Families of Harris’ Victims Angered by Execution Delay

Frustrated and disappointed, the families of the two teen-age San Diego boys murdered by Robert Alton Harris said late Friday that a federal appellate judge’s decision to put off next Tuesday’s scheduled execution has reinforced their anger with the legal system.

“I’m disgusted,” said John Mayeski’s mother, Kathryn Mayeski Sanders, 68, a retired civilian electronics technician with the Navy. “I just can’t believe this. I just can’t believe it, that’s all.”

“I thought this was it,” said her son, Anton Mayeski, 37, a self-employed landscaper and auto mechanic. “I thought we were going to be able to put this behind us, in the past, and live our lives normally. Now I don’t have faith in our system anymore, I really don’t.

“You might as well take a knife and stick it in me and twist it,” Anton Mayeski added. “That’s how it feels.”

Harris, 37, convicted of the 1978 murders of John Mayeski and Michael Baker, was in line to become the first person executed in California in 23 years. His case had progressed farther through the court system than any of the more than 270 prisoners on Death Row.

But, late Friday, Judge John Noonan of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals indefinitely blocked Harris’ execution, ordering a hearing on a last-ditch appeal alleging that Harris received incompetent psychiatric help at his trial.

Harris was arrested July 5, 1978, by Steve Baker, a San Diego police officer, who did not know at that time that Harris’ victims included his son.

Harris killed both 16-year-old boys after stealing their car from a fast-food parking lot in Mira Mesa for use in a bank robbery. Later, he ate their half-finished hamburgers.

The California Supreme Court upheld his death sentence in 1981, and the U.S. Supreme Court has turned down Harris’ appeals four times, most recently on Jan. 16.

After January’s rejection, Harris’ San Diego attorneys, Charles Sevilla and Michael McCabe, filed a last-ditch appeal, contending that new psychiatric evidence shows that Harris suffered from a variety of mental disorders that played a part in the killings.

It would be unfair to execute Harris because those conditions were not considered when he was sentenced to death in March, 1979, the defense lawyers argued.

Over the past two weeks, that claim failed to persuade the California Supreme Court and a San Diego federal trial judge, William B. Enright, to spare Harris. But Noonan ruled Friday that Harris was entitled to a hearing on the issue, a process that could take several months.

Noonan, a conservative appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, said his order was “a vindication of the state and federal interest that no one be put to death without due process of law.”

Steve Baker, the father of Michael Baker, could not be reached Friday for comment. But he said in an interview earlier in the week with The Times that he feared the execution might be put off once the case reached the federal appellate court.

The 9th Circuit, Baker said, has “been the weak link in this thing the whole time.”

“I think Harris is grabbing at straws,” Baker said. “But, again, I don’t trust the 9th Circuit Court. And I haven’t really trusted them for some time.”

Michael’s sister, Linda Herring, a 24-year-old Escondido homemaker, said she had adopted a fatalistic attitude about a postponement, figuring that one was inevitable from the 9th Circuit.

“I was expecting this,” she said. “I told you guys, I told everybody, it wasn’t going to happen. Not with wimpy judges like that and wimpy people in the system.

“The wimpy judge who gave (Harris) his way. Who cares how sick (Harris) is? Who cares if they want to (claim some) sort of sickness or something? Does that make it OK? So what? This new testimony--they had their chance to bring that up 12 years ago with the jury, and they didn’t. So, too bad.”

Once again, Herring said, “the criminal gets away with murder. And we suffer.”

“It’s so ridiculous,” she said. “Why don’t they let us people take care of him? Just throw him out here to us, and we’ll take care of him. We won’t waste everybody’s money either. “I know that’s ridiculous, but it makes more sense than this makes. It’s so ridiculous, and I’m so sick of it.”