Robert Alton Harris
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Robert Alton Harris (January 15, 1953 – April 21, 1992) was an American career criminal and murderer who was executed in San Quentin's gas chamber in 1992. This marked the first execution in the state of California since 1967. Harris had killed two teenage boys in 1978. Harris' execution is specifically remembered for his peculiar choice of final words (recorded by Warden Daniel Vasquez): "You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everyone dances with the grim reaper." This was a reference to the film Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, released in 1991.
Harris was born when his abusive father came home and began kicking his mother while she was bathing his sister, claiming she was pregnant by someone else, sending her into premature labor.
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[edit] The crime
On July 5, 1978, Harris and his 18-year-old brother, Daniel, decided to steal a getaway car for a holdup they planned at a branch of the San Diego Trust and Savings Bank. By chance they came upon John Mayeski, 15, and Michael Baker, 16, both high school sophomores, sitting in a green Ford LTD in a parking lot eating Jack in the Box burgers.
Armed with a 9mm Luger automatic pistol, Robert Harris commandeered Mayseki's car and ordered him to drive to a wooded area near Miramar Lake. He promised them no one would be hurt.
After killing the two boys, according to testimony, the Harris brothers drove to a girlfriend's apartment, where Robert Harris finished the rest of the murdered boys' half-eaten hamburgers and flicked bits of gore from his pistol barrel. He laughed and bragged about how he had killed them and giggled at what it would be like to be a police officer telling the victims' families that the boys had been murdered.
About an hour later, wearing maroon ski masks over their faces, the Harrises held up the crowded Mira Mesa branch of the San Diego Trust and Savings Bank and fled with about $3,000.
By coincidence, one of the San Diego police officers to arrest the Harrises a few hours later was undercover officer Steven Baker, father of the boy who was shot point blank.
Later, after he was arrested, Robert Harris boasted to a cellmate that he told the terrified Baker boy to "quit crying and die like a man." When the boy started to pray, Harris said, "God can't help you now, boy; you're going to die."
The San Diego 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.
On March 6, 1979, the elder Harris was convicted in the San Diego County Superior Court of two counts of murder in the first degree with special circumstances, and of kidnapping.
His younger brother, Daniel, was convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to six years in state prison. He was released in 1983.
[edit] The execution
An appeal for clemency to California governor Pete Wilson 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."[1]
Wilson then left without waiting for reporters' questions.
Robert Alton Harris was executed on April 21, 1992 in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison - the first execution in California in 25 years. 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. At 6:01 a.m., Harris was escorted into the gas chamber.
The execution order was given at 6:07 a.m., and Harris was pronounced dead at 6:21 a.m. The body was removed from the chamber at 7 a.m. and left the grounds at 8:15 a.m.
Harris' execution was originally scheduled for 12:01 a.m. on the morning of April 21, but a series of four stays issued by individual federal judges delayed the execution until just after 6 a.m. In its order vacating the fourth stay of execution, the U.S. Supreme Court stated, "No further stays of Robert Alton Harris' execution shall be entered by the federal courts except upon order of this court."
[edit] Prior criminal history
- Initial police involvement was for killing neighborhood cats.
- Served three years as a juvenile in Florida for petty larceny, auto theft and escape.
- In 1975 he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and was paroled three years later.
[edit] See also
- Capital punishment in California
- Capital punishment in the United States
- The documentary Procedure 769, witness to an execution, features 11 people who were present at Harris' execution.
