Michael's murder, Sharron Mankins said, destroyed the inner peace the couple had found with each other. People like Miller can teach and write only so long as the state has the power to crush thugs. 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. 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. The real world is the state of mind in which the only purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. Harris was A total of 49 people were present to watch. Nothing unreal exists. 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. 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. In denying mercy, Wilson said he sympathized with Harris for having been the victim of alcoholic and abusive parents but said he could not excuse or forgive the choice made by Robert Harris the man.. If it costs fifty thousand dollars a year to secure a prisoner, thats one million dollars over twenty years. Actually killing someone to get even, however, is crazy. [2] During his time at the juvenile detention centre, Harris was repeatedly raped. This is how I go about changing my own human nature. It is not a choice an entire society can make. Why? D. Patrick Miller too often sounds like a true believer when he applies A Course in Miracles to the body politic. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ To prosecutors and the families of his victims, Robert Alton Harris is a vicious murderer who laughed about killing two teen-agers and told one to ''quit crying and die like a man.'' I couldnt forgive him. Then Robert Harris ate the boys' hamburgers, laughing at the blood that gushed from Mayeski's fatal head wound. Magris was arrested several hours later and charged with murder, kidnapping, robbery, and attempted murder. 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. Kay Mayeski died a year ago after a long battle with cancer. There has to be a limit on the appeals. In adolescence, he emulated criminal role models and became involved in narcotics and petty crimes, which eventually led to involvement with drug syndicates. I can't help but think, 'Gosh, would we have grandchildren? Staff writers David Hasemyer, Jim OConnell, Dana Wilkie and Dori Meinert of Copley News Service contributed to this story. If we treat prisoners more humanely, would they be getting away with it, or would we be doing ourselves a service?. Roberts mother called for police. (Barry Fitzsimmons/San Diego Union-Tribune). Harris reserved special abuse for him. 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 The only way to have peace is to teach peace. 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. To eliminate capital punishment would not raise the ethics of humanity. However much lip service Americans pay to the ideal of ending violence, we refuse to take the required steps to end it. Capital punishment allows us the choice of spending that one million on food and books and education for a lot of desperate, hungry five-year-olds in this world. One of the arresting officers, Steve Baker, was the father of one of the murdered boys, but did not realize the victim was his son until later. He didnt joke, he didnt laugh, he didnt roll his eyes, as he did frequently during the earlier failed attempt to kill him. The fifth of nine children, he was born two months premature in a Fort Bragg, North Carolina, army hospital after his drunken father kicked his alcoholic mother in the stomach. The state formalizes this rage in impersonal and ritualized executions, but it is rage nonetheless. 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. But you do yourself an injustice when you feel that your victimization justifies somebodys execution or degradation in prison. I want them dead. Acts like rape, robbery, extortion, and murder are odious and repulsive, quite apart from the background of the criminal; they destroy the social consensus that makes civilization possible, and we are completely justified in restoring it at the criminals expense. The metal-walled 8-by-10-foot cell contains only a mattress, toilet and recessed lights, with bars on one side, Crittendon said. At 4:01 a.m., guards entered the chamber and unstrapped Harris from the chair. The state attorney generals office immediately took the second matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned it, as it did the last stay by Pregerson. He wanted to rob a bank. Pete Wilson (R) denied Harris's petition for clemency. Part of the answer is certainly that his upbringing, however chaotic and confused, was nowhere near as cruel as Harriss. They had been drinking a lot, Singh said. [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. [5] He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and imprisoned in San Luis Obispo;[2] during his imprisonment Harris' wife filed for divorce. Theyd fight and then go in the hole [solitary confinement], meaning their entire prison experience was altered. Fear will run rampant in your mind if you allow it, and when it does, it becomes bigger than life. 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. Nor does the birth of an unwanted, soon-to-be-abused baby. Web1. Perhaps we were simply too cowardly to take up a gun or a knife. He looked absolutely inhuman. To his lawyers and closest friend, he is the product of a violently abusive childhood who, during a decade on death row, has grown into a On his twenty-first birthday, his credentials as a petty criminal well established, Magris and his pals decided to do a robbery. Is pain an illusion? He was somewhat distracted and, at times, seemed depressed, Kroll said. If we must go down as the victims of senseless violence, we intend to go down with guns blazing. SAN DIEGO -- The last time Sharron Mankins saw her son, Michael Baker, she was piling him and her five other children into the family car for the drive to the local high school where they watched the neighborhood's Fourth of July fireworks in 1978. They also dropped by to visit their father, who clubbed Robert in the head with a wrench. He said it was too soon to know whether witnessing Harris death closed a horrible chapter in his life. Three years ago this month, Kenneth Harris Sr. placed a shotgun against his chest and squeezed. Because we recognize the horror of death, we believe that someone should be punished for it whenever possible, failing to recognize that this very belief in vengeance is what drives us to kill, whether as armies or individuals. 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. Mankins recalled that her friend's primary wish was to stay alive long enough to see Harris executed. Perhaps the most unexpected development in the legal drama was the re-emergence of Daniel Harris in court papers filed Friday on behalf of his condemned brother. The voice of the Course identifies itself as the living consciousness of Jesus Christ and offers a number of corrections to modern Christian beliefs. What if you were governor and you had to make this real, immediate choice? When I feel angry and vengeful, I attempt to face those feelings squarely and completely, and then I decide whether I want them to drive my behavior. Schizophrenia was diagnosed. God does love the real world, and those who perceive its reality cannot see the world of death. Robert Harris had other crimes on his mind. I guess just like me.. He died on 21 April 1992 in San Quentin State Prison, California, USA. They gave him $50 pocket money and a bus ticket to Chula Vista, where his father lived. His mother had recently been put on parole for bank robbery. The only genuine alternative is to give up the ideas of punishment and vengeance entirely. 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. Death is not merciful either way. Somehow justice has to be swift while being fair.. That policy would surely stop all the killing, wouldnt it? His lack of comprehension that deaths are different must come from a lack of exposure to actual death. In a recent interview at their home, Mankins and her husband of 17 years, Sam, 56, said the pain of Michael's death has been compounded by the decade of litigation that has kept Harris alive. Rev. 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. 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. At 6:01a.m., Harris was escorted into the gas chamber. 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. A hearing was scheduled in that case before U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel at 6 p.m. today. . He was arrested less than an hour after the robbery and charged with murder, auto theft, kidnapping, burglary, and bank robbery. What would I do if I lost another child?". , State Deputy Atty. Unable to start the car, Robert Harris decided to steal another car in which two youthsJohn Mayeski and Michael Bakerwere eating lunch. Federal Circuits, 9th Cir. 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. Robert told the boys to "Quit crying, and die like men", then shot both boys multiple times. If the best they can do in this life is wage perpetual war on the rest of us, then maybe they dont belong here. 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. He claimed that hed only watched others do it. "[18] It was the subject of a 1995 Dutch documentary film, Procedure 769, witness to an execution. In a letter earlier this month, he wrote: Robert has looked to me for the strength to seek the Lords forgiveness and face his own death.. 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. As Rabindranath Tagore said, If everyone cleaned up his own back yard, the whole world would be clean.. 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. Violence begets violence. In December, 1964, the elder Harris got drunk and became unusually abusive. Harris was convicted and sentenced to death on March 6, 1979. He would beat him with a bamboo cane and taunt him with a loaded gun, telling him to run. A lawsuit by two Rincon Middle school teachers argues parents deserve to know. Harris murdered the two teenagers to eliminate the witnesses who could have connected him with the car theft and bank robbery, according to testimony at Harris's trial. [2] With Kenneth in jail, the remaining family members lived a migrant life around the San Joaquin Valley. D. Patrick Millers essay A Brutal Sadness [August 1993], for all its insight and tender heart, disturbs and angers me in exactly the same way. 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. WebRobert Alton Harris, Petitioner, v. R. Pulley, Warden of the California State Prison At San Quentin, Respondent. But the diagnostic approach to defining sanity has a serious flaw: it often flies in the face of common sense. To stop the death penalty once and for all, we must be willing to question the reality of this world of death. Robert Harris outlived his parents. Born prematurely at Fort Bragg, South Carolina, the fifth child of nine. Mankins, 48, remains haunted by a vision of her son's death and unable, she said, to carry on with her life until "justice is served and Harris is executed.". All it does is alienate us further from our own humanity. Right now, I cant actually say it has.. His execution was the first in the state of California since 1967.[1]. What does this metaphysical perspective have to do with the politics of capital punishment and our vengeful incarceration of criminals? One makes choices. The alternative is to maintain our belief in vengeance, making our time in this world seem so long and painful that death becomes attractive. Nothing much had changed. Arizona, which conducted its first execution in 30 years on April 7, is considering a switch to lethal injection. I owe this to Michael.". Think of Martin Luther King, Jr. Letting the victim sentence the criminal, within guidelines of course, would personalize the concept of justice, empower the victim, and (if he werent executed) allow the offender to make amends by producing wealth instead of draining it. "After Tammy's death, I felt afraid I'd lose Linda too," Sharron said of her sole surviving child by Baker. All the hatred inside me totally disappeared. 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. Since you cannot not teach, your salvation lies in teaching the exact opposite of everything the ego believes. Deep within us seethes a venomous logic that says someone must pay for death. After thinking about his creation, the old man demanded to know: How could that bastard do that?, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. Our tax dollars can help care for neglected children and rehabilitate criminals, but we should not forget that the government cannot do it alone; it requires the commitment and responsibility of the people involved. I was determined to be a star. Later divorced, Magris ended up in a crash pad where drugs were sold to subsidize the rent. It merely asks that this should be your choice. Between this choice and its fulfillment lies our most profound learning task, one that can encompass and direct all other forms of learning. We could, however, create more community service programs, so that criminals at least have a civilized alternative. [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. I hope it will, he said. He also serves as a board member of Centerforce, an organization that manages hospitality houses at state prisons, where the visiting families of inmates are greeted and assisted with child care. Thats life. A last-ditch legal attempt to save Robert Alton Harris turned on the argument that he may have suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome. Miller also assumes there is something inherently wrong with anger and vengeance. He then proceeded to persecute them before burying a bullet in both their brains. After some joking and laughter, and a promise no harm would come to them, he told them to start walking. He was raised by his maternal grandparents and was not told who his real parents were. With his father again in prison, Robert and his family took up the migrants life, following the crops up and down the valley. That is, we have this five-million-year-old instinct to resist predators, but Helen Schucman, author of the Course, got a message from Jesus, or whomever, that its no good and we should throw it out. Robert Alton Harris was executed by gas chamber in 1978 for murder. By now Robert was ten, and he was questioned by police investigating the killing of cats. Our primal human nature will always scream out to fight or flee in response to attack, but we have the conscience to choose thoughtfully how well respond, whether with exquisitely planned, torturous vengeance, or with prayer and forgiveness, or with something else altogether. Is this letter an illusion? But unlike him I am actually interested in humanity getting there not endlessly delaying that attainment in order to land one more punch on anybodys nose. Id say you have a right as a victim or loved one of a victim to get resolution, he says. He left the house early the next morning with John Mayeski, also 16, one of his closest friends, to look for summer work. It can ease the pain these families have been experiencing. 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. Such a death often allows people to let go of this world, to say goodbye to loved ones and allow them to say goodbye to you. 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. 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. In 1978, at age 25, Harris was released again, despite warnings from the Imperial County Sheriffs Department to parole authorities that Harris was in need of psychiatric attention.. Sgt. Why? 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. Death is not the worst state for a mind with no conscience or controls. [8] Robert Harris commandeered Mayeski's car and ordered him to drive to Miramar Lake, with Daniel Harris following in another vehicle. But our actions must be open to some evaluation in the here and now. Pleading guilty to manslaughter, Robert served two and a half years in the state prison at San Luis Obispo. I was leading an exemplary life in the daytime as a dancer, he recalls. Hours later, police arrested the Harrises at their house three blocks from the Mayeski home. Harris was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and was abused as a child. By denying criminals justice, we live with a growing underclass of violent, hopeless people. Moreover, most people believe that their sins deserve serious punishment someday; in fact, a great many people inwardly punish themselves every day with chronic guilt and anxiety. Robert also had his first contact with police--for killing cats, although he maintained that he only watched as others did the deeds. Times staff writers Jenifer Warren and Bob Baker in San Francisco, Paul Feldman in Los Angeles and Alan Abrahamson in San Diego contributed to this story. They dropped by their fathers home. 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. Does that timidity make us sane? Gen. Louis Hanoian said no evidence was withheld and the claim that Daniel Harris was hypnotized was an outrageous lie.. [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. 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. His mother abandoned him at age 14 and he was soon after placed into juvenile detention after stealing another car. Vogel, Lawrence. A hearing is scheduled before U.S. District Judge Howard B. Turrentine at 9 a.m. today. It is completely savage and completely insane. 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. Robert Harris told the boys that they would be using the vehicle to rob a bank, but that no one would be hurt. 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. Taught from the womb onward that the world runs on senseless violence, Harris behaved with a chronic viciousness that clearly suggested he was incapable of making sensible choices. But I am very closely involved in this case, and I feel I should be given the same courtesy. Barbara enrolled him in the eighth grade but, after a day, the school kicked him out. But it doesnt work so nicely. WebALARCON, Circuit Judge: Robert Alton Harris (hereinafter Harris) appeals from the denial of his petitions for a writ of habeas corpus challenging the constitutionality of his Justice in there is swift and sure and very clear. Lisa ByBee, stepsister of victim Michael Baker, hugs friend Valerie Giefer after learning of the last stay of execution of Robert Alton Harris from Ed Mayeski, brother of John Mayeski. Prison was like a rebirth. 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. In the safety of Juvenile Hall, she began revealing the sexual things her father would do to the girls. Millers account of David Magris, the reformed felon, gave me profound satisfaction. At the psychological level, teaching peace means learning to release ourselves from the habit of self-punishment, and to stop creating and projecting blame. Her ruling was overturned, but the videotape is to be used as evidence in the class-action case. What are the obligations of each? 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. I agree with Miller that the sanity/insanity argument is absurd. The visitors were not allowed to bring anything to Harris, but they shared sodas and sandwiches supplied by the prison. To have forgiven him would have been to say, We will no longer teach vengeance to you or your victims. In an order signed by Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas, the court said it had carefully read and considered legal arguments from both sides. To change human nature religions and belief systems and psychology never tire of this rhetoric. But Harris was a force of our nature, human nature, which can perhaps be changed by looking deeply at how our beliefs create our behavior. The fascinating thing is that his face took on the features of a monster. "This is a political game now," Sharron Mankins said of recent pleas to spare Harris's life from celebrities including Mother Teresa and Hollywood television stars. Can we afford that write-off? Of the 36 states that have death penalty laws, only three--California, Arizona and Maryland--prescribe gas. All rights reserved. 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. David Magris took responsibility for his actions and regained his right to live. So I tried to reach out in a . Killing has gone on and will always go on. His mother died in 1981 of cancer. The suit--which employs emotional statements from Holocaust survivors and physicians--argues that killing the condemned by forcing them to inhale hydrogen cyanide fumes in the San Quentin gas chamber inflicts torture and unnecessary pain and suffering when other, more humane methods--such as lethal injections--are available. [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. All lives are not equal; neither are all deaths. WebTwo suspects, Robert Alton Harris and his brother, Daniel Harris, were arrested a short time later and questioned by police. 82-5246. We are horrified by the lengths to which people like Harris pursue vengeance, but not to the point of surrendering our own belief in vengeance entirely. [2][6] He spent the next three years in the Florida juvenile detention system, but when he turned 19, the system could no longer keep him, and he was sent to Chula Vista, California. ), How Palm Springs ran out Black and Latino families to build a fantasy for rich, white people, At Willie Nelson 90, country, rock and rap stars pay tribute, but Willie and Trigger steal the show, Plaschke: Lakers live up to their legacy with a close-out win for the ages, Concertgoer lets out a loud full body orgasm while L.A. Phil plays Tchaikovskys 5th, L.A. Affairs: I had my reasons for not dating white men. Who would call a man sane who casually kills two teenagers for their car, and then finishes their lunch before going about his criminal business? He said; "You can be a king or a street sweeper but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper". Its absolutely true, as Robert Becker suggests, that killing a murderer prevents him from killing again. 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. "[10][11] Wilson then left without waiting for reporters' questions. Robert was the fifth of their nine children, and the slowest. He was Michael's father and at the time had been divorced from Sharron Mankins for almost 12 years. Our criminal laws are absurd. By Christmastime, the Harrises had their first run-in with the law in California. [3] Robert was especially targeted for abuse by his father, who believed that Robert was conceived in an affair. Friedman, in a letter to Wilson, also asked the governor to authorize a 10-day reprieve to allow defense lawyers to refute factual errors, misstatements and omissions contained in Wilsons statement rejecting clemency. With time now their most fearsome enemy, lawyers for condemned killer Robert Alton Harris pressed last-ditch appeals in several courthouses Friday, searching for a judge who will delay Californias first execution in 25 years. He mouthed the words, looking me square in the eye: `Im sorry. I nodded my head at him.. Harris pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served 2 1/2 years in the state prison at San Luis Obispo. For the simple fact that we cannot: God seems unreachable, unpunishable, the ultimate, invulnerable Boss in an unassailable Heaven. Human murderers dont get off the hook because we can punish them. Wanting to get even is only natural, we tell ourselves. "It was a terrible loss. He was serious, much more somber than he had been two hours earlier. The execution ended He was officially pronounced dead at 6:21 a.m. But Magris lived a double life. The death penalty exists so that we may know with absolute certainty that a criminal will never inflict pain and suffering on any other family ever again. 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.". These are the people we must worry about most, of course those who have decided that they can kill to avenge murder, end their suffering, or solve a particular problem, whether their victim is guilty of anything or not. He wanted their car for the getaway from the bank robbery. A few years later, in 1975, Robert was unemployed and drinking heavily. 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. It never has. We could be giving people back their dignity, respect, self-esteem, and confidence., Magris suggests our scattered and minimal efforts toward such resocialization of prisoners stem from political reinforcement of ignorance about the realities of our criminal justice system. Id see guys lives change over an exchange of bad words, Magris remembers. Because we fear that giving these values more than lip service would leave us undefended. 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. He also discovered an artistic means of self-expression early in life, so he knew there existed a better channel for his energies than the repetition of the punishments doled out to him. The whole thing had a dreamlike quality to it, beginning with the eerie illumination of the chamber itself, literally with life or death hanging by a thread..
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