I looked at him and I saw just another human being, Clark told Times reporter Alan Abrahamson. 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. What were our means of creating this vast illusory world? WebRobert A Harris Collection: U.S. Social Security Death Index (SSDI) Birth: May 18 1909 Death: June 1 1990 Last residence: Haskell, Texas 79521, USA View the Record view all Immediate Family Holland Harris mother Fletcher Harris father J. Lester Harris brother Loyd B. Harris brother Julia L. Harris sister Jerold L. Harris brother Maybe now they can sleep knowing justice is done.. Miller does not want to acknowledge that civilization is founded on armed force. "[18] It was the subject of a 1995 Dutch documentary film, Procedure 769, witness to an execution. 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. Robert also had his first contact with police--for killing cats, although he maintained that he only watched as others did the deeds. Robert Alton Harris On the morning of April 21, Clark was deeply moved by Harriss last-minute apology to Steve Baker. By now Robert was ten, and he was questioned by police investigating the killing of cats. Instead we should give the victims and their families the option of either killing their offenders swiftly and cheaply or enslaving them to community service. Lungren said he originally planned to witness the execution and was present in the gas-chamber viewing area when Harris was strapped in for the first, aborted execution attempt. As Rabindranath Tagore said, If everyone cleaned up his own back yard, the whole world would be clean.. Are the crimes illusions, too? I am not so arrogant as to presume that I understand the ancient hard wiring of human nature. In the hard wiring that is human nature, maybe all those contradictory messages that alternately tell us to hit back, run, or stand tall in the face of violence can give us a clue that there is no simple solution. [2] With Kenneth in jail, the remaining family members lived a migrant life around the San Joaquin Valley. (To its credit, the state goes to some trouble to determine whether a punishment fits the crime, but the freelance agents of personal justice generally dont worry about such niceties.) Even if we conclude that he knew better and was capable of not making such a horrendous decision, the fact remains that he did this insane thing for no discernible reason other than the compulsion of his own horrific past. Part of the answer is certainly that his upbringing, however chaotic and confused, was nowhere near as cruel as Harriss. Top 10 Scary Last Words from Prison Inmates Before They were [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. After sixty days in jail, Magris was free briefly before being brought up on burglary charges, for which he received a suspended sentence. He later gloated about their deaths and ate the rest of their hamburgers. Some said he suffered from shellshock. 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. The brothers then used the car as their getaway car when they robbed a bank in San Diego. Human murderers dont get off the hook because we can punish them. Three others--Mississippi, Missouri and North Carolina--give the choice of gas or lethal injection. Absolutely not. Magris was arrested several hours later and charged with murder, kidnapping, robbery, and attempted murder. Arizona, which conducted its first execution in 30 years on April 7, is considering a switch to lethal injection. You just cant commit a heinous crime and expect to live, Kolender said a short time after Harris was pronounced dead. (Barry Fitzsimmons/San Diego Union-Tribune). He said it was too soon to know whether witnessing Harris death closed a horrible chapter in his life. We know we must still work for such a life and that we may not obtain it owing to our own failures, misfortunes, and sins. What does one do in the face of such a mess? 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. . But Magris lived a double life. Staff writers David Hasemyer, Jim OConnell, Dana Wilkie and Dori Meinert of Copley News Service contributed to this story. LAST SECOND DELAY OF EXECUTION MADE IT `TORTURE,` [2][3] 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. 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. 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. She soon found a solution to her problems with Robert. In a vengeful and violent society, theres a great temptation simply to eliminate the worst byproducts of our cultural mind-set. Harris came within 12 hours of being executed in April 1990.1 He was Michael's father and at the time had been divorced from Sharron Mankins for almost 12 years. I think lethal injection is much cleaner, more surgical, quicker, Leary said. The Course is a one-year, self-study curriculum that guides its students toward an instinctive, utilitarian spirituality by restoring their contact with what it calls the Internal Teacher. Published in 1976, the Course was written down over a period of seven years by Columbia University research psychologist Helen Schucman, who claimed to hear a soundless voice giving her a compelling inner dictation. Schucman, who died in 1981, never claimed authorship of the Course. Even then I knew her advice was bad. 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. The U.S. Supreme Court lifted that delay about an hour and a half before Harris had been originally scheduled to be executed. In 1968, after his brother tried to stop him from sniffing glue, Robert ran off, stole a car, and was arrested in Florida. That is the method used by most states with death-penalty laws. 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. I was leading an exemplary life in the daytime as a dancer, he recalls. WebRobert Alton Harris. After a fruitless search, they drove to a fast-food restaurant for lunch. 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.