Mother Teresa Asks Wilson to Spare Harris

Mother Teresa appealed Wednesday evening to Gov. Pete Wilson to “do what God wants you to do” and spare condemned murderer Robert Alton Harris from his scheduled execution April 21.

As he earlier said he would do, Wilson telephoned Mother Teresa at her Calcutta headquarters to hear her plea for clemency for Harris, the second such appeal she had made to a California governor on behalf of Harris.

Gubernatorial press spokesman James Lee said Wilson, a supporter of the death penalty who will hold a clemency hearing for Harris next Wednesday, and the Nobel Peace Prize-winning missionary spoke for about three minutes.

“The governor spent most of the time listening to her position,” Lee said, adding that Wilson did not state his own position to her. “The conversation was polite and cordial.”

John Dear, a seminarian at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, who arranged the call, said Mother Teresa told him after the conversation that she urged the governor to “ ‘do what God wants you to do.’ That means, of course, grant clemency to Robert Harris.”

The seminarian said she also asked him to “please tell everyone everywhere to pray for Gov. Wilson to do what God wants him to do.”

During a 1987 visit to Death Row convicts at San Quentin, Mother Teresa gave Harris a religious medal to wear and promised to pray for him. Harris was convicted of the 1978 slayings of two 16-year-old San Diego boys, Michael Baker and John Mayeski, and through a long series of appeals has avoided the death sentence he was given.

Mother Teresa made a similar appeal for Harris’ life to then-Gov. George Deukmejian in March, 1990. Deukmejian told her that the death penalty is a “just and appropriate” punishment for killers. A few days later, Harris was issued a stay of execution by a federal court.