This appeal failed, and Harris went to his death because the justice system determined that he was sane that is, capable of understanding his actions and their consequences, and therefore responsible for his choices. These responses embody the spiritual values presumably endorsed by a nation with a Christian majority, yet we do not endorse them. The other warriors captured him and gave the dead mans wife the choice of what to do with his killer. This is how I go about changing my own human nature. On July 5, 1978, Harris and his younger brother commandeered a car occupied by two 16-year-old boys, John Mayeski and Michael Baker, ordered them to drive to a remote area, then killed them. [15] Two hours later, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated that stay, explicitly ordering "No further stays of Robert Alton Harris' execution shall be entered by the federal courts except upon order of this Court. At 52, she recalled that when her mother hit the whiskey, she would get wild and vicious. One gets off ones idealistic cloud of spirituality and finds a way to make common-sense choices that will benefit the people who are truly innocent. Soon after his release in 1978, he drove from San Diego to Visalia to attend a Fourth of July picnic with his family; his mother, serving time for bank robbery, was out on parole. 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. At the spiritual level, teaching peace means cultivating the willingness to relinquish the world as we know it, in favor of a peaceful world that is presently beyond both our perception and our imagination. "In hindsight, you look back and really kick yourself in the tail," Baker said. [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. Harris nodded, winking at one officer who stood outside waiting to witness his death. Just before 6 a.m., the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the final stay of execution, which had been issued by Judge Pregerson and also focused on the method of execution. I hope it will, he said. Robert joked and laughed with them awhile, then told them to start walking away. Human murderers dont get off the hook because we can punish them. I do not mean abortion lifts up humanity. Federal Circuits, 9th Cir. In 1978, Robert Alton Harris and his brother, Daniel Marcus Harris, went to a fast food restaurant and abducted two teenage boys. 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. He graduated from Strawn High School and attended Ranger Jr. College. Any violent or sudden death, whether through murder or not, is quite different. Sharron, a bookkeeper, and Sam, a teacher, work for the San Diego City School District. Most people have judged themselves harshly for their mistakes, their desires, and their dark secrets. People who idealistically face violence with nonviolence have often been mowed down. For that is what Miller finally offers us, asking us to relinquish the world as we know it, in favor of a peaceful world that is presently beyond both our perception and our imagination.. Kay Mayeski died a year ago after a long battle with cancer. He spoke with a lisp and sat by himself talking to imaginary friends and fantasizing about visits from mystical Indians and flying saucers. Its absolutely true, as Robert Becker suggests, that killing a murderer prevents him from killing again. Nothing about this identity should be forgiven; it should die. I am deeply troubled by several aspects of the decision you rendered, wrote Friedman. The result is a lesson in blame, for all behavior teaches the beliefs that motivate it. "Understanding and Blaming: Problems in the Attribution of Moral Responsibility". This story was originally published in The San Diego Union-Tribune on April 21, 1992. Robert Alton Harris' final words read out loud by warden Daniel Vasquez, Video footage of the crime and the conviction of Robert A Harris, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, "From Birth to Death Row, Violence Surrounded Harris", "California Execution Stayed: State Is Appealing to High Court", "Best friends, their lives ended on a summer day", "An Argument That Goes Back to the Womb: The Demedicalization of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, 19731992,", "The Lawless Execution of Robert Alton Harris", "Equity and Hierarchy: Reflections on the Harris Execution", "The Supreme Court, The Death Penalty, and The Harris Case", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Alton_Harris&oldid=1148067390, 20th-century executions of American people, American people convicted of manslaughter, People executed by California by gas chamber, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 3 April 2023, at 21:45. Harris pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served 2 1/2 years in the state prison at San Luis Obispo. In the safety of Juvenile Hall, she began revealing the sexual things her father would do to the girls. Arguing against the death penalty and in favor of forgiveness and compassion are sensible, humane positions. One of Harris last hopes for a reprieve was dashed Thursday when Wilson denied his request for clemency -- a bid to have a death sentence reduced to a lifetime in prison. He was convicted of the kidnap, robbery and murder of two teenage boys in July 1978 and was sentenced to death on 6 March 1979. So lets leave the spiritual growth of forgiveness to the individuals private conscience, and lets come together as a society that has to find practical and ethical solutions to crime and punishment. "The process has been too long and too cumbersome.". He found work as a welder, married and fathered a son. It was very sobering and somber, stark and real, eye-opening., For three years of his incarceration Magris served as an institutional photographer, called to duty every time there was an incident between prisoners or contraband was found. Back in the late 1970s, Harris and his teenage brother, Daniel, stole hamburgers from their young victims' bodies after shooting them in a car robbery. Im not saying I know what that point is, but common sense tells me that people like Charles Manson, Jeffrey Daumer, and Chikatilo reached it. "The politicians are making a name for themselves off my loss. What were our means of creating this vast illusory world? This process eventually will feel shattering to the ego and ones sense of reality because real forgiveness will actually undo the world as we see it. Like Lewis K. Elbinger, I, too, hope the time will come when humanity attains the state of spiritual realization in which capital punishment is unnecessary. 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. To eliminate capital punishment would not raise the ethics of humanity. Havent we all been seized at least once by a murderous rage and wondered later what kept us from acting on it? Our courts are crowded with unnecessary lawsuits while real crimes go untried. 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. ", "Mother Teresa is telling the governor to pray for these men {on Death Row} and make the right decision by granting clemency," Mankins said. There is a point at which someone is a hopeless case in terms of societys resources. Robert spent four months in juvenile hall at age 13 for stealing a car. Think of Jesus. When murderers torture and slay the vulnerable bodies of their victims, we are reminded of our own tenuous physicality, and we react with a fearful rage. Can we afford that write-off? Actually killing someone to get even, however, is crazy. The relationship between my son and me would have probably been different later. He wanted their car for the getaway from the bank robbery. Nor does the execution of a convicted murderer. If the best they can do in this life is wage perpetual war on the rest of us, then maybe they dont belong here. "It was a terrible loss. He said; "You can be a king or a street sweeper but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper". [5] Mayeski and Baker were best friends who had planned to spend the day fishing to celebrate Mayeski's newly acquired driver's license. It isnt always so clear. Justin E.H. Smith On The Mysteries Of Language. 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. 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. Part of the answer is certainly that his upbringing, however chaotic and confused, was nowhere near as cruel as Harriss. . If death is an illusion, then executions are illusions. He is the son of Kenneth and Evelyn Harris. The abrupt command ended a grueling all-night marathon that court employees said was unlike anything in recent memory. Robert Alton Harris was gassed to death at sunrise on April 21, 1992, the first person to be executed by the state of California in twenty-five years. Do not underestimate the intensity of the egos drive for vengeance on the past. When Robbie was 1 1/2 years old, Harris pummeled him with a bamboo cane. Through the windows of the soundproof chamber, many of the forty-eight witnesses to the execution saw Harris mouth the words, Im sorry. Baker nodded his head sharply in acceptance of the apology. A hearing was scheduled in that case before U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel at 6 p.m. today. One of my New England ancestors killed a sagamore warrior in 1706. 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. All lives are not equal; neither are all deaths. Rev. To have forgiven him would have been to say, We will no longer teach vengeance to you or your victims. Those who oppose the death penalty saw a mentally dysfunctional misfit being sentenced to die for crimes for which they felt he was not fully responsible. Two years ago, Harris came within hours of being executed. It is being posted online from the U-T archives to mark the 25th anniversary of the Robert Alton Harris execution at San Quentin. For every monk who devoted his life to God, there were a hundred barbarians whose idea of a good time was to burn his books and throw him down a well. But in an affidavit filed Friday, Daniel Harris said he at first told prosecutors that he may have fired the first shot from a rifle he carried to the scene. He mouthed the words, looking me square in the eye: `Im sorry. I nodded my head at him.. In 1975 he was imprisoned for manslaughter and paroled in January 1978. I think lethal injection is much cleaner, more surgical, quicker, Leary said. The Harris The photographs, Sharron Mankins said, are too painful to display. Steps taken to delay or annul his execution illustrate some of the arguments against the death penalty. A few minutes later, Harris second cousin, Rev. [12] In 1982, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted a writ of habeas corpus relieving Harris of the death sentence, vacating a contrary district court order. One reason that we are fascinated by stories of murders is that most of us can identify with the varieties of vengeance motivating them: jealousy, greed, revenge, momentary blind furies over trifling insults. His mother had recently been put on parole for bank robbery. We believe that this will somehow deter violence, despite the lack of evidence to that effect. Any concept of punishment involves the projection of blame, and reinforces the idea that blame is justified. 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. Society is lucky in that this individual does not seem likely to kill again, but I do not want the safety of my family to depend on luck. 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. [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. A few years later, in 1975, Robert was unemployed and drinking heavily. Three officers then strapped Harris into the chair and bound his feet and chest. Youve been hurt or no longer have someone you loved, so you feel robbed, cheated, and abandoned, and that makes you angry and afraid. Harris' death sentence was affirmed by the Supreme Court of California in 1981. When we think about it, most of us know that vengeance isnt justice, because justice is what we want for ourselves and vengeance is what we wish on people we think dont deserve justice: criminals, homosexuals, the homeless, people of other races, people who have AIDS. The only clean way through is first to forgive yourself for all the pain youve gone through and all the things you may not have had the opportunity to say to someone you loved. Harris was sentenced to die 13 years ago for killing 16-year-olds John Mayeski and Michael Baker in 1978. 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. In a vengeful and violent society, theres a great temptation simply to eliminate the worst byproducts of our cultural mind-set. Do we need more variations on the Christian pie-in-the-sky viewpoint? And what they see upholds their freedom from imprisonment and death. At 6:22 p.m. yesterday, he was moved to a death-watch cell about 15 feet from the gas chamber. His wife Evelyn, one of 11 children from a poor Cherokee family in Oklahoma, took her first drink by age 8. Robert Alton Harris was born at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the fifth of nine children of Kenneth and Evelyn Harris. Then something changed, 7 hospitalized after driver in stolen car runs red light in San Bernardino, police say, Barstow police investigating after officer caught on video hitting man with a baton, Northern California town on edge after second fatal stabbing in a week, Man found guilty of murdering teens who ding-dong-ditched his house, Sacramento, San Francisco mayors take shots at each others city before NBA playoff game. Thus I am satisfied that my essay did indeed have the effect I intended upon Elbinger: making him question his own belief in vengeance. The minute I saw him, I had a real sick feeling, sister Barbara recalled of the picnic, in an interview two years ago. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. All it does is alienate us further from our own humanity. Id see guys lives change over an exchange of bad words, Magris remembers. But the diagnostic approach to defining sanity has a serious flaw: it often flies in the face of common sense. In 1968, after his brother tried to stop him from sniffing glue, Robert ran off, stole a car, and was arrested in Florida. A flurry of legal appeals kept delaying what became the states first execution in 25 years. Open your mind to change, and there will be no ancient penalty exacted from your brother or yourself. [15] That evening, a group of Ninth Circuit judges ordered the execution stayed while the circuit considered granting en banc consideration of his lawsuit. And then we take two steps back.". His execution was the first in the state of California since 1967.[1]. Magris claims, The irony is that I was the trigger man on the attempted murder I was acquitted of, and not the trigger man on the murder I was found guilty of. Sent to San Quentins death row for the murder, Magris was also given a life-without-parole sentence for the kidnapping. It is not a choice an entire society can make. 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. Harris was visited by several people Friday, including a brother, Randy, and a friend, writer Michael Kroll. I want them locked up, or killed, to keep their guns out of my face and to save me the expense of hiring guards and turning my home into a fortress, which is what people in my social class had to do before there were prisons. Other members of the victims families clutched one another, Hearn said, as they watched Harris die. Pete Wilson watched television coverage of the events preceding the scheduled execution, sticking close to a telephone should he have to intervene during last-minute appeals from Harris attorneys. . 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. Arizona, which conducted its first execution in 30 years on April 7, is considering a switch to lethal injection. Pleading guilty to manslaughter, Robert served two and a half years in the state prison at San Luis Obispo. Sharron and Sam Mankins each brought three children from previous marriages to their own, creating what they call a "Brady Bunch" household. To forgive and try to save a killer like Robert Alton Harris does not mean excusing his crimes, but recognizing them more clearly as evidence of the ceaseless cycle of vengeance by which we all live. It is access to the means to a full and meaningful life. We will try our best to teach you peace, and by learning it, you will teach us as well.. Hours later, police arrested the Harrises at their house three blocks from the Mayeski home. As a teen-ager, she was picking cotton to pay for her booze. That policy would surely stop all the killing, wouldnt it? Robert Harris had other crimes on his mind. I'm not a saint, and I'm not a politician. The only genuine alternative is to give up the ideas of punishment and vengeance entirely. It helps us to understand what forgiveness really is: not the self-sacrificing acceptance of wrongs that have been done to us, but rather the willingness to recover a long-abandoned world of peace by questioning both the sanity and reality of the world we have built on vengeance. We wound up kidnapping someone, and the victim was murdered. I asked Magris if anything helpful happened to him in prison. The cycle of vengeance will never resolve itself; to end it we must question its foundation the belief that the body and its death are real. 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. According to court testimony by Daniel Harris, this happened: Robert Harris promised not to harm the boys, then shot Mayeski in the head and back, killing him. Because we fear that giving these values more than lip service would leave us undefended. 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. Along the way, Robert had run-ins with police--glue-sniffing in Modesto at 12, four months in Juvenile Hall in Santa Rosa for stealing a car at 13. He would spend the rest of his days behind bars, they predicted. Today Magris is married and lives not far from San Quentin. Hes employed as a general manager for a packaging manufacturer and serves as chair of the Northern California Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Harris was Then, on July 5, 1978, five months and 26 days after his release from prison, Robert kidnaped John Mayeski and Michael Baker, both 16. The problem is that we think there are lots of people who dont deserve the chance to create a meaningful life for themselves. In an extraordinary move, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor ruled that no further delays of Harris execution would be allowed unless ordered by the Supreme Court. WebRobert Alton Harris 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 A memorial, an act of rebellion, a reminder of survival. Some said he suffered from shellshock. "Well, how about praying and giving the victims inner strength? Forgiveness is often mistaken for the passive acceptance of wrongdoing and the denial of anger. This course, says the introduction, can therefore be summed up very simply in this way: Nothing real can be threatened. Think of the students in Tiananmen Square. Robert and his brother Daniel, then eighteen, decided to rob a bank themselves. But around age ten Magris learned that the man in the photographs around his house was his biological father a bad man, he was told, who was in prison for murder, a Mafioso whose brothers and sisters were pimps and whores. Kroll said a television has been removed from Harris cell, but that he has books. I owe this to Michael.". The cold logic of economic analysis produces this intriguing option. In their most surprising legal bid, defense lawyers presented what they called new proof that Daniel Harris, a younger brother of the condemned man, may also have shot one of the two San Diego teen-agers whom Robert Harris was convicted of murdering. God does love the real world, and those who perceive its reality cannot see the world of death. [International Phenomenological Society, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Wiley]: 12942. So I tried to reach out in a . He said he had never before seen the extraordinary legal action taken by the U.S. Supreme Court in Harris case. The alternative is to maintain our belief in vengeance, making our time in this world seem so long and painful that death becomes attractive. Kolender, who was appointed director of the California Youth Authority last year, said he hoped Harris death would bring peace to the families of his victims. "There were all these things he was just starting to enjoy. Why is Frank McCourt really pushing this? D. Patrick Miller too often sounds like a true believer when he applies A Course in Miracles to the body politic. They gave him $50 pocket money and a bus ticket to Chula Vista, where his father lived. He was serious, much more somber than he had been two hours earlier. Fear will run rampant in your mind if you allow it, and when it does, it becomes bigger than life. Over Independence Day weekend, he drove from San Diego to Visalia for a Harris family picnic. The old man clubbed his son in the head with a wrench. 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. It is ironic indeed that the murderer quoted by Miller was convicted of a murder he didnt commit but acquitted of the murder he committed. Daniel Harris claims that when he told authorities this, they threatened him with the death penalty if he made such statements at his brothers trial. Ive never experienced anything like it in my 10 years here, said Toni House, the high courts public-information officer. Harris was bound in handcuffs and a waist chain. The defendant brutally murdered the boys, and then stole their car. In the life history of Robert Alton Harris, two facts stand out: The murders that put him on Death Row were heartless, and he seemed destined to die strapped down in an execution chamber somewhere. Thats all the effect I can have. On July 2, Daniel stole We love getting letters to the editor for our Correspondence section. The wackos who commit torturous murders are not equal to other human lives. We do not have the political will to cease serving as the number-one arms merchant to the world. It created a very positive effect on day-to-day living in a place where racial and territorial tensions were still prevalent.. At fifteen, Magris stole the dance schools car to run away from home with a fourteen-year-old girl. In the simplest terms, we collectively want to kill those who kill. The last person to die in the gas chamber was Aaron Mitchell, who was executed April 12, 1967, for the murder of a Sacramento policeman. When Roberts eldest sister was arrested for theft shortly after the familys arrival in California in 1962, she told of her fathers sexual abuse; he was convicted of being a sex offender and went to jail for eighteen months.
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