Conviction and Execution
The San Diego County 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, Robert Harris was convicted in the San Diego County Superior Court of two counts of murder in the first degree with special circumstances as well as two counts of kidnapping, and was sentenced to death. Daniel Harris was convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to six years in state prison; he was released in 1983.
An appeal for clemency to California governor Pete Wilson – who was mayor of San Diego at the time of the killings – 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." Wilson then left without waiting for reporters' questions.
In 1990, federal appeals court judge John T. Noonan, Jr. issued a stay on the execution, as Harris argued that childhood brain damage interfered with his judgments during his crimes.
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. PDT, and Robert Alton Harris died at 6:21 a.m. PDT. Harris' body was removed from the chamber at 7:00 a.m. and was taken to a funeral home 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's execution shall be entered by the Federal courts except upon order of this Court."
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 everybody dances with the grim reaper," a misquote from the film Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, released in 1991. His execution was the subject of a 1995 Dutch documentary film, Procedure 769, witness to an execution.
Read more about this topic: Robert Alton Harris
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