Path Cleared for Cal. Execution : High Court Puts San Diego Killer Nearer Gas Chamber

The U.S. Supreme Court moved San Diego murderer Robert Alton Harris a giant step closer to the gas chamber today by flatly rejecting a broad legal challenge to his death sentence. He would be the first person to die in California’s gas chamber since 1967.

“Harris will likely be executed sometime toward the end of March or early April,” Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp said at a morning press conference in San Diego.

“In this one, the end is in sight. This is a somber moment. There can be no joy in taking a human life. Nor can there be any justice in prolonging this case any longer,” Van de Kamp said.

The justices rejected Harris’ appeal by a 7-2 vote.

The 37-year-old convicted murderer of two San Diego teen-agers still has legal avenues open to him, including a recently filed appeal in the state Supreme Court. But his case has progressed much farther through the court system than any of the other 272 prisoners on California’s Death Row.

If Harris is executed, California will join 13 other states which have carried out a death sentence since 1976, when the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment. Thirty-six states have death penalty laws, and nationwide more than 2,200 prisoners are on Death Rows. Only 120 persons have been put to death since 1976, and most of them have died in four Southern states: Texas, Florida, Louisiana and Georgia. The only states outside the South that have carried out executions since 1976 are Nevada (4), Utah (3) and Indiana (2).

Nine years after the state Supreme Court upheld his sentence, Harris’ chance of obtaining any more lengthy delays is getting slimmer.

His attorneys, Michael McCabe and Charles Sevilla of San Diego, issued a brief statement saying they are “disappointed by the ruling” and vowing to press the new appeal in the state Supreme Court.

“Hopefully, our petition for writ of habeas corpus now before the California Supreme Court, which addresses other issues relating to the legality of the death penalty in this case, will succeed,” the statement said.

Sevilla told The Times that he had not spoken to Harris this morning, but noted: “We know the obvious. The guy is not feeling very good about it.”

“I don’t think anybody can imagine what it is like to live with a death sentence over your head for 11 years while living in the abominable conditions of San Quentin,” Sevilla said.

Harris is on Death Row for the July 5, 1978, murders of John Mayeski and Michael Baker. The boys had been sitting in Mayeski’s car in a north San Diego parking lot, eating a Jack-In-The-Box lunch. Brandishing a gun, Harris forced the boys to drive to a fire road at Miramar Reservoir, where he shot them and stole their car for use in a bank robbery.

Later that day, Harris and his brother Daniel robbed a bank of $3,009, then returned to the house where they were staying. Police quickly arrived and arrested them. San Diego police officer Steve Baker was among the arresting officers. Only later did he learn that his son had been one of Harris’ victims.

Harris was convicted and sentenced to death in 1979. In 1981, the state court upheld his death sentence on a 4-2 vote. For most of the years since then, his case has been in the federal courts. Counting the appeal rejected today, Harris’ case has been before the U.S. Supreme Court four times.

Families of the victims welcomed today’s Supreme Court decision, but are skeptical an execution will take place this spring. “After 11 years, I’m not bringing out the champagne yet,” said Kathryn Mayeski Sanders, 68, John Mayeski’s mother.

The U.S. Supreme Court action today upheld the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that rejected an array of contentions. The action came without comment, although Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall dissented, as they do in all death penalty affirmances. Harris’ attorneys had claimed in the latest appeal Court that he suffered from a “mental disorder,” that he was treated more harshly by the trial jury because his victims were white, and that his trial was tainted by inflammatory pretrial publicity.

A psychiatrist had told the sentencing jury that Harris had a “sociopathic personality.” This mental condition, his lawyers argued, demands a less severe punishment for Harris.

“It is unconstitutional to allow a medically recognized mental disorder to serve as a reason to put someone to death,” Sevilla told the high court in his appeal for Harris.