Harris Sues Over Visitor Ban in Final Hours

Robert Alton Harris and a relative who is a Southern Baptist minister have sued the state for prohibiting visits by family members and spiritual counselors in the final hours before his April 21 execution.

The suit, filed Thursday in Marin County Superior Court, said the Department of Corrections cuts off all visits from family members, religious counselors and mental health practitioners nine hours before the execution and stops lawyers’ visits three hours later. Lawyers may remain in touch by telephone.

Nearly every major state with a death penalty law allows contact visits until shortly before the execution, the suit said. It said California’s policy is unnecessary for security, violates the prisoner’s religious freedom and access to a lawyer, and is cruel and unusual punishment.

Harris offered no statement, but he knows about the suit and has authorized it, a lawyer in the case, Jack Londen, said Friday.

Department of Corrections spokesman Tip Kindel said he was unfamiliar with the policy and unaware of the suit.

The Rev. Leon Harris, a Southern Baptist minister in Alabama and second cousin to Harris, said he has been the prisoner’s spiritual guide for 1 1/2 years, speaking to him weekly by telephone. He said Harris has asked him to be there during the final hours, looking to him for “the strength to ask the Lord’s forgiveness and face his own death.”