Governor Will Hold Clemency Hearing to Rule on Harris’ Fate

Gov. George Deukmejian announced Thursday that he will convene a clemency hearing to decide the fate of Robert Alton Harris a week before the convicted murderer is scheduled to become the first person executed in California since 1967.

Harris requested clemency in a Jan. 26 letter to the governor, a leading proponent of capital punishment. In his letter, Harris said he has shown during more than a decade on Death Row that he can “play a positive role” if he is allowed to live out his days in prison.

“You have the power of life or death, a power I abused when I shot the two youths,” Harris wrote, admitting--as he has previously--that he shot and killed teen-agers John Mayeski and Michael Baker in 1978 at Miramar Reservoir in San Diego County.

Huston T. Carlyle Jr., Deukmejian’s legal affairs secretary, responded in a letter to Harris saying that the governor will preside over a clemency hearing March 27 at San Quentin prison, the location of California’s Death Row and gas chamber. Harris’ execution date is set for April 3 there.

Carlyle said in the letter that Harris will not be allowed to reargue the facts of his case or the wisdom of capital punishment, but will be allowed to say why he should be spared.

Opponents of clemency will also be allowed to speak. The letter did not identify any specific opponents, but the governor’s office has sent notices of the hearing to the families of Harris’ victims, the San Diego County district attorney and the state attorney general’s office.

Charles Sevilla, one of Harris’ lawyers, said Deukmejian’s decision to hold a clemency hearing was “a welcome development” and “a bit of a surprise.”

“I didn’t know what was going to be set, if anything,” Sevilla said. “In a worst-case scenario, I thought there was a possibility of a straight denial.”

Under state law, Deukmejian will have to obtain approval from the state Supreme Court if he decides to grant clemency to Harris.

California’s last clemency hearing was in April, 1967. Then-Gov. Ronald Reagan did not attend the hearing, leaving his legal affairs secretary, Edwin Meese III, to preside. Two days later, Aaron Mitchell was executed for killing a Sacramento police officer. Mitchell was the last person executed in California--and the nation--before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down capital punishment laws in 1972.

Harris, 37, has been on Death Row since 1979, when he was convicted of killing the 16-year-old boys and stealing Mayeski’s car for use in a bank robbery.

“My act was senseless,” Harris wrote to the governor, “and to this day I do not understand it. Yours is a choice based on fairness and the law. I know I am asking for a chance I did not give those two boys.”

Later in the letter he said: “I do not ask for forgiveness. I do not deserve it. But I do believe that I have demonstrated that I can live as a peaceful human being in prison and play a positive role here.”

Harris noted that as a Long Beach legislator, Deukmejian sponsored the 1977 law that reinstated the death penalty in California.

“I think you wrote that law because you sincerely believed that some good would come from taking a man’s life as punishment,” Harris said. “But I think you wrote that law believing that the person to be executed would be the same person condemned by his jury. In 1990 I do not think I am much like the Robert Harris that stood before a jury for his terrible crimes.”