Perhaps we were simply too cowardly to take up a gun or a knife. In these cases we think it just that we suffer reasonable consequences and then be allowed to earn another chance. "It was a terrible loss. Barbara enrolled him in the eighth grade but, after a day, the school kicked him out. Randy Harris said he once spoke to his father about the life and crimes that led little Robbie to the gas chamber. He claimed that hed only watched others do it. God does love the real world, and those who perceive its reality cannot see the world of death. At fifteen, Magris stole the dance schools car to run away from home with a fourteen-year-old girl. He left the house early the next morning with John Mayeski, also 16, one of his closest friends, to look for summer work. But even as the Supreme Court was considering that appeal and just two hours before Harris scheduled 12:01 a.m. execution, 10 judges on the federal appeals court issued a second stay of Harris execution based on a defense claim that the use of cyanide gas was an unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment. Maybe now they can sleep knowing justice is done.. A total of 49 people were present to watch. But wait a minute the law says youre crazy only if you dont know any better than to kill. He quotes a confessed murderer who advises crime victims to forgive yourself for all the pain youve gone through. This is the sort of fuzzy pseudothinking that makes Rush Limbaugh rich. We believe that this will somehow deter violence, despite the lack of evidence to that effect. Seconds before the cyanide gas filled the chamber, Harris had looked squarely into the eyes of Steve Baker, the father of one of the two San Diego teen-age boys Harris murdered. To die at the hands of someone who hates you is worlds apart from a death (at any age) preceded by an acceptance of your own circumstances of ill health, surrounded by family and friends. The equation is simple and so blatantly clear in human history and in the daily news that one has to wonder why our modern society has not yet grasped it. We do not want to reduce access to even the most dangerous guns in our own country. None of this was true, Magris knows today, but he asserts that the idea that he came from criminal stock was a powerful influence on him. Robert Alton Harris San Quentin, California On July 5, 1978, Robert and his brother Daniel found John Mayeski and Michael Baker, both 16, eating hamburgers in Mayeski's car celebrating his new driver's license. 1993. Today Harris became the 502nd person to be put to death by the state of California. Under terms of a plea bargain--in which he received three years for kidnaping for his role in the crime--Daniel Harris testified during his brothers trial that Robert had shot both victims. What are the reasonable consequences of a crime for criminals, for victims, for society? Are the crimes illusions, too? Killing a few murderers will not make a bit of difference in lowering our crime rates. I asked Magris if anything helpful happened to him in prison. He died on 21 April 1992 in San Quentin State Prison, California, USA. Robert Harris had other crimes on his mind. [15][16], On April 20, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a separate stay of execution the Ninth Circuit had issued on Harris' habeas corpus petition. 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. There, in the parking lot, they were kidnapped at gunpoint by two men later identified as Robert Alton Harris, then 25, a paroled murderer, and his brother, Daniel, then 18. Over the last 13 years, Daniel Harris has made a variety of conflicting statements about his brother and the slayings of John Mayeski and Michael Baker, both 16, who were found dead in a remote San Diego wash. A $300-million (minimum) gondola to Dodger Stadium? Yet what is poignantly missing and systematically suppressed in our society is the voice of our conscience when we face the choice of killing or not killing. 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. WebRobert 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. This formula is so confusing that it may seem simpler to forget about defining sanity and rely instead on the fundamental logic of vengeance: if you kill, for any reason, you deserve to be killed. A hearing is scheduled before U.S. District Judge Howard B. Turrentine at 9 a.m. today. Kolender, who was chief of police when Harris killed the two boys, said he hopes the justice system learns from the lengthy legal proceedings -- both from the last-minute appeals and the tedious litigation that blocked the execution for years. If we want to see how angry we are about this unhappy circumstance, we need only look at our treatment of murderers. 17 SoCal hiking trails that are blooming with wildflowers (but probably not for long! That policy would surely stop all the killing, wouldnt it? I saw enough bloodshed, sadness, pain, and degrading and demeaning things to last several hundred people a lifetime. The Supreme Court of the United States reimposed Harris' death sentence in Pulley v. Harris (1984), reversing the Ninth Circuit by a vote of 72. Since the body is always vulnerable to damage and destruction, our lives are constricted by our perpetual service to fear, self-defense, and vengeance. We discuss his true crime history, his execution , and we eat his last meal. Native American societies handled murderers this way. I was determined to be a star. He would not have defended it with such exasperation had he not been moved to question it. Miller seems to have it backward: if we eliminate capital punishment, he argues, suddenly we will have educated, responsible citizens. There is no glee here, Lungren said at a press conference following Harris execution. Convinced that Robert was conceived in an affair, Sgt. The man didnt believe Robert was his progeny and made the boy the special object of his hatred. "I haven't had a postcard even acknowledging, 'Yes, Mrs. Mankins, we're taking your feelings into consideration.' Ive never experienced anything like it in my 10 years here, said Toni House, the high courts public-information officer. But because of Harris, I never got the opportunity.". Atheists may substitute the forces of nature for the idea of God, but the basic logic is unchanged. . ", After hearing that Wilson denied Harris's petition for clemency, Sharron Mankins told reporters, "This is just what we were waiting to hear.". Particularly in America, we seem bent on encouraging the endless cycle of violence feeding upon itself. Nor does the execution of a convicted murderer. Mankins said they had spent hours on the phone discussing shared pain. A lawsuit by two Rincon Middle school teachers argues parents deserve to know. Janice Gay demonstrated outside San Quentin against the execution of Robert Alton Harris in 1992. Kenneth Harris had won a Silver Star and Purple Heart in World War II. Federal Circuits, 9th Cir. The photographs, Sharron Mankins said, are too painful to display. Harris was sentenced to die 13 years ago for killing 16-year-olds John Mayeski and Michael Baker in 1978. He and his older brother Kenneth decided to show a neighbor, James Wheeler, how to fight. The best revenge you can have on criminals is to see them kill themselves not their bodies, the deaths of which are only a shadow gratification, but what offended you: their selfish malice, their contempt for human life, their identity as criminals. Robert 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. But as long as society is unwilling to liberate itself from that same belief, it will continue to have a chaotic correctional system that does little more than warehouse and further degrade societys most dangerous members. Several multiple murderers have said how much easier it was to murder the second time. Open your mind to change, and there will be no ancient penalty exacted from your brother or yourself. And then we take two steps back.". At the psychological level, teaching peace means learning to release ourselves from the habit of self-punishment, and to stop creating and projecting blame. Robert 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. Schizophrenia was diagnosed. The choices we may make as individuals are not necessarily the choices that society should make, considering the greater good. Robert Harris spent the next four years as a ward of federal reformatories. Miller draws from a set of doctrinal preconceptions (A Course in Miracles) to lay a massive guilt trip, not on criminals, who elicit his forgiveness and understanding, but on the innocent people they rape, rob, and mutilate. But it does not prevent our society from producing murderers. With his father again in prison, Robert and his family took up the migrants life, following the crops up and down the valley. It was a solemn act. SAN QUENTIN -- After an exhausting night of uncertainty and three last-minute legal delays, condemned San Diego murderer Robert Alton Harris was put to death at dawn today in Californias gas chamber. D. Patrick Miller too often sounds like a true believer when he applies A Course in Miracles to the body politic. Arizona, which conducted its first execution in 30 years on April 7, is considering a switch to lethal injection. By denying blacks justice, we live with an uneasy armed peace in our inner cities. [15] Later that evening, the Ninth Circuit entered a third stay blocking the execution while it reconsidered reimposing the lower court's temporary restraining order. Give me all the statistics you want to about how it doesnt deter crime; Ill keep the death penalty as a symbol of the ultimate consequence the violent must face. 17 SoCal hiking trails that are blooming with wildflowers (but probably not for long! Shortly after 8 a.m., a white van escorted by a California Highway Patrol car entered the prison grounds, leaving 15 minutes later with Harris body. If youre guilty, you deserve justice, which is to be killed; if youre crazy, you deserve treatment. He said it was too soon to know whether witnessing Harris death closed a horrible chapter in his life. (Barry Fitzsimmons/San Diego Union-Tribune). [8] Robert Harris commandeered Mayeski's car and ordered him to drive to Miramar Lake, with Daniel Harris following in another vehicle. It got worse and worse. What if you were governor and you had to make this real, immediate choice? It was like the miracle of forgiveness. Think of Gandhi. She soon found a solution to her problems with Robert. A similar challenge to the constitutionality of the use of gas, raised in a case from Mississippi, was turned down by a federal appeals court in 1983. Dr. Howard Kornfeld, a San Francisco physician, said Harris will experience the terror of air hunger, a sense of strangulation, and desperate gasping for breath for a period extending up to several minutes.. My point is that there are times when murder is warranted, and it is the conscience with which the murder is committed that makes the long-term difference for human society. "I wish things could have been different. In recent years, we have decided, by at least a three-fourths majority according to most polls, that we do want capital punishment administered in due course to convicted murderers. Vasquez had planned to provide a prison chaplain for Harris, but opposed allowing the prisoners second cousin into the prison on the night of the execution, saying that it might lead to a desperate act to free Harris or interfere with the execution. The idea of miracles engages the child in each of us and its need for clear, happy conclusions the necessary stuff of wonder and myth. SAN FRANCISCO -- Friends and family eulogized executed killer Robert Alton Harris Friday as a man who had found peace of mind while awaiting his fate on 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. [2] With Kenneth in jail, the remaining family members lived a migrant life around the San Joaquin Valley. Miller also suggests that since violence begets violence, nonviolence must beget nonviolence. He replied, I have a hard time seeing how twenty-five years in prison equals getting away with it. Over Independence Day weekend, he drove from San Diego to Visalia for a Harris family picnic. To those who favor capital punishment, his case came to symbolize their frustrations with a legal system that allows lengthy appeals by a killer condemned to die. There's something wrong with a system where we pay a federal judge or any judge hundreds of thousands of dollars a year not to make a decision. [15] On April 22, the Ninth Circuit issued an emergency writ of mandate vacating the restraining order, in which Judge Arthur Alarcn was joined by Judge Melvin T. Brunetti, over the dissent of Judge Noonan. There is a chasm of difference between the murderer who is full of remorse for killing someone while driving drunk and the murderer who, having tortured and killed someone, feels no remorse whatsoever. The flurry of legal maneuvers was set off by Gov. Millers essay is an example of what I would call idiot compassion: the well-meaning inability to set limits on predators, disguised as spirituality. The witnesses said water that is part of the mixture that forms the lethal cyanide gas already had been pumped into the chamber, when a phone rang to announce that Pregerson had granted a one-day stay. The cold logic of economic analysis produces this intriguing option. Together, Mankins and Kay Mayeski, John's mother, had weathered emotional storms. The metal-walled 8-by-10-foot cell contains only a mattress, toilet and recessed lights, with bars on one side, Crittendon said. "We've sent letters to Governor Wilson, and I haven't had a call back," she said. By 1967, Roberts mother Evelyn had left her husband and driven off with her four youngest kids and a boyfriend, leaving fourteen-year-old Robert to fend for himself. This process usually feels like ego death, which is precisely what our so-called correctional system should be about suppressing criminal behavior and changing ways of thinking until criminals, whose egos are often saturated with the belief in vengeance, are liberated from that belief. To imagine that Robert Alton Harris dispensed an incomprehensible mercy to his young victims would seem to us the height of lunacy; yet the death he dealt was surely no worse than that suffered by a child with a terminal wasting disease. 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. But at night I was doing burglaries, drinking, taking and selling drugs.. But when they do choose abortion, with a conscience full of prayer, the very act of their spiritual struggle is a lifting up of the human spirit for all of humanity. Sharron and Sam Mankins each brought three children from previous marriages to their own, creating what they call a "Brady Bunch" household. Patel had issued a temporary restraining order late Saturday in response to a class-action lawsuit filed by Harris attorneys claiming that death in the gas chamber is cruel and unusual punishment. In short, a political stance against the death penalty must be metaphysically daring. But I am very closely involved in this case, and I feel I should be given the same courtesy. Sharron Mankins, Baker and Herring plan to attend the execution as official witnesses and have expressed a need to know firsthand that Harris has been punished. [International Phenomenological Society, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Wiley]: 12942. He seemed to be making a great effort to die well, said Wade Douglas, a media witness from KSDO radio in San Diego. It is being posted online from the U-T archives to mark the 25th anniversary of the Robert Alton Harris execution at San Quentin. [15] That night, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a per curiam decision vacating the Ninth Circuit's stays and allowing the execution to proceed, by a vote of 72. WebRobert Alton Harris is perhaps the most famous bad-history wrongdoer in the philosophical * I thank Saba Bazargan-Forward, Amy Berg, Matthew Braich, and his brother planned a bank robbery. Former San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender, who watched Harris die, said the execution sent a message that killers will face justice. "There were all these things he was just starting to enjoy. 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. Do we need more variations on the Christian pie-in-the-sky viewpoint? To get past that, you have to confront your fear., Without a death penalty, I asked Magris, wont many people conclude that murderers can get away with it? I want them dead. Fistfighting led to Robert dousing the man with lighter fluid and setting him on fire; Wheeler died. From the archives: Time runs out for killer of 2 youths here Movies. 82-5246. Outside the prison, foes and advocates of the death penalty used the twin occasions of Good Friday and Passover to argue their respective religious positions. . I think lethal injection is much cleaner, more surgical, quicker, Leary said. At a deeper level, we believe that state-sanctioned, ritualized killing will provide us with resolution, emotional satisfaction, and perhaps even a dramatic final opportunity to forgive those who trespass murderously against us. He had orgasms while doing so. It isnt always so clear. He said; "You can be a king or a street sweeper but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper". SAN JOSE, CALIF. As he first smelled the lethal cyanide fumes, Robert Alton Harris looked to his left where members of his family were standing. The relationship between my son and me would have probably been different later. She never had anything good to say for Robbie, sister Brenda Harris said. He would spend the rest of his days behind bars, they predicted. Violence will continue with or without legislation. Harris came within 12 hours of being executed in April 1990.1 His younger brother, Daniel, 18, was willing to help. [13], In 1990, federal appeals court judge John T. Noonan Jr. issued a stay of execution, as Harris argued that childhood brain damage interfered with his judgment during his crimes. He found work as a welder, married and fathered a son. Does that timidity make us sane? Miller does not want to acknowledge that civilization is founded on armed force. Mankins recalled that her friend's primary wish was to stay alive long enough to see Harris executed. WebRobert Alton Harris: Birthdate: May 18, 1909: Death: June 01, 1990 (81) Haskell County, Texas, United States Immediate Family: Son of Fletcher Harris and Holland Harris [2] During his time at the juvenile detention centre, Harris was repeatedly raped. In that sense, political activism in the name of forgiveness can be seen as an important part of a transformational spiritual discipline. Harris was But citing the 1st Amendment right of freedom of religion, the judge concluded that Harris would be more willing to clear his conscience to a confidant rather than a stranger offered by the prison. 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. . Its absolutely true, as Robert Becker suggests, that killing a murderer prevents him from killing again. Kroll said Harris was not surprised by Wilsons denial of clemency, but continued to talk about the future, as if he held out hope that a court would grant an Easter weekend reprieve. Human beings presently believe in punishment and vengeance as necessary and inescapable strategies for survival, social order, and personal advancement. He made his way to Oklahoma to live with his sister Barbara and brother Randy and was expelled from the eighth grade after his first day at school. Just two hours before the Supreme Courts last order, Harris spent 12 minutes strapped into the gas-chamber chair before prison officials learned of the stay by Pregerson. Robert Harris told the boys that they would be using the vehicle to rob a bank, but that no one would be hurt. [3] Robert was especially targeted for abuse by his father, who believed that Robert was conceived in an affair. Three years ago this month, Kenneth Harris Sr. placed a shotgun against his chest and squeezed. He recalled his son's budding interest in police work, a profession he said Michael might have chosen, and he spoke with more pain about a relationship with his son that never developed. One of the officers who apprehended the Harris brothers was Steven Baker, father of victim Michael Baker, who at the time was unaware that his son had been killed, let alone by one of the men he was arresting. Nothing much had changed. Forgiveness is often mistaken for the passive acceptance of wrongdoing and the denial of anger. Then youre ripe for anyone who comes along and says, Well, lets kill the guy who did it! But that doesnt solve anything. The minute I saw him, I had a real sick feeling, sister Barbara recalled of the picnic, in an interview two years ago. Harris approached the car and pointed a Luger at Mayeskis head. Earlier this year, Daniel Harris told the San Diego Union-Tribune that Robert is a nut who always liked hurting and killing something.. Is this letter an illusion? Five minutes before the cyanide gas was released, Harris twisted against the straps confining him and looked back over his shoulder to catch the eye of Steve Baker, the father of one of the two teenage boys Harris had killed in 1979. If we have free will, we must own the causes and the results of our actions, however complex the relationship. 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. There is always someone willing to terrorize his neighbors for personal gain, regardless of what effort we make to understand him. A Course in Miracles defines the ego as that part of our awareness usually the ruling part that believes in the reality of the body and its death. For instance, nearly everyone harbors self-hatred of a complex nature, including the petty and the profound. We resign ourselves to the random destruction wrought by tornadoes because we cant change nature. In another legal move Friday trying to spare Harris, his attorneys filed a federal civil rights suit in San Francisco seeking to block the execution on grounds that the use of lethal gas is a violation of the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. She described Michael as sensitive and quiet, a boy just becoming interested in girls and excited about the prospect of a driver's license. A Course in Miracles suggests a reason that capital punishment is morbidly alluring to so many: The death penalty is the egos ultimate goal, for it fully believes that you are a criminal, as deserving of death as God knows you are deserving of life.. Theyd fight and then go in the hole [solitary confinement], meaning their entire prison experience was altered. Sometime in May or June 1978, Robert, then aged 25, asked his brother Daniel, 18, for help in planning a bank robbery. Violence might come to us at random, as Harris came to young Baker and Mayeski, and we would be unprepared to protect ourselves or avenge the deaths of the innocent. State-level and district guidance advise schools not to disclose to parents if students are transgender without the students consent, citing safety concerns. Robert also had his first contact with police--for killing cats, although he maintained that he only watched as others did the deeds. Think of Jesus. I thought he was either going to kill mom or Kenneth.. Three officers then strapped Harris into the chair and bound his feet and chest. They forced Michael Baker and John Mayeski to drive into a nearby canyon. After Robert shot The alternative is to maintain our belief in vengeance, making our time in this world seem so long and painful that death becomes attractive. Kevin Leary, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter who witnessed Harris execution and said he has also witnessed a lethal-injection execution, said he prefers that method. He then proceeded to persecute them before burying a bullet in both their brains. Three others--Mississippi, Missouri and North Carolina--give the choice of gas or lethal injection. Howard I. Friedman criticized Wilson for ignoring scientific evidence that Harris suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome. WebRobert Alton Harris, Petitioner, v. R. Pulley, Warden of the California State Prison At San Quentin, Respondent. Web1. He was unemployed, drinking heavily and living on welfare. Robert joked and laughed with them awhile, then told them to start walking away. One day she and her latest man, and the four youngest kids, drove off and left Robert, 14, to fend for himself. Sgt. In addition to mercy and compassion, there is justice and responsibility in this world. Fridays appeal also says that Daniel was hypnotized, apparently at the behest of authorities, before his brothers trial. His date with the gas chamber is set for Tuesday morning at one minute past midnight Pacific time. For instance, why dont we use taxpayer money for programs to prevent children from being tormented by their parents, just as the young Robert Alton Harris was, rather than putting the money into extended stays of execution and the board and care of multiple murderers? Prison was like a rebirth. They met in a small conference room and were monitored 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. I saw a lot of changes in other prisoners ability to forgive, he says. Robert Davis was Robert Alton Harris Jr. Leon Harris of Alabama, whom he had chosen as his spiritual adviser, was locked into a cell adjacent to Harris so that he could stay with Harris during the final hours. If I listen to the voice in my own head, however, I conclude that anyone who violates Article 3 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of person) loses the protection of society in regard to his or her own life, liberty, and security of person and must suffer the consequences. Education and the great assumption of responsibility by individual citizens are indeed how we will get to a state of merciful realization. "Well, how about praying and giving the victims inner strength? He mouthed the words, looking me square in the eye: `Im sorry. I nodded my head at him.. [5], On July 5, the Harris brothers happened upon John Mayeski and Michael Baker, both 16, sitting in a green Ford LTD eating cheeseburgers in a supermarket parking lot in Mira Mesa.

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