area. Daniel Harris followed in the defendant's 1963 Ford.
At about 11:45
a.m., the defendant shot and killed both victims in the presence
of Daniel Harris. Following the killings, the Harris brothers
drove both automobiles to their residence. Later that day they
drove the stolen vehicle to a local bank. Donning colored ski
masks, the two robbed the bank, netting $2,000 in cash.
The Harrises
fled the bank at 12:30 p.m. and drove back to the residence.
Robert Harris parked the stolen vehicle in the garage.
At about 1:05
p.m., San Diego police officers, acting on a tip by a witness
who had followed the suspects' vehicle to the residence,
apprehended the Harrises. Police recovered 20 unfired rounds of
9mm ammunition from Robert Harris. Clothing and other effects
linked to the robbery were found smoldering in the fireplace.
At about 6:20
p.m. that evening, police questioned Daniel Harris who gave a
voluntary statement describing in detail the abduction and the
killing of the victims by the defendant. Officers went to the
scene of the murder and discovered the two murdered victims.
When initially
interviewed by authorities, the defendant admitted robbing the
bank but denied kidnapping the youths or being responsible for
their murders. He later indicated to authorities that his
brother, Daniel, had furnished the stolen automobile. The
defendant continued to deny any involvement in the murders,
indicating that it had been his brother who had suggested the
robbery while they were in Porterville, California.
The San Diego
District Attorney's Office filed felony charges of auto theft,
kidnapping, murder and burglary against the defendant. The U.S.
Attorney's Office filed bank robbery charges against him.
On March 6,
1979, Robert Alton Harris was convicted in San Diego County,
Superior Court of two counts murder in the first degree with
special circumstances, and kidnapping.
Co-defendant
Daniel Marcus Harris was convicted of kidnapping and sentenced
to six years in state prison. He was discharged in 1983.
Execution:
Robert Alton
Harris was executed April 21, 1992 in the gas chamber at San
Quentin State Prison - the first execution in California in 25
years.
For his last meal,
Harris requested and was given two large pizzas, a bucket of
fried chicken, and ice cream. At 6:01 a.m., Harris was escorted
into the gas chamber. The execution order was given at 6:07
a.m., and Harris was pronounced dead at 6:21 a.m. The body was
removed from the chamber at 7 a.m. and left the grounds at 8:15
a.m.
The Harris
execution was scheduled for 12:01 a.m. on the morning of April
21, but a series of four stays issued by individual federal
judges delayed the execution until just after 6 a.m. In its
order vacating the fourth stay of execution, the U.S. Supreme
Court stated, "No further stays of Robert Alton Harris'
execution shall be entered by the federal courts except upon
order of this court."
According to
Warden Daniel Vasquez, Harris' last words were: "You can be a
king or a street sweeper, but everyone dances with the grim
reaper."
Prior:
SERVED 3 YEARS IN
FLORIDA AS A JUVENILE: PETTY LARCENY; AUTO THEFT; ESCAPE
Robert Alton Harris
(January 15, 1953–April 21, 1992) was an American career criminal
and murderer who was executed in San Quentin's gas chamber in 1992.
This marked the first execution in the state of California since
1967.
Harris had killed two teenage boys in 1978. Harris' execution
is specifically remembered for his peculiar choice of final words
(recorded by Warden Daniel Vasquez): "You can be a king or a street
sweeper, but everyone dances with the grim reaper." This was a
reference to the film Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, released in
1991. The Grim Reaper (William Sadler) raps, "You might be a king or
a little street sweeper, but sooner or later you'll dance with the
reaper."
The
crime
On July 5, 1978, Harris and his 18-year-old
brother, Daniel, decided to steal a getaway car
for a holdup they planned at a branch of the San
Diego Trust and Savings Bank. By chance they
came upon John Mayeski, 15, and Michael Baker,
16, both high school sophomores, sitting in a
green Ford LTD in a parking lot eating Jack in
the Box burgers.
Armed with a 9mm Luger
automatic pistol, Robert Harris commandeered
Mayseki's car and ordered him to drive to a
wooded area near Miramar Lake. He promised them
no one would be hurt.
After killing the two boys, according to
testimony, the Harris brothers drove to a
girlfriend's apartment, where Robert Harris
finished the rest of the murdered boys' half-eaten
hamburgers and flicked bits of gore from his
pistol barrel. He laughed and bragged about how
he had killed them and giggled at what it would
be like to be a police officer telling the
victims' families that the boys had been
murdered.
About an hour later, wearing maroon ski masks
over their faces, the Harrises held up the
crowded Mira Mesa branch of the San Diego Trust
and Savings Bank and fled with about $3,000.
By coincidence, one of the San Diego police
officers to arrest the Harrises a few hours
later was undercover officer Steven Baker,
father of the boy who was shot point blank.
Later, after he was arrested, Robert Harris
boasted to a cellmate that he told the terrified
Baker boy to "quit crying and die like a man."
When the boy started to pray, Harris said, "God
can't help you now, boy; you're going to die."
The San Diego District Attorney's Office
filed felony charges of auto theft, kidnapping,
murder and burglary against Robert Harris, while
the U.S. Attorney's Office filed bank robbery
charges against him.
On March 6, 1979, the elder Harris was
convicted in the San Diego County Superior Court
of two counts of murder in the first degree with
special circumstances, and of kidnapping.
His younger brother, Daniel, was convicted of
kidnapping and sentenced to six years in state
prison. He was released in 1983.
The execution
An appeal for
clemency to California governor Pete Wilson was
rejected in a live television news conference,
where Wilson read a statement acknowledging
Harris' abusive childhood but ended with a clear
rejection of the clemency request, saying, "As
great as is my compassion for Robert Harris the
child, I cannot excuse or forgive the choice
made by Robert Harris the man."
Wilson then left
without waiting for reporters' questions.
Robert Alton
Harris was executed on April 21, 1992 in the gas
chamber at San Quentin State Prison - the first
execution in California in 25 years. For his
last meal, he requested and was given a 21-piece
bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, two large
Domino's pizzas, a bag of jelly beans, a six-pack
of Pepsi, and a pack of Camel cigarettes. At
6:01 a.m., Harris was escorted into the gas
chamber.
The execution
order was given at 6:07 a.m., and Harris was
pronounced dead at 6:21 a.m. The body was
removed from the chamber at 7 a.m. and left the
grounds at 8:15 a.m.
Harris' execution
was originally scheduled for 12:01 a.m. on the
morning of April 21, but a series of four stays
issued by individual federal judges delayed the
execution until just after 6 a.m. In its order
vacating the fourth stay of execution, the U.S.
Supreme Court stated, "No further stays of
Robert Alton Harris' execution shall be entered
by the federal courts except upon order of this
court."
Prior criminal history
Initial
police involvement was for killing neighborhood cats.
Served
three years as a juvenile in Florida for petty larceny, auto
theft and escape.
In 1975
he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and was paroled three
years later.
Capital
Punishment USA
On Tuesday, April 21st 1992,
39 year old Robert Alton Harris was put to death in the gas
chamber at San Quentin Prison in California’s first execution
for 25 years. He had been sentenced to die for the particularly
brutal killing of two teenage boys in 1978 who’s car he had
hijacked for use in a bank robbery.
The execution had originally been scheduled
for 12.01am, half an hour after the first stay was overturned,
but was then postponed for nearly four hours while courts
considered applications claiming that execution by lethal gas
was cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment to the
Constitution. On that issue, a federal judge ruled that the
execution had to be filmed to see the extent of Harris's
suffering and a camera was mounted on a tripod outside the gas
chamber.
The execution was re-scheduled for 4.01am.
Shortly before 3am, he got dressed in new jeans and a blue
prison shirt. He was strapped into one of the two chairs in the
gas chamber and had been waiting for 12 minutes for the
execution to be carried out when an unexpected call came through
saying a US appellate judge had granted a further stay. Some of
the 49 official witnesses, who included "12 reputable citizens"
selected by the warden, spoke of their horror and astonishment
as Harris was unbuckled and led away by guards.
Four stays of execution had been granted and
overturned in nine hours. But the Supreme Court finally issued
an unprecedented order that no further stay would be valid
unless issued by the court itself. Shortly before 6am, Harris
was again led back to the chamber. He was described as looking
resigned to his fate and was fully co-operative with the guards
who led him the 15 paces from his cell. He was strapped into the
metal chair and a stethoscope taped to his chest. The door was
closed and sealed and at 6.05am, he began breathing deeply,
staring ahead and attempting to mouth the words "it's all right"
and "I'm sorry."
At 6.07. a prison official operated the lever,
slowly lowering the pellets of cheesecloth-wrapped sodium
cyanide into the small vat of sulfuric acid beneath the chair to
create the lethal hydrocyanic gas. Harris took a number of deep
breaths and for several minutes appeared to gasp and twitch
convulsively. His head snapped back and then dropped as he
strained against the straps. After a minute his hands seemed to
relax. His mouth was open and his face flushed and turning blue.
Three minutes later there was a cough and a convulsion.
At 6.21 a.m. (eleven minutes after the start)
Warden Daniel Vasquez declared Harris dead. and announced the
words Harris had chosen to be remembered by. Taken from the film
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, they were: "You can be a
king or a street sweeper. But everybody dances with the grim
reaper." Christina Crystal who witnessed the execution for UPI,
said afterwards: "It wasn't as hard to watch as I thought it
would be the second time around. Harris seemed to lose
consciousness after about one-and-half minutes." She, and other
witnesses, said he looked a very different and more solemn
Robert Harris than two hours earlier. After the execution the
exhaust fan is switched on to remove the hydrocyanic gas and
then the dead body is sprayed with liquid ammonia to neutralize
any remaining gas. The last stage in the process is "Procedure
769" in which staff wearing gas masks and rubber gloves remove
the body having first ruffled the hair to ensure that no gas is
trapped in it.
Background.
Robert Harris had a violent and unhappy
childhood that started in the womb. He was born three months
premature after his mother was brutally assaulted by his father
who kicked her in the stomach. Both parents inflicted frequent
beatings on young Robert who suffered a broken jaw at the age of
two after a punch form his father. For sport, his father would
load a gun and tell the children they had 30 minutes to hide
outside the house, after which he would shoot them down like
animals.
Eventually Harris senior was jailed for
sexually molesting his daughters, while the mother smoked and
drank herself to death. Robert Harris was twenty five years old
when he shot and killed two San Diego teenagers. Prosecutors
told the jury that Harris taunted the victims before they died,
laughed at them after he pulled the trigger, then calmly ate the
hamburgers they had bought for lunch.
Executions Out of the Ordinary: Robert Alton
Harris
BBC News
In 1979 Harris was sentenced to death for the
murder of two teenage boys whose car he had stolen. He was
executed on 21 April 1992 in the gas chamber at San Quentin
State Prison in California, the state's first execution for 25
years.
Harris's last words, quoting a Keanu Reeves
film, were: "You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everyone
dances with the grim reaper." A federal judge ordered the
execution to be filmed so as to decide whether the gas chamber
was a "cruel and unusual punishment". The tapes were later
destroyed.
A Tale of Two Criminals: The Primal Roots of
Violence
By David Chamberlain, PhD.
BirthPsichology.com
David Edwin Mason and Robert Alton Harris
spent their final years on Death Row before they were gassed by
the state of California in 1991 and 1993 for heinous crimes of
violcnce. Their brographies expose the primal roots of violence.
The dossier on Mason reveals him to have been
a sad and lonely child whose mother tried to induce a
miscarriage to avoid having him in the first place - and who
never was allowed to forget that he was unwanted. Older sisters
describe a household where hugging or laughter were prohibited,
and in which young David was beaten almost daily with his
father's belt or, in the hands of his mother, "a switch or
pancake turner."
When only five, the child attempted suicide
by swallowing a bottle of pills and set his clothing on fire. At
eight he was taking out his hostility by setting fires at church
or at school. The parents took to locking him away in a room
they called "the dungeon" - a bedroom with the windows nailed
shut. Persistent bedwetting, and worse, were countered by
parading David with the soiled clothes wrapped around his head.
At age 23, Mason went on a nine-month killing spree in the
neighborhood where he had grown up, strangling four elderly men
and women. He later confessed that it was "something I have
always wanted to do."
Robert's beginnings were striklngly similar.
He was born three months premature after his mother was kicked
so brutally in the abdomen by an angry husband, that she began
hemorrhaging. As in the Mason family, both parents inflicted
frequent beatings - the father with his fists, causing a broken
jaw when Robert was not yet two. Sitting at the table, if Robert
reached out for something without his father's permission, he
would end up with a fork in the back of his hand.
For sport, father would load his gun and tell
the children they had 30 minutes to hide outside the house,
after which he would hunt them like animals. threatening to
shoot anyone he found. Like Mason, young Harris soon began
showing anger toward animals and people. The senior Harris was
jailed for sexually molesting his daughters, while the mother
smoked and drank herself to death.
Harris was twenty five years old when he shot
two San Diego teenagers to death. Prosecutors told the jury that
Harris taunted the victims before they died, laughed at them
after he pulled the trigger, then calmly ate the hamburgers they
had bought for lunch. Pain and rejection were the foundation
stones on which these angry young men tried to build their lives.
Violence was a legacy from their parents.
In an editorial on the occasion of Mason's
execution, former U.S. Congressman Lionel Van Deerlin of San
Diego concluded: "Such persons must be put away, of course. But
can society feel comfortable when providing the final touch to a
pattern of violence which may literally have begun in the
mother's womb?" Congressman Van Deerlin shows rare nsight in
connecting events widely separated in time: womb violence and
criminal violence. As a society we have naively viewed the
earliest period of human development as a "free period" when
rules are suspended and there are no consequences for torturous
mental and emotional events. This is wishful thinking.
The latest research on fetal and neonatal
behavior indicates that all babies are keenly aware of their
environment, are fully able to feel pain, and are constantly
learning from their experiences. These scientific findings
support what the biographies of Mason and Harris reveal so well:
violence during pregnancy and birth is the seedbed of a violent
society.
Vulnerability to hostility during the primal
period continues through a range of flashpoints including
discovery of pregnancy, chronic warfare between parents,
physical and psychic attacks on the fetus, the multiple traumas
ot premature birth, the routine traumas of medical birth
including heel lancing for blood samples, needle injections of
vitamin K, rough handling in a too cold, too bright environment,
and finally, more often than not, exile and isolation from
mother and father. Crown these insults and injuries with
rejection after birth and you have the formula for personal
misery, smoldering resentments, and social explosions.
What can parents do about violence in society?
Briefly, they can turn things in a different direction at all
the chronological flashpoints: Start with a planned conception,
get help to resolve interpersonal problems at the earliest
possible time, send lots of loving messages to the baby in the
womb, organize for health and fitness to support full-term
gestation in utero, and arrange for a non-vioient, natural birth
in a context of reassuring touch, where mother's milk is always
available and family solidarity is unbroken.
"Vicims of a devastating trauma may never be
the same (again) biologically. It does not matter if it was the
incessant terror of combat, torture, repeated abuse in childhood,
or a one-time experience."
[Psychiatrist Dennis Charney, National Center
for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Yale University]
PROCEDURE 769
FilmsTransit.com
By Jaap van Hoewijk & Rikkert
Boonstra, The Netherlands, 35mm, 80’
After a nerve-wracking last minute stay
Robert Alton Harris finally walked to his execution in San
Quentin on April 21st, 1992 for the murder of two boys he
committed back in 1978. For the State of California this was the
first execution in 25 years and for 14 years the Harris-case was
a top news story on radio and television across the United
States. Procedure 769 (which is the administrative name for the
death penalty) makes a major contribution to the topical
discussion on death penalty by focusing on the people who are
witnesses to an execution.
The film features a number of people who were
present at the time. Among them San Quentin’s former warden who
supervised the execution, the father, mother and a sister of one
of the slain boys, a journalist, official witnesses such as the
current sheriff of San Diego, a brother and a far cousin (a
Minister from Alabama) of Harris. All of these people had mixed
and often very contradictory feelings about watching Harris’
execution. Throughout the film, we are made aware of the vital
role the media played in the case.
The making of Procedure 769 - On April 21st
1992 Jaap van Hoewijk hears on the radio of the execution in
California of someone by the name of Harris. It would be the
first execution in the state in 25 years. He hears that the
condemned man has been executed in the presence of about 50
witnesses... 50 people were present at the execution. 50 people
stood or sat and watched. Who are they and why are they there?
Van Hoewijk's curiosity is aroused and he decides to investigate.
A few days later he finds out through newspaper reports that the
witnesses came from widely different backgrounds. At that moment
he realized that this could be a wonderful point of departure
for a film: a group of people all watching the same event, but
all seeing something different.
But it is not easy to find these witnesses.
No one in the US is willing or able to help track these people
down. Quite coincidentally, an organisation opposed to
executions sends a fax from van Hoewijk on to the Death Penalty
Information Center in Washington DC. Michael Kroll, director of
this centre, responded. He happened to attend the execution as a
friend of Harris, but he refuses to cooperate with the film.
The memory of that horrific night when Harris
was killed is too painful. After many months and many letters,
Kroll is finally willing to cooperate and help with the project.
He puts the filmmaker in touch with Randall and Leon Harris,
respectively the brother and cousin of Robert Harris. Randall
Harris has never previously wanted to talk to a reporter.
Slowly but surely, van Hoewijk comes into
contact with the other witnesses and to his amazement, almost
all the witnesses he finds agree to take part. San Quentin State
Prison director Daniel Vasquez however refuses to speak to the
filmmaker. However when the crew is already shooting the film,
Vasquez calls van Hoewijk by phone. He has a different job now
and wants to talk.
"Hoewijk has made one of the best films on
the subject ... gripping all the way ... aa real eye-opener!" -
Filmnews.
Deadly Compromise
By Joshua Green -
The Washington Monthly
* * * * *
In 1978, Robert Alton Harris, a 26-year-old
paroled murderer, kidnapped two California teenagers in the
parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. He drove to a remote
canyon where he killed the two boys, then finished the
hamburgers they'd been eating and drove off. Harris was later
caught robbing a bank. He confessed to the murders and was
sentenced to death in 1979. Yet he managed to delay his
execution for 13 years by repeatedly manipulating the appeals
system.
Harris and his lawyers challenged the quality
of his psychiatric evaluation, claimed California's gas chamber
was unconstitutional, and argued that the death penalty
discriminated against younger killers, males, and those who
killed whites. Each of these claims stalled his execution. In a
flurry of last-minute appeals, the Supreme Court overturned four
separate stays on the night of Harris' execution before it took
the unprecedented step of forbidding lower courts to issue
further stays. By the time he was finally put to death in 1992,
Harris had managed to get more than 20 appeals.
Righting a Lopsided Argument
Bates
Magazine - Letters to Editor
I feel compelled to register the significant
level of concern I felt over Michael Laurence's essay, "Death Be
Not Proud" (summer 1997). There is an obligation to balance his
one-sided assessment of the death penalty and what can be
construed as the magazine's implicit endorsement of these views.
I, too, come from a Jewish family, from a
family whose ranks were decimated by an evil regime bent on
extinguishing an entire people from the earth. Reading Mr.
Laurence's veiled attempt to link the self-imposed consequences
of cold-blooded killers to the plight of the slaughtered and
innocent victims of the Holocaust was deeply troubling. This
shameful ploy is an insult to the victims by associating their
names with the scum Mr. Laurence has every right in the world to
defend. Additionally, I do not see any similarity between the
hateful Nazi regime and the United States government that helped
end their attempt at world domination.
Throughout Mr. Laurence's piece we are
offered his insight into the "distortions of the legal system,"
interpretations of capital punishment as "killing," and the
long, agonizing journey that leads to the execution of Mr.
Laurence's client, Robert Harris. Apart from perfunctory
references to a horrific crime, we are left with the impression
that Mr. Harris is as much a victim as anyone. Mr. Laurence is
loyal to his client by presenting all the typical excuses for
his criminal behavior, but fails to detail that behavior. What
would I like to do here is something that is rarely, if ever,
done in typically lopsided anti-capital punishment arguments:
represent the victims.
In 1978 Robert Alton Harris abducted two
teenagers from a San Diego fast food restaurant and shot them
down for absolutely no reason. Through his own admission, he
taunted them before they died, laughed after shooting each of
them in the head, and calmly sat down beside the bodies and
finished the lunch he had stolen from the victims before ending
their lives.
Whether Robert Harris had a terrible
upbringing or not, did too many drugs, hung out with the wrong
crowd, was messed up on Twinkies, or whether other excuses were
offered is, I feel, irrelevant. He snuffed out two young, vital
lives that no excuse in the world can restore. Why should
extenuating circumstances be argued in cold-blooded cases of
murder such as this? Does any extenuating circumstance make
these two boys less dead? Charles Manson, too, had a pretty
rough upbringing. Does that somehow negate the carnage he
inspired? What happened to the concept of responsibility for
one's actions? Even the term "not guilty by reason of insanity"
is legalistic insult to a murder victim. What about guilty by
reason of insanity?
Mr. Laurence should also be cautious of
overstepping his professional capabilities and personal
experiences by claiming to speak for the families of his
client's victims. "Capital punishment is not a panacea for the
loss of a loved one," he asserts, and "it is a lie" that
execution will offer closure. He is, unfortunately, unqualified
to speak for these people and, moreover, clearly uninformed.
The families of the two young boys all
requested to be present at Robert Harris's execution "to see
justice done after fourteen years." Linda Herring Baker, whose
brother was slain by Harris, expressed the following after
witnessing the execution: "He didn't want to give us the
satisfaction of watching him die in pain, so he just sat there
and died. He struggled a bit, but not enough for me
unfortunately: I would have liked to see him struggle more for
what he did."
Another point to which I must object is the
assertion that the death penalty is not a deterrent. Make no
mistake that it certainly is a deterrent. Robert Alton Harris
will never again cut short the life of another young person or
ruin the remaining years of countless family and friends. We are
all safer with this type of person off the planet. I have never
bought the argument that the death penalty should be measured by
its ability to deter others from committing similar crimes. (How
could that truly be measured, anyway?) People still run red
lights even though our society penalizes such behavior. Does
this mean fines do not work and they should be abolished?
Further, to assert that life in prison is an
acceptable alternative to capital punishment challenges reality.
We would all like to take comfort in the naive belief that once
a convicted murder goes off to prison he is subject to a harsh
daily routine on the rock pile, making little ones out of big
ones.
However, the term "life in prison" is either
wishful thinking, a sadly apt description, or simply an
additional mockery toward a murder victim's family and the
departed's memory. Thanks to the advent of minimum security,
work release, parole hearing for "lifers," commutations, and "good
behavior" credits and the like, "life in prison" is all but a
hollow and impotent threat to the many who eventually walk free
from their life sentences.
I could certainly go on here, but I will not.
There are many more points that I object to in Mr. Laurence's
article. However, my objective is not to "gang up" on him. His
motives seem pure and his work honest. But there are people out
there with much less virtuous intent who are a blight on society
for the fear, destruction, and devastation they wrought on
people's lives. They abrogate their rights of protection by a
society whose very protection they threaten. The stilled voices
of their victims must never be forgotten in our zeal to apply
fairness where fairness does not exist.
Martin E. Levenson '81, Danvers,
Massachusetts
The Electric
Chair.Com
Famous Last Words: Robert
Alton Harris: "You can be a king or a street sweeper, but
everyone dances with the Grim Reaper." (Robert Alton Harris, put
to death in California's gas chamber on April 21, 1992, for the
slayings of two teenagers)
Canadian
Federation of Humane Society
Robert Alton Harris murdered
two 16 year old boys, doused a neighbour with lighter fluid and
tossed matches at him. His initial run-in with police was for
killing neighbourhood cats.
People v. Harris, 171
Cal.Rptr. 679 (Cal. 1981) (Direct Appeal).
Defendant Robert Alton Harris
appeals from a judgment imposing the death penalty following his
conviction of kidnaping, robbery and first degree murder of John
Mayeski and Michael Baker. Defendant was also convicted of
receiving stolen property and of possession of a concealable
firearm by an ex-felon. We affirm the judgment.
GUILT PHASE
In May or June of 1978
defendant first asked his brother Daniel for help in a planned
bank robbery. On 2 July 1978, Daniel stole a .22 rifle and a .9
millimeter pistol from the home of Jim Corbin, a neighbor. While
Daniel and defendant were in the house, apparently in Corbin's
absence, defendant stated they needed weapons for the bank
robbery and asked whether there were any in the house. Daniel
then showed defendant the guns and took them from the house.
The brothers left Visalia for San Diego that
evening. The next morning, 3 July 1978, they purchased
ammunition, went to a nearby rural area and practiced firing the
weapons by shooting at trees while running and rolling a drill
they considered appropriate in preparing for the bank robbery.
The following morning, 4 July 1978, defendant
and his brother purchased more ammunition as well as knit caps,
in which they burned eye holes, to serve as masks in the bank
robbery. That afternoon they went to the Miramar Lake area, near
Mira Mesa, for more shooting practice.
The next morning, 5 July 1978, having decided
to steal an automobile for use as a getaway car, the brothers
spotted a green Ford in a grocery store parking lot directly
across Mira Mesa Boulevard from the bank. John Mayeski, 15, and
Michael Baker, 16, were in the car eating hamburgers. Assuring
Daniel "nobody is going to get hurt," defendant walked over to
the Ford, pulled the pistol from his waistband, and got in the
back seat. With Daniel following in defendant's car, the Ford
was then driven out Mira Mesa Boulevard toward Miramar Lake and
the fire trail where the brothers had been the day before.
At the foot of the fire trail defendant and
Daniel parked the cars and forced the two boys to walk up the
trail at gunpoint. Defendant was carrying the pistol and Daniel
the rifle. Defendant told the boys their car was going to be
used in a bank robbery but that no one would be hurt. Defendant
asked the boys whether there was any rope in their car. The boys
replied there was not but said they would walk to the top of the
hill, wait until the brothers drove back to Mira Mesa, and then
report the Ford as stolen, giving the police a misleading
description of the thieves. Defendant voiced approval of this
suggestion.
The boys then began walking up the hill.
Suddenly, Daniel heard a shot. Turning around, he saw John
Mayeski fall to the ground. Defendant had shot the boy in the
back with the pistol. Defendant fired another shot into the
boy's head, then ran after Michael Baker. Finding the Baker boy
crouching and screaming in the brush, defendant shot him four
times. Defendant then went back to the fallen Mayeski boy and
fired a shot point-blank into his head.
Finally, defendant picked up the rifle
dropped by Daniel and shot John Mayeski yet again. The brothers
then left the murder scene and drove back to the house defendant
shared in Mira Mesa. There defendant ate the remainder of the
dead boys' food and laughed at Daniel for not having the stomach
to join him.
While the brothers continued preparing for
the bank robbery, defendant laughed and giggled about shooting
the boys, saying he had blown Michael Baker's arm off. Defendant
also amused himself by imagining what it would be like to be a
police officer and to report the boys' deaths to their families.
When Daniel noted there were fragments of flesh on defendant's
pistol, apparently from the point-blank shot fired into John
Mayeski's head, defendant laughed, commented he had really blown
the boy's brains out, and then flicked the bits of flesh into
the street.
Later the same day the brothers robbed the
bank. They were quickly arrested for the bank robbery when a
witness, who followed them from the bank to defendant's house,
called the police. The brothers were arrested at 1:05 p. m. on 5
July 1978. At 4 p. m., Daniel first informed officers of the
murders; at 6:30 p. m., Daniel confessed in a tape-recorded
statement, placing the blame primarily on defendant. At 7 p. m.,
having listened to portions of Daniel's statement, defendant
himself confessed to Officer Fred Dreis.
At midnight, the brothers were interviewed by
Dr. Wait Griswold, a psychiatrist. On 7 July 1978, at 11:20 a.
m., defendant repeated his confession in detail to Johnny Bolden,
a criminal investigator for the San Diego County District
Attorney's office. Finally, at 1 p. m. on 7 July 1978 an hour
before he was arraigned defendant confessed to Officer Ronald
Newman.
When one of defendant's sisters visited him
in jail on 15 July 1978, he told her, "Now, I guess because I
killed those two boys, they were only 16 years old, then robbed
the bank and kidnaped them was because I really wanted to die."
Defendant's last extrajudicial confession was made to a fellow
inmate. Asked why he had killed the boys, defendant answered, "I
couldn't have no punks running around that could do that (identify
him), so I wasted them."
Testifying in his own behalf at the guilt
phase, defendant admitted the bank robbery but denied kidnaping,
robbing and murdering the two boys. He explained his pretrial
confessions as attempts to protect his brother.Daniel testified
for the People in return for being permitted to plead guilty to
one count of kidnaping. His testimony was corroborated by a
series of extrajudicial statements made by defendant.
PENALTY PHASE
In 1975 defendant pleaded
guilty to voluntary manslaughter of James Wheeler. Wheeler and
his wife lived with defendant's brother Ken and his wife;
defendant and his wife lived next door. At the scene, defendant
admitted beating Wheeler to death but claimed he had done so to
protect the victim's wife when her husband threatened her with a
knife. Later, just as in the present case, defendant repudiated
his confession and sought to shift the blame to his brother,
claiming Ken had killed Wheeler and that he had confessed to
protect Ken. This is the story defendant told when testifying in
the present proceeding.
However, defendant's former wife and his
niece testified defendant, without provocation, beat Wheeler to
death while mockingly claiming to teach his victim self defense.
During this sadistic attack defendant also cut off Wheeler's
hair and threw matches at him after squirting him with lighter
fluid. Defendant's former wife admitted she lied to the grand
jury investigating Wheeler's death explaining defendant had
threatened to kill her too if she did not support his story.
Pulley v. Harris
Petitioner
R. Pulley, Warden
Respondent
Robert Alton Harris
Petitioner's Claim
The failure of the state to provide for a
judicial review of the proportionality of his
death sentence was unconstitutional and required
reversal of the sentence.
Chief Lawyer for
Petitioner
Michael D. Wellington
Chief Lawyer for
Respondent
Anthony G. Amsterdam
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger, Sandra Day
O'Connor, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William H.
Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens, Byron R. White (writing
for the Court)
Justices Dissenting
William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
23 January 1984
Decision
The Constitution does not require that a court
review a sentence of death toconfirm that it has
been imposed in similar cases.
Significance
The Harris decision
described a minimum procedural threshold for
statutory death penalty schemes.
The 14- year-long case
against Robert Alton Harris began in 1978, when
Harrisasked his brother, Daniel, to help him rob
a bank. In July, the two brothersbegan to buy
materials for the robbery, including pistols,
rifles, ammunition, and face masks. After
practicing shooting while running and rolling in
a rural area near Mira Mesa, California, Harris
and his brother staked out the San Diego Trust
and Savings Bank on Mira Mesa Boulevard on 4
July 1978. The next morning they decided to
steal a car to use for a getaway in the robbery.
Spotting 15-year-old John Mayeski and 16-year-old
Michael Baker in a car eating hamburgers near
the bank, Harris approached the car, hopped into
the back seat, pulled out his pistol, and
ordered the boys to drive to a rural area.
Although Harris had assured
his brother that no one was "going to get hurt,"Harris
eventually shot Mayeski in the back, fired four
shots at the shriekingBaker, and then returned
to Mayeski for a pistol shot to the head and,
finally, a blast from the shotgun. After killing
the boys, Harris ate the boys' hamburgers and
then chided his brother Daniel for being too
weak to join him. Harris laughed about the
murders and, when Daniel remarked that the
pistol wascovered with fragments of flesh,
Harris chuckled, saying as he flicked pieces of
Mayeski's brain onto the street that he had "really
blown [Mayeski's] brains out." Later that day,
Harris and his brother robbed the bank of Mira
Mesa Boulevard, but they were quickly
apprehended when a witness to the
robberyfollowed them from the bank to Harris'
house and then called the police.
Daniel confessed to the
police less than three hours after the arrests.
Robert Harris confessed shortly thereafter on
four different occasions to three different law
enforcement officials and one psychiatrist. Both
men were chargedin a California state court with
the murders, but prosecutors offered Daniela
lesser charge of kidnapping in exchange for a
plea of guilty to that charge and his testimony
against his brother. At his trial for first-degree
murder, Robert Harris testified that his
confessions were lies, and that he had lied to
save his brother, who was the real killer.
Harris had done the same thing in 1975, when he
was accused and convicted of killing a neighbor;
after confessing, Harris attempted to pin the
blame on another of his brothers Ken. Harris was
convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the 1975
case. For the 1978 slayings of Mayeski and
Baker, Harris was convicted of first-degree
murder. Harris admitted to the murders at the
penalty phase of his trial and explainedto the
jury that he had suffered a difficult childhood,
but the jury sentenced him to death.
The Supreme Court of
California affirmed the conviction and the
sentence, andthe U.S. Supreme Court denied
certiorari. Harris filed a habeas corpus
petition against his prison's warden in state
court, but the petition was denied, and the U.S.
Supreme Court again denied certiorari.
Harris then filed a petition for habeas
corpus in federal district court;the
district court denied the writ and refused to
stay Harris' execution, butthe Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit reversed the decision. The
appeals court held that, under the Eighth
Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual
punishment, Harris was entitled to a judicial
determination of whether Harris' sentence was
proportionate to sentences imposed for similar
crimes. Theappeals court ordered the district
court to issue a writ revoking the sentence
unless the Supreme Court of California conducted
a proportionality reviewwith 120 days. The state
of California appealed this ruling to the U.S.
Supreme Court through Harris' prison warden, and
the High Court, by a vote of 7-2,reversed the
decision.
Writing for the majority,
Justice White defined proportionality in the
context of sentencing as "an abstract evaluation
of the appropriateness of a sentence for a
particular crime." The Court acknowledged that
the lack of proportion in a particular sentence
could violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition
of cruel and unusual punishment. The High Court
had held, in the past, that the severity of a
sentence could be inherently disproportionate to
the seriousness of the crime. However, the Court
had never engaged in the kind of proportional
analysis offered by Harris and accepted by the
appeals court. Specifically, Harris was claiming
that he was entitled to a judicial review to
determine that the death sentence was
proportionate compared to the sentences metedout
in cases with similar facts.
Harris argued, in part, that
the Court's ruling in Furman v. Georgia
(1972) supported a constitutional right to the
so-called "comparative review."In Furman,
the Court held that the death penalty was
unconstitutionalunder the Eighth Amendment,
effectively outlawing the death penalty. The
Court ruled the same way in two companion cases,
Proffitt v. Florida (1976) and Jurek
v. Texas (1976). The Court ruled in Gregg
v. Georgia (1976) that certain states had
cured the infirmities in their death penalty
sentencing schemes, effectively reinstating the
death penalty. Still, the Gregg Court had
not departed from the reasoning employed by the
Court in Furman, so the Furman
case remained good law, and the Court was forced
to meet Harris' argument.
The Furman Court,
without a clear majority, essentially had held
thatthe death penalty, at the time, "was being
imposed so discriminatorily, so wantonly and
freakishly, and so infrequently, that any given
death sentence wascruel and unusual." After the
Furman decision, states changed their
capital sentencing statutes to limit the jury's
discretion to impose the penalty and to "avoid
arbitrary and inconsistent results." States gave
to capitaldefendants the right of automatic
appeal of a death sentence to a court
withstatewide jurisdiction, and they also
created a second proceeding, called
thesentencing phase, that took place after a
guilty verdict in a capital case.The sentencing
proceeding allowed the introduction of evidence
and testimonyand was designed to ensure that the
sentencing authority (the judge or jury)had
sufficient information and guidance to make a
fair decision on the sentence.
Most states did require the
reviewing court to determine whether the
sentencewas proportionate to that imposed in
similar crimes, but some states did notrequire
such a comparative proportionality review.
According to Justice White and the majority, the
Court in Gregg,Proffitt, and
Jurek did not think that such a
proportionality review was necessary. Just
because some states required a sentence
proportionality review in death penalty cases,
that did not "mean that such review [was]
indispensable." The most important factors that
had resolved the constitutional infirmities in
the statutory death penalty schemes were the
provisions for stricter guidance of the
sentencing authority and the availability of
appellate review. Comparative proportionality
review was not, declared the Court, a factor in
the 1976 cases. In1983, the Court in Zant v.
Stephens had upheld a death sentence basedin
part on the fact that the defendant had a right
to comparative proportionality review. However,
the right to comparative proportionality review
was merely "an additional safeguard against
arbitrarily imposed death sentences" and was not
"constitutionally required."
The majority analyzed
California's capital sentencing scheme and found
it constitutionally sound. Although California
did not provide for comparative proportionality
review, it did provide "checks on arbitrariness"
by requiring thesentencing authority to conduct
a detailed process in deciding whether to impose
the death penalty. The Court concluded that it
could not "say that the California procedures
provided Harris inadequate protection against
the evil identified in Furman." By
reversing the appeals court's decision, the
Supreme Court placed Harris back on death row.
Justice Stevens concurred in
the judgment, but he agreed with only part of
the majority's reasoning. To Stevens, the
Court's own precedent indicated that"meaningful"
appellate review was required in death penalty
cases. Stevens was not convinced, though, that
comparative proportionality was "the only method
by which an appellate court can avoid the danger
that the imposition of thedeath sentence in a
particular case, or a particular class of cases,
will beso extraordinary as to violate the Eighth
Amendment."
Justice Brennan authored a
long, passionate dissent in which Justice
Marshalljoined. In the estimation of Brennan and
Marshall, the minimal procedures that the
majority required in capital sentencing were not
enough to prevent thearbitrary and capricious
imposition of the death penalty. Brennan was
concerned mainly about the possibility of racial
discrimination in the applicationof the death
penalty. Additional concerns for Brennan
included the discriminatory imposition of the
death penalty based on gender, socioeconomic
status, and location within a state.
Brennan observed that most
states required comparative proportionality
reviewin capital case sentencing. This fact
convinced Brennan that comparative review "serve[d]
to eliminate some, if only a small part, of the
irrationality that infect[ed] the . . .
imposition of the death sentences throughout the
various States." Thus, reasoned Brennan, such
review should be required in capital case
sentencing. Brennan discussed the teachings of
various legal commentators on the topic of the
death penalty and cited cases in which men were
putto death on questionable grounds. Reviewing
the proportionality of a death sentence by
comparing it to the sentence imposed in cases
with similar facts was "clearly no panacea," but
"such review often serve[d] to identify the
mostextreme examples of disproportionality among
similarly situated defendants."To the dissent,
there was no reason not to require comparative
proportionality review, especially when death
sentences were being vacated in states that
required it. Even if Brennan and Marshall did
not believe that "the death penalty is in all
circumstances cruel and unusual punishment,"
they "could not join in such unstudied decision
making."
Harris continued to file
habeas corpus petitions in an attempt to
avert his sentence. His sentence was stayed four
times. In April of 1992, the appeals court
stayed his execution and ordered the district
court to conduct a hearing to determine whether
the use of cyanide gas to kill Harris might
constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The
U.S. Supreme Court vacated that decision too,
and Robert Harris died in the gas chamber at San
Quentin Prison in California on 21 April 1992.
Impact
Although most states require a court reviewing a
death penalty sentence to determine that the
sentence is proportional compared to similar
crimes, such review is not required because of
the holding in the Harris case. A later
decision in Harris' case also stands for the
proposition that use of gas chambers for
executions does not violate the Eighth
Amendment's prohibition ofcruel and unusual
punishment.
