Lessons in the Making of a Demon

In six days now Robert Alton Harris is scheduled to take his slow walk into San Quentin’s death chamber. When he does, Harris will carry with him a demon mythology that has grown out of his crime. Is there anyone in California who doesn’t know that Harris ate his victim’s hamburgers? That he murdered and laughed?

This demonizing of the condemned is part of the tradition of American executions. The demonized are easier to kill. They no longer resemble you or me. They are monsters from the night, and their demise brings relief and a certain sense of revenge. A demon’s death is worth savoring.

In Harris’ case, demonizing has been no problem. Didn’t he murder kittens when he was 9? Yes, yes. Didn’t he organize the gang rape of another prisoner while awaiting trial? Yes, yes. Didn’t his very colleagues on Death Row claim they would party on the day he died? Yes, yes.

So Harris has gotten the treatment. We, the people of California can strap him to the green chair in the gas chamber without remorse or ambivalence. We did it regularly to guys just like Harris--and an occasional woman--23 years ago, and we can do it again.

But for anyone who’s interested, there is a difference now. In the intervening years, we’ve come to understand the origins of a Robert Alton Harris and the way any young boy or girl gets turned into a Frankenstein. Maybe this knowledge doesn’t affect the question of whether Harris should die. It does, however, make demonization more difficult.

The laboratory of that transformation is known as the family. Over the years of his appeals, details of Harris’ family life have grown ever richer, and a complete picture has emerged. It is instructive.

Here’s a description of Robert’s day of birth, offered by his sister in a court declaration. “Mother was bathing (two other children) in the bathtub, and father came in and starting kicking her in the abdomen, screaming that it was not his baby, and she fell into the bathtub. He then kicked her in the crotch with his combat boots on, and she began hemorrhaging. He kicked her several more times.”

Thus Robert was born, three months premature. Mom was a drunk like dad, and the fetal alcohol had taken its toll. Robert had tremors and sleep disorders.

From the start, he was beaten by both parents, virtually every day. Mom preferred bamboo sticks. Dad just used his knuckles.

The sister described it this way: “Robert couldn’t walk into a room without father kicking or beating him. Sitting at the table, if (Robert) reached out for something without father’s permission, he would end up with a fork in the back of his hand.” At age 1, Robert’s jaw was broken.

The father remains convinced that Robert was sired by another man. When Robert would seek affection by rubbing against his mother’s leg, dad would beat both Robert and the mother. In this family, everyone got beaten by dad.

Sometimes, for no apparent reason, dad would load his guns and tell his loved ones they had 30 minutes to hide outside the house. He then hunted his family like animals, promising to shoot anyone he found.

Here is the list of drugs, divided by ingestion technique, taken by Robert from age 6 through adolescence. Sniffing: airplane glue, gasoline, oven cleaner, paint, typewriter correction fluid. Injection: cocaine, heroin. Oral: Seconal, methamphetamine, PCP, LSD.

Robert had no friends, did poorly in school, received no help for his problems. Before he was a teen-ager, he revealed the pattern that would dominate his life. He started killing neighborhood pets. The need to hurt and destroy was directed at everything, even himself. Once mom told Robert and a brother to go get switches so she could beat them. The brother brought back a small twig. Robert brought back a club.

The parents were consistent to the end. Dad went to prison for sexually molesting his daughters and last year killed himself with a shotgun. Mom drank and smoked herself to death.

We know now that families like this one create demons. We know that, contrary to the happy endings of Dickens’ novels, most children never overcome cruelty on this scale. Rather, they repeat it. Death Row is full of people like Robert Alton Harris, and most of them have histories just like his.

We know all this, but we haven’t a clue what to do about it. Harris was well known to the state of California from his prior brushes with the law. He was no secret, just as a thousand others are no secret today. But little was done until he murdered. Now Harris will be a ritual sacrifice.

The demon will be dead, long live the demon.