Justices Get Last-Ditch Appeals to Save Harris From Death

The state Supreme Court weighed the fate of condemned killer Robert Alton Harris behind closed doors Thursday as his attorneys filed a last-ditch flurry of documents aimed at persuading the justices to set aside his scheduled execution on April 3.

By day’s end, the court had not decided whether to formally hear the latest in a series of appeals by Harris that have been reviewed and rejected by state and federal courts over the last 11 years. Court aides said action on the case may be taken today.

Harris, 37, is in line to be the first prisoner executed in California since 1967. He was convicted and sentenced to die in the gas chamber for the 1978 murders of two teen-age San Diego boys whose car he and his brother stole to use in a bank robbery.

Although the formal deadline for briefs in the case was Monday, Harris’ attorneys since then have continued to submit what they said was new evidence supporting their claim that the condemned man suffered brain damage and other mental disorders that could have affected his behavior in killing the two youths. Harris, they said, was improperly sentenced to death and deserves a new trial.

The lawyers filed a declaration from Harris’ brother, Daniel Marcus Harris, asserting his belief that Robert had not planned to kill his two victims. Daniel, a participant in the crime who later testified for the prosecution and was sentenced to six years in prison in a plea bargain, said in the document:

“I do not believe Robert was capable of independently devising or sustaining a plan to commit a robbery; neither do I believe the shooting of the victims was premeditated, nor anything more than a sudden, impulsive act.

“I do not believe Robbie had any thought of harming the boys until he fired the first shot.”

There was no explanation of why Daniel, who now lives in Oroville, had not offered such a declaration earlier in the case.

Daniel Harris did not recant his trial testimony implicating his brother in the slayings. Rather, his declaration appeared aimed at persuading the court that the trial jury had been improperly denied a chance to consider evidence of his brother’s mental state that could have induced jurors to send him to prison for life, instead of imposing the death penalty.