Robert Alton Harris

Robert Alton Harris was born at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the fifth of nine children of Kenneth and Evelyn Harris, the latter of whom was half-Cherokee. Kenneth was a sergeant in the United States Army who was awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart for his service in World War II. By May 1967, Harris was living in an apartment in Sacramento with his mother, her boyfriend, and four younger siblings. The same year, his mother relocated the family without her son's knowledge, effectively abandoning him at age 14. He subsequently moved to Oklahoma, where he lived with his older sister Barbara and his younger brother Daniel. His sister arranged for Harris to continue schooling in the eighth grade, but he was expelled shortly after enrollment. In 1968, Harris had an argument with his brother after the latter tried to stop his drug use, after which Harris ran away from home and stole a car; he was arrested in Florida. In Florida, he was designated a ward of the state, spending the next four years at various reformatories. During this time, Harris was recorded for numerous suicide attempts and diagnosed with schizophrenia. In June 1973, Harris married, and the couple had a son, Robert Jr., born in October 1974. By 1975, he had lost his job as a welder, become an alcoholic and taken residence at a trailer park in Imperial County. Manslaughter In 1975, Harris killed his neighbor James Wheeler, who lived with his brother Kenneth and his wife in the same trailer park. Both brothers were drunk at the time of the killing, and Harris later claimed that they wanted to give Wheeler "a lesson in how to fight". Over the course of six hours, the brothers repeatedly beat Wheeler, with Robert Harris additionally dousing Wheeler in flammable liquid, threatening to burn him with matches, and shearing his head. Harris admitted to killing Wheeler after the latter threatened his own wife. Later, however, Harris claimed that his brother Kenneth was responsible for Wheeler's death and that he had lied to cover for Kenneth. Wheeler's wife and niece testified in court that Robert Harris had killed Wheeler and that the attack was unprovoked. The same year, he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and imprisoned in San Luis Obispo; during his imprisonment Harris' wife filed for divorce. Harris was paroled in January 1978. ==San Diego murders==

Sometime in May or June 1978, Robert, then aged 25, asked his brother Daniel, 18, for help in planning a bank robbery. On July 2, Daniel stole two guns from a neighbor's house in Visalia, California, and the two drove to San Diego that night. They spent the next two days purchasing ammunition and practicing the robbery in a rural area near Miramar Lake. Robert Harris commandeered Mayeski's car and ordered him to drive to Miramar Lake, with Daniel Harris following in another vehicle. Robert Harris told the boys that they would be using the vehicle to rob a bank, but that no one would be hurt. At Miramar Lake, the Harris brothers ordered the boys to kneel, whereupon the boys began to pray. Robert told the boys to "Quit crying, and die like men", then shot both boys multiple times. The Harris brothers then returned to Robert's Mira Mesa home and allegedly finished the victims' half-eaten cheeseburgers while Robert boasted about the killings. About an hour later, the Harris brothers robbed the Mira Mesa branch of the San Diego Trust and Savings Bank located across the street from where they had abducted Mayeski and Baker, and fled with about $2,000. A witness to the robbery followed the Harris brothers to their home and notified police. The Harris brothers were arrested less than an hour after the robbery. 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 those he was arresting. ==Conviction and execution==

The San Diego County 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. Harris pleaded guilty to a federal charge of bank robbery and received a 25-year sentence. On March 6, 1979, Robert Harris was convicted in the San Diego County Superior Court of two counts of murder in the first degree with special circumstances as well as two counts of kidnapping, and was sentenced to death. At his trial, it was revealed that he had killed James Wheeler without provocation and once raped a fellow inmate in prison. Daniel Harris was convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to six years in state prison; he was released in 1983. A plea for clemency from California governor Pete Wilson – who had been mayor of San Diego at the time of the killings – 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. Harris's death sentence was affirmed by the California Supreme Court in 1981. 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. The Supreme Court of the United States reimposed Harris' death sentence in Pulley v. Harris (1984), reversing the Ninth Circuit by a vote of 7–2. In March 1990, federal appeals court judge John T. Noonan Jr. issued a stay of execution in response to Harris arguing that childhood brain damage interfered with his judgment during his crimes. Harris was scheduled to be executed on April 21, 1992. On April 18, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel issued a temporary restraining order barring Harris' execution while she considered his lawsuit challenging the gas chamber's constitutionality. A three-member panel of the Ninth Circuit issued an emergency writ of mandate vacating the restraining order, in which Judge Arthur Alarcón was joined by Judge Melvin T. Brunetti, over the dissent of Judge Noonan. On April 20, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a separate stay of execution the Ninth Circuit had issued relating to Harris' habeas corpus petition. That evening, a group of Ninth Circuit judges ordered the execution stayed while the circuit considered granting en banc consideration of his case. Later that evening, the Ninth Circuit entered a third stay blocking the execution while it reconsidered reimposing the lower court's temporary restraining order. On April 21, 1992, at 3:49 a.m., Harris was strapped into the gas chamber. Seconds before the execution was to begin, Judge Harry Pregerson of the Ninth Circuit stayed the execution for the fourth time, explaining that Harris should be allowed to file a new lawsuit in state court. Two hours later, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated that stay, explicitly ordering that "No further stays of Robert Alton Harris' execution shall be entered by the federal courts except upon order of this Court." The execution is specifically remembered for his choice of final words (recorded by Warden Daniel Vasquez): "You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the grim reaper." It was the subject of a 1995 Dutch documentary film, Procedure 769, witness to an execution. His words are based on the 1991 film ''Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey'' as "You might be a king or a little street sweeper but sooner or later you dance with the reaper"; the lyric was written by actor William Sadler for his character in the film. As his execution proceeded, Harris noticed Steve Baker, the father of one of his victims and the police officer who had arrested him in 1978, amongst the witnesses. He mouthed "It's all right" and "I'm sorry" to him, then turned his head away. The older man nodded in response, not out of forgiveness, just acknowledgment. ==See also==