Robert told the boys to "Quit crying, and die like men", then shot both boys multiple times. 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. Is this letter an illusion? 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. God and nature get off the hook for apparently committing murders because we have no way of punishing either of them. I was leading an exemplary life in the daytime as a dancer, he recalls. Former San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender, who watched Harris die, said the execution sent a message that killers will face justice. If you did not believe that you deserved attack, it never would occur to you to give attack to anyone at all. In an age of media conglomerates, were something of an oddity: an ad-free, independent, reader-supported magazine. In 1978, Robert Alton Harris and his brother, Daniel Marcus Harris, went to a fast food restaurant and abducted two teenage boys. 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. 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? A few minutes later, Harris second cousin, Rev. 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. 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.. 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. And as gas filled the glowing green chamber, he mouthed `Its all right to several people. 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. He started slapping Wheeler around about 9 a.m. But it doesnt work so nicely. He married Peggy Joy Grabin on June 22, 1957 in Strawn. Robert Alton They spent the next two days purchasing ammunition and practicing the robbery in a rural area near Miramar Lake. It is a choice they would prefer never to have to make. But the most effective political stance against capital punishment will be firmly grounded in an ongoing process of self-forgiveness. WebRobert Alton Harris - San Diego Murders San Diego Murders Sometime in May or June 1978, Robert, then aged 25, asked his brother Daniel, 18, for help in planning a bank Before I couldnt do it. Arguing against the death penalty and in favor of forgiveness and compassion are sensible, humane positions. You just cant commit a heinous crime and expect to live, Kolender said a short time after Harris was pronounced dead. The brothers then drove back to town in the boys' car and robbed a bank. I saw enough bloodshed, sadness, pain, and degrading and demeaning things to last several hundred people a lifetime. 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? Such questioning will not immediately yield a deathless world of spirit, for we have gone too deep into our illusions for that. Her ruling was overturned, but the videotape is to be used as evidence in the class-action case. His mother abandoned him at age 14 and he was soon after placed into juvenile detention after stealing another car. A pragmatic friend of mine views capital punishment as a bookkeeping function, coldly arguing that its the only way to guarantee that those irredeemable murderers will not kill again. Kenneth Harris had won a Silver Star and Purple Heart in World War II. We seem studiously to avoid many other choices: to forgive without condoning or committing further violence ourselves; to lay down our arms; to turn the other cheek or even to try to love our perceived enemies. Are the crimes illusions, too? As a spiritual training, it insists on a complete reversal of ordinary perception, urging acceptance of spirit as reality and the physical world as illusion. Why is Frank McCourt really pushing this? A lawsuit by two Rincon Middle school teachers argues parents deserve to know. Do not underestimate the intensity of the egos drive for vengeance on the past. These responses embody the spiritual values presumably endorsed by a nation with a Christian majority, yet we do not endorse them. According to the Los Angeles Times, Clark had had a vivid dream a few weeks before the execution, in which Harriss death unleashed a cloud of black gremlins that shrieked and flew in circles around his head before descending, tornado like, into hell. Barbara enrolled him in the eighth grade but, after a day, the school kicked him out. "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. 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. Among the arresting officers was Steve Baker, 49, now a detective with the San Diego Police Department. They arrived to find the father with his pants down, involved in a sex act with one of Roberts sisters. 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. She never had anything good to say for Robbie, sister Brenda Harris said. ROBERT ALTON HARRIS 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. 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. She writes down what the voices say, and a guy named D. Patrick Miller reads it and concludes that we all should forgive murderers and eliminate capital punishment and then the world would be a better place [A Brutal Sadness, August 1993]. The brothers then used the stolen vehicle to Where is the criminals accountability in all of this? He might as well have been a brute force of nature, like a tornado. In fact, Beckers calculations to the contrary, capital punishment is much more expensive than life imprisonment, and it will continue to be unless we so greatly shorten the appeals process that we increase the proportion of innocent people who are executed. Condemning ourselves for feeling vengeful leads nowhere. He shot them dead and then finished their fast-food lunch: Daniel told police about the killings while he and his brother were being held for the robbery, which netted them $3,009. 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. Absolutely not. 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. To demonstrate or legislate with full force against the death penalty is to acknowledge that we are actually campaigning to change human nature. [15] Seconds before execution, Ninth Circuit Judge Harry Pregerson stayed the execution for the fourth time, explaining that Harris should be allowed to begin a new lawsuit in state court. "I wish things could have been different. Somehow justice has to be swift while being fair.. Or is the most humane action for them and for the citizens who pay for their trials, attorneys, medical care, food, and clothes to kill them as quickly as possible after their conviction and cease this argument that a Chikatilo is somehow like us? Alton was born on March 13, 1937 in Ranger to John Marion Harris and Audie (Gailey) Harris. 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. He showed no change in expression, Hearn said. 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. 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. 17 SoCal hiking trails that are blooming with wildflowers (but probably not for long! ), 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. Fear will run rampant in your mind if you allow it, and when it does, it becomes bigger than life. Michael's murder, Sharron Mankins said, destroyed the inner peace the couple had found with each other. 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. 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. After Harris was discharged in October, 1962, the family arrived in the San Joaquin Valley $2,500 in debt, with eight kids to feed and a ninth on the way. We love getting letters to the editor for our Correspondence section. "It's frustrating," Sharron Mankins said. Kay Mayeski died a year ago after a long battle with cancer. Millers account of David Magris, the reformed felon, gave me profound satisfaction. "We were just traumatized . [15] 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. Harris was visited by several people Friday, including a brother, Randy, and a friend, writer Michael Kroll. He had been scheduled to be put to death at 12:01 a.m. today. In response, Harris attorneys filed a new lawsuit raising the same issues in a federal court in San Diego. One drunken night in an Imperial County trailer court, he and his oldest brother, Kenneth, decided to give a neighbor, James Wheeler, a lesson in how to fight. [15] That evening, a group of Ninth Circuit judges ordered the execution stayed while the circuit considered granting en banc consideration of his lawsuit. I want them dead. Criminal. Following his release he found work, married, and had a son. There is always someone willing to terrorize his neighbors for personal gain, regardless of what effort we make to understand him. On Thursday, Gov. 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. Gen. Louis Hanoian said no evidence was withheld and the claim that Daniel Harris was hypnotized was an outrageous lie.. He looked absolutely inhuman. [6] In June 1973 Harris married, and the couple had a son, Robert, Jr., born in October 1974. The tragic saga began 14 years ago, on July 5, 1978, when Harris and his brother kidnapped the two 16-year-old Mira Mesa boys, best friends who lived down the street from each other, at gunpoint as they were sitting in the parking lot of a Jack In The Box restaurant in Mira Mesa. A hearing is scheduled before U.S. District Judge Howard B. Turrentine at 9 a.m. today. Most of us love life enough not to wreak death indiscriminately upon others every time we are ourselves faced with our mortality (or deprivation or suffering, which are often experienced as equally threatening). It was a serious act. The problem is that we think there are lots of people who dont deserve the chance to create a meaningful life for themselves. It can ease the pain these families have been experiencing. We invented death as our answer to Gods invention of eternal life, for our creative powers are God-like, though we have used them to make a chaotic world of beauty and death mixed together. 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. For instance, nearly everyone harbors self-hatred of a complex nature, including the petty and the profound. I doubt we have the collective imagination to implement anything so radical. ", After hearing that Wilson denied Harris's petition for clemency, Sharron Mankins told reporters, "This is just what we were waiting to hear.". 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. 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. 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. Education and the great assumption of responsibility by individual citizens are indeed how we will get to a state of merciful realization. He then calmly finished off the burgers hed stolen off them. He had run-ins with police as early as age 10, and was first placed into juvenile detention at age 13 for stealing a car. Part of the answer is certainly that his upbringing, however chaotic and confused, was nowhere near as cruel as Harriss. Robert was the fifth of their nine children, and the slowest. Human beings presently believe in punishment and vengeance as necessary and inescapable strategies for survival, social order, and personal advancement. The relationship between my son and me would have probably been different later. Five years after Michael's murder, tragedy struck the family again when Tammy Baker, Steve and Sharron's daughter, was thrown from the back of a motorcycle and killed the night before her 18th birthday. Murderers are our whipping boys and girls for the metaphysical insult of mortality. Released at age nineteen, he moved near his father to Chula Vista, California, where he found work as a welder, married, and fathered a son. In each issue of The Sun youll find some of the most radically intimate and socially conscious writing being published today. Eats, shoots and leaves And so to the murder; Harris abducted two 16-year-old boys who worked at a fast-food outlet, along with his brother Daniel. Harris had a criminal record from a young age and was convicted and sentenced to death on March 6, 1979, after being charged with murder, auto theft, kidnapping, burglary, and bank robbery. [2] Both parents were alcoholics, and Robert reportedly was born two months premature as a result of Kenneth kicking Evelyn in the abdomen;[2] Robert is also reported to have suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome. . 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. If you know better and do it anyway, youre not crazy just guilty. "[18] It was the subject of a 1995 Dutch documentary film, Procedure 769, witness to an execution. If we have free will, we must own the causes and the results of our actions, however complex the relationship. Further, seeing vengeance as the primary motivation for the death penalty grossly oversimplifies. But facing and caring for what we have created, in order that we might someday understand and undo our violence, is a great collective assumption of responsibility. One day she and her latest man, and the four youngest kids, drove off and left Robert, 14, to fend for himself. Robert Alton Harris was born at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the fifth of nine children of Kenneth and Evelyn Harris. As a teen-ager, she was picking cotton to pay for her booze. 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. Think of Gandhi. They forced the boys to drive them to an isolated area, where Robert shot them. But Magris lived a double life. 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. "The politicians are making a name for themselves off my loss. [5] Mayeski and Baker were best friends who had planned to spend the day fishing to celebrate Mayeski's newly acquired driver's license. in such a helpless, depressed state," Sam Mankins said of Michael's death. Robert Alton Harris The flurry of legal maneuvers was set off by Gov. I am glad that Robert Alton Harris was executed because, as the perpetrator of a heinous crime, he deserved to be. If death is an illusion, then executions are illusions. Millers article did not have the effect on me that he intended. I invite responses at 103 N. Hwy 101, #1022, Encinitas, CA 92024. He was raised by his maternal grandparents and was not told who his real parents were. But 95 percent of everybody we lock up is going to come home someday, rehabilitated or not.. The older Harris brother, Randall, confirmed Daniels latest account of the facts in a sworn affidavit, noting that Daniel had confessed a few years after leaving prison that his rifle went off first and that Robert then just went crazy and opened fire. I thought he was either going to kill mom or Kenneth.. He graduated from Strawn High School and attended Ranger Jr. College. Fistfighting led to Robert dousing the man with lighter fluid and setting him on fire; Wheeler died. [5] A witness to the robbery followed the Harrises to their home and notified police. Robert's first Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (1). And what they see upholds their freedom from imprisonment and death. No further stays of Robert Alton Harris execution shall be entered by the federal courts except upon order of this court, OConnor declared. Robert Alton Harris (1909 - 1990) - Genealogy Robert Alton Harris - IMDb [5] 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. 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.
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