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. 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]. At a deeper level, we believe that state-sanctioned, ritualized killing will provide us with resolution, emotional satisfaction, and perhaps even a dramatic final opportunity to forgive those who trespass murderously against us. "I haven't had a postcard even acknowledging, 'Yes, Mrs. Mankins, we're taking your feelings into consideration.' 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. Just being here, it gives me hope, Oceanside Police Department launches website showing what calls officers are handling, crime statistics, San Diego paying $3.3M to settle injury lawsuits, including $3M to Carlsbad man thrown off bicycle in Bay Ho, San Diego releases water from Lake Hodges to fix crumbling dam, In Tanzania, Ethiopia begins talks with violent Oromo rebels, Padres notes: Yu Darvish recovers with hard stuff; Austin Nola uses new lumber; Nelson Cruz borrows a triple, Column: Padres confidence-swelling sweep of Giants in Mexico City could signal true momentum, College baseball weekend: Point Loma Nazarene earns second straight PacWest title. Baker bolted, trying to find cover in the bushes, but Robert Harris chased him. 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. Baker pleaded for his life, but Harris shot him in the back and the abdomen, killing him too. This is how you will learn the truth that will set you free, and will keep you free as others learn it of you. For this reason alone, not for vengeance or punishment, the death penalty will continue to be demanded until prison reforms have been so perfected that a criminal is no longer dangerous once his sentence is served. It never has. 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. The Supreme Court of the United States reimposed Harris' death sentence in Pulley v. Harris (1984), reversing the Ninth Circuit by a vote of 72. "I'm not cherishing this," Mankins admitted. Harris pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served 2 1/2 years in the state prison at San Luis Obispo. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. 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. It did nothing to change him and made me into a sacrificial lamb. Nor does the execution of a convicted murderer. 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.. D. Patrick Miller too often sounds like a true believer when he applies A Course in Miracles to the body politic. He was serious, much more somber than he had been two hours earlier. Miller seems to have it backward: if we eliminate capital punishment, he argues, suddenly we will have educated, responsible citizens. He would spend the rest of his days behind bars, they predicted. Death is not the worst state for a mind with no conscience or controls. At the psychological level, teaching peace means learning to release ourselves from the habit of self-punishment, and to stop creating and projecting blame. In 1978, Robert Alton Harris and his brother, Daniel Marcus Harris, went to a fast food restaurant and abducted two teenage boys. As Rabindranath Tagore said, If everyone cleaned up his own back yard, the whole world would be clean.. Like most of us, killers believe that punishment works. 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 married Peggy Joy Grabin on June 22, 1957 in Strawn. Attorney General Dan Lungren said attorneys for the state had worked until 3 a.m. each night since Friday to fight the legal challenges to Harris execution. The first hitch in the states plans for execution had come last night when a 9th Circuit judge delayed the execution based on late claims by Harris lawyers that they had new evidence that Harris younger brother, Daniel, had fired the first of eight shots that killed Baker and Mayeski. Miller draws from a set of doctrinal preconceptions (A Course in Miracles) to lay a massive guilt trip, not on criminals, who elicit his forgiveness and understanding, but on the innocent people they rape, rob, and mutilate. He might as well have been a brute force of nature, like a tornado. "The politicians are making a name for themselves off my loss. I want them dead. The metal-walled 8-by-10-foot cell contains only a mattress, toilet and recessed lights, with bars on one side, Crittendon said. Harris reserved special abuse for him. Harris nodded, winking at one officer who stood outside waiting to witness his death. [6], Sometime in May or June 1978, Robert, then aged 25, asked his brother Daniel, 18, for help in planning a bank robbery. 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. [2] During his time at the juvenile detention centre, Harris was repeatedly raped. If we presume that God brings all natural deaths to us, why not exact a death penalty from our Creator? But true forgiveness accepts wrongdoing and anger and strives to heal, correct, or redirect them. The abrupt command ended a grueling all-night marathon that court employees said was unlike anything in recent memory. The judge denied other requests by Harris sister, his lawyer, and a psychiatrist that they be allowed to remain with Harris on Monday night. Thats life. in such a helpless, depressed state," Sam Mankins said of Michael's death. Giving up the death penalty for good would mean challenging some of our most personal, most firmly embedded beliefs, as well as our social policies. There, in the parking lot, they were kidnapped at gunpoint by two men later identified as Robert Thus, forgiveness is an inherently paradoxical spiritual path. 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. Mankins said the two looked to each other for strength, waiting on the night of the murders at the Mayeski house for news of their sons and waiting these years for Harris's execution. He died on 21 April 1992 in San Quentin State Prison, California, USA. 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. Robert also had his first contact with police--for killing cats, although he maintained that he only watched as others did the deeds. [15] That evening, a group of Ninth Circuit judges ordered the execution stayed while the circuit considered granting en banc consideration of his lawsuit. But around age ten Magris learned that the man in the photographs around his house was his biological father a bad man, he was told, who was in prison for murder, a Mafioso whose brothers and sisters were pimps and whores. Think of Gandhi. We believe that this will somehow deter violence, despite the lack of evidence to that effect. Harris was An hour later, the Harris brothers robbed the local bank of $2000 but were arrested shortly after. Rarely, if ever, is the public made aware of the reasoning behind the District Attorneys Offices decision not to file charges in a case. If we presume that this surrender is impossible, we ensure that killers like Harris will always be with us as the most extreme perpetrators of our collective belief in vengeance. He mouthed the words, looking me square in the eye: `Im sorry. I nodded my head at him.. He especially liked to boil and eat uteruses, though he ate men as well as women. At 6:01a.m., Harris was escorted into the gas chamber. We could, however, create more community service programs, so that criminals at least have a civilized alternative. [5] A witness to the robbery followed the Harrises to their home and notified police. Margarito Angeles Vargas, 46, is accused of hitting 19-month-old Annaleeh Rodarte the evening of Sept. 24, 2022 on Redwood Street near 40th Street, Robin McPherson, now 68, was slated to appear for a March 2001 sentencing hearing following his convictions for tax evasion and conspiracy, but instead fled the country, according to the Department of Justice, No charges were ever filed by South Dakota authorities against T. Denny Sanford, who has donated nearly $1 billion to San Diego institutions. The revelation hit him like a bullet. [6] In June 1973 Harris married, and the couple had a son, Robert, Jr., born in October 1974. This formula is so confusing that it may seem simpler to forget about defining sanity and rely instead on the fundamental logic of vengeance: if you kill, for any reason, you deserve to be killed. In their most surprising legal bid, defense lawyers presented what they called new proof that Daniel Harris, a younger brother of the condemned man, may also have shot one of the two San Diego teen-agers whom Robert Harris was convicted of murdering. In recent years, we have decided, by at least a three-fourths majority according to most polls, that we do want capital punishment administered in due course to convicted murderers. Knowledge of their whereabouts would not materially change his situation, since they appear to be the cause of his delinquency and would offer nothing in the way of stable planning, the report said. WebRobert Alton Harris was gassed to death at sunrise on April 21, 1992, the first person to be executed by the state of California in twenty-five years. I can't help but think, 'Gosh, would we have grandchildren? You just cant commit a heinous crime and expect to live, Kolender said a short time after Harris was pronounced dead. There is no glee here, Lungren said at a press conference following Harris execution. Deep within us seethes a venomous logic that says someone must pay for death. 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. After sixty days in jail, Magris was free briefly before being brought up on burglary charges, for which he received a suspended sentence. Fistfighting led to Robert dousing the man with lighter fluid and setting him on fire; Wheeler died. She must have known it too; that kid was out of our home the next morning, and I never saw him again. Civil complaint seeks a court order to require owner Caydon Property Group to remedy all municipal code violations or allow the city to do so at the owners expense. The man didnt believe Robert was his progeny and made the boy the special object of his hatred. Such questioning will not immediately yield a deathless world of spirit, for we have gone too deep into our illusions for that. Menu. Wheeler died. Human beings presently believe in punishment and vengeance as necessary and inescapable strategies for survival, social order, and personal advancement. He deliberately smashed my bicycle; I screamed I would tell my mother. 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. Do we need more variations on the Christian pie-in-the-sky viewpoint? Herein lies the peace of God.. The investigation revealed that at 10:30 a.m. on July 5, 1978, the defendant and co The only way to have peace is to teach peace. When an innocent child is slowly destroyed by leukemia, we struggle to understand Gods incomprehensible mercy; but we surely do not attempt the same expansive attitude with mortal killers in our midst. Prison was like a rebirth. Robert Harris had other crimes on his mind. Three years ago this month, Kenneth Harris Sr. placed a shotgun against his chest and squeezed. Criminal. [7] Harris was paroled in January 1978. This process eventually will feel shattering to the ego and ones sense of reality because real forgiveness will actually undo the world as we see it. The voice of the Course identifies itself as the living consciousness of Jesus Christ and offers a number of corrections to modern Christian beliefs. 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? Staff writers David Hasemyer, Jim OConnell, Dana Wilkie and Dori Meinert of Copley News Service contributed to this story. The eldest daughter, Barbara, was arrested for theft. The nod, however, was not one of forgiveness but only acknowledgment, said Baker, who wore a small gold pin shaped like a hangmans noose on the lapel of his gray suit. All the hatred inside me totally disappeared. After taking the boys to a deserted wash near the Miramar Reservoir, Harris shot the two boys four times each. And as gas filled the glowing green chamber, he mouthed `Its all right to several people. He said it was too soon to know whether witnessing Harris death closed a horrible chapter in his life. A last-ditch legal attempt to save Robert Alton Harris turned on the argument that he may have suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome. With his father again in prison, Robert and his family took up the migrants life, following the crops up and down the valley. Alton Harris, 79 of Strawn, passed away Sunday August 7, 2016 in Ft. Worth. In the last few years I have taken up a discipline of forgiveness, which means I have decided against vengeance as a guide. Actually surrendering his belief in vengeance is a miracle he will have to induce himself. He replied, I have a hard time seeing how twenty-five years in prison equals getting away with it. This is a new-age doctrine of original sin, which teaches us to have contempt for our physical being: we have bodies because we are ignorant, and our instincts and experiences are illusions. The other warriors captured him and gave the dead mans wife the choice of what to do with his killer. 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 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. This course, says the introduction, can therefore be summed up very simply in this way: Nothing real can be threatened. Because we fear that giving these values more than lip service would leave us undefended. For every monk who devoted his life to God, there were a hundred barbarians whose idea of a good time was to burn his books and throw him down a well. However much lip service Americans pay to the ideal of ending violence, we refuse to take the required steps to end it. They stole guns from a neighbor, returned to San Diego, and took target practice. The minute I saw him, I had a real sick feeling, sister Barbara recalled of the picnic, in an interview two years ago. 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. He was unemployed, drinking heavily and living on welfare. A $300-million (minimum) gondola to Dodger Stadium? 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. Do not underestimate the intensity of the egos drive for vengeance on the past. One of my New England ancestors killed a sagamore warrior in 1706. In the simplest terms, we collectively want to kill those who kill. When Robbie was 1 1/2 years old, Harris pummeled him with a bamboo cane. 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. Theyd fight and then go in the hole [solitary confinement], meaning their entire prison experience was altered. For if you did, it would be gone.. ), 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. 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 Harris, the murderer of two 16-year-old boys, made his first trip at 3:49 a.m., when he was strapped in a chair for 12 minutes. On July 2, Daniel stole two guns from a neighbor's house in Visalia, California, and the two drove to San Diego that night. 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. This is how I go about changing my own human nature. Robert Alton Harris' final words read out loud by warden Daniel Vasquez, Video footage of the crime and the conviction of Robert A Harris, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, "From Birth to Death Row, Violence Surrounded Harris", "California Execution Stayed: State Is Appealing to High Court", "Best friends, their lives ended on a summer day", "An Argument That Goes Back to the Womb: The Demedicalization of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, 19731992,", "The Lawless Execution of Robert Alton Harris", "Equity and Hierarchy: Reflections on the Harris Execution", "The Supreme Court, The Death Penalty, and The Harris Case", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Alton_Harris&oldid=1148067390, 20th-century executions of American people, American people convicted of manslaughter, People executed by California by gas chamber, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 3 April 2023, at 21:45. At 52, she recalled that when her mother hit the whiskey, she would get wild and vicious. God does love the real world, and those who perceive its reality cannot see the world of death. He and his older brother Kenneth decided to show a neighbor, James Wheeler, how to fight. The cold logic of economic analysis produces this intriguing option. As Robert M. Pirsig points out in Lila, all our laws are nothing but instructions to the army and the police, and if we want a society, as opposed to a battlefield of warlords, we had better make those instructions clear and give the state our unequivocal support in following them. What would his wife be like?' "We've sent letters to Governor Wilson, and I haven't had a call back," she said. Patel had issued a temporary restraining order late Saturday in response to a class-action lawsuit filed by Harris attorneys claiming that death in the gas chamber is cruel and unusual punishment. Sharron and Sam Mankins each brought three children from previous marriages to their own, creating what they call a "Brady Bunch" household. . Kroll said a television has been removed from Harris cell, but that he has books. Vogel, Lawrence. 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. Perhaps we were simply too cowardly to take up a gun or a knife. A few years later, in 1975, Robert was unemployed and drinking heavily. She soon found a solution to her problems with Robert. They arrived to find the father with his pants down, involved in a sex act with one of Roberts sisters. 82-5246. I used to be against the death penalty, but Im not anymore. "We just felt like we were totally deserted. 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. Harris was bound in handcuffs and a waist chain. Is pain an illusion? I guess just like me.. 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. They forced Michael Baker and John Mayeski to drive into a nearby canyon. [2][3][5] After making his way to Oklahoma to live with his brother and sister, he stole a car and was subsequently arrested in Florida. Justice in there is swift and sure and very clear. Shortly after 8 a.m., a white van escorted by a California Highway Patrol car entered the prison grounds, leaving 15 minutes later with Harris body. The photographs, Sharron Mankins said, are too painful to display. He later gloated about their deaths and ate the rest of their hamburgers. I couldnt forgive him. I dont buy this. They had been drinking a lot, Singh said. When I was ten, my parents took in a delinquent boy of fifteen. He seemed to be making a great effort to die well, said Wade Douglas, a media witness from KSDO radio in San Diego. I dont know what the answer is, but its not forgiveness, and its not letting prisoners out. What does this metaphysical perspective have to do with the politics of capital punishment and our vengeful incarceration of criminals? Violence will continue with or without legislation. He has spoken publicly against capital punishment alongside his surviving victim, Dennis Tapp. The execution ended fourteen years of legal wrangling over Harriss fate, capped by four overnight stays of execution. When Harris turned 19, authorities could no longer hold him. The visitors were not allowed to bring anything to Harris, but they shared sodas and sandwiches supplied by the prison. We do not have the political will to cease serving as the number-one arms merchant to the world. The relationship between my son and me would have probably been different later. Give them lobotomies? The wackos who commit torturous murders are not equal to other human lives. Magris emphatically believes so, arguing that society could be spending money and energy in more positive approaches to rehabilitation, which in the long run would be far more economical. WebRobert Harris has been under sentence of death for thirteen years. "It's frustrating," Sharron Mankins said. 1993. Magris recalls, I had a gun, and I gave it to one of the other three guys to do a service station. He was raised by his maternal grandparents and was not told who his real parents were. 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. 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. But our actions must be open to some evaluation in the here and now. After a fruitless search, they drove to a fast-food restaurant for lunch. By 1967, Roberts mother Evelyn had left her husband and driven off with her four youngest kids and a boyfriend, leaving fourteen-year-old Robert to fend for himself. Hours later, police arrested the Harrises at their house three blocks from the Mayeski home. 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. In short, a political stance against the death penalty must be metaphysically daring. Harris had been held since Thursday in a cell on death row. It is a dangerous world because it is a world of death. "We're frustrated with the justice system," Mankins said. I asked Magris what he would say to crime victims who assert that they have a right to see the criminals who hurt them punished.
