Wilson Won’t Rule Out Harris Clemency

Gov. Pete Wilson said Monday he is willing to consider clemency for convicted murderer Robert Alton Harris, who faces execution next month for the 1978 murders of two San Diego teen-agers.

The Republican governor, who has a longstanding political alliance with crime victim groups and other advocates of the death penalty, said it should not be assumed that he would automatically reject Harris’ appeal.

“Clemency, by definition, is an act of executive mercy. It doesn’t go either to the question of guilt--that is long since settled--nor does it go to the wisdom of capital punishment. It is purely and simply an act of executive mercy,” Wilson said.

Asked what might prompt him to grant clemency, Wilson replied: “I don’t know. Until I’ve heard the presentations by his counsel, I can’t answer your question.”

Wilson said nothing in the law requires him to hold a hearing for Harris, and he sharply disputed a suggestion he would not seriously consider clemency.

“You don’t know the outcome of it any more than I do,” said Wilson, who was mayor of San Diego when Harris committed the killings there.

San Diego County Sheriff Jim Roache released a letter to Wilson asking him for speedy rejection of Harris’ clemency request.

“Mr. Harris has steadfastly refused to show remorse for a crime which shocked this community a decade ago,” Roache wrote.

“It is my believe that Mr. Harris has established no justification for clemency. To the contrary, he has demonstrated a determination to use any and all manipulations of the legal system to avoid paying the price for his viciousness.”

Even if Wilson decided to grant clemency to Harris, his decision would require approval of at least four members of the California Supreme Court to cancel Harris’ scheduled April 21 execution. The approval is needed because Harris was previously convicted of manslaughter.

Harris, 39, has been on San Quentin’s death row for 13 years. Four earlier orders to send him to the gas chamber were blocked, but earlier this month a federal appeals court refused to block the latest execution date.

Wilson made his remarks at a news conference in a prison-like setting, with steel bars on all sides of him as he spoke in a second-floor dormitory cell of the recently closed Sonoma County Jail.

He called the news conference to endorse state Assembly candidate Janet Nicholas, a former Sonoma County supervisor and former member of his Board of Prison Terms.

The governor used the event to repeat his condemnation of an Assembly panel that voted two weeks ago to eliminate funds to operate the Board of Prison Terms. He also criticized the assemblyman who initiated the move, San Francisco Democrat John Burton.

“It is dangerous nonsense that the average stay in a California prison for rapists is just four years. Perhaps what’s going to be necessary to change the law is to change the lawmakers,” Wilson said.

He described Burton’s action as “incredibly irresponsible” and typical of “a Legislature that does nothing to improve public safety against the hardened criminals who rob, rape and murder.”