Pastor, Prosecutors Reflect on Harris’ Long Night’s Journey to an Execution

For those with any involvement in the Robert Alton Harris case, it was a night and day for reflection and mixed emotions.

Jonathan Eric McCaskill, an associate pastor for Community Baptist Church in South San Diego, attended the interfaith service Monday night in Hillcrest at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul (Episcopal).

Ministers of all faiths inveighed against capital punishment and called for mercy for Harris.

McCaskill was there to sing in a gospel choir. But he did not share the anti-death-penalty rhetoric.

“Even though I’m a minister, when the man took a life, he forfeited his own life,” he said. “The system seems set up to protect the criminals.”

Bob Foster, chief supervising deputy attorney general in the AG’s San Diego office, was moved Tuesday morning to remember the execution of Aaron Mitchell 25 years ago, the last person to die in California’s gas chamber before Harris.

Foster was then a high school student in Marin County from a family with liberal politics (“FDR and God were held in equal esteem.”)

He joined other students in an all-night protest outside San Quentin the night before Mitchell was executed: “We held hands and sang and did a vigil.”

Now, one of Foster’s duties is to thwart the appeals of three Death Row inmates, including a cop-killer from Orange County. Two decades of experience with crime and criminals have changed Foster’s mind about executions.

“I’ve reached a conclusion that some crimes are so atrocious and so far beyond the bounds of even criminal conduct that there is no other punishment appropriate except death,” he said.

Richard Huffman, who prosecuted Harris and is now a state appeals judge, said he was “grateful” that the 14-year ordeal was over but “appalled” at the 11th-hour tug of war between the federal appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

“What must the public think of this?” he asked.

Huffman said his role in sending a man to his death has caused him fitful sleep in recent nights and probably will continue to do so:

“It was the right thing to do, but it wasn’t easy.”

Dogs Have Feelings, Too

Less art, more matter.

* The Lakeside-based Animal Press has called for an end to “ugly dog” contests:

“Do we hold ‘ugly people’ contests? Would anyone enter? Personally we have never seen an ugly dog.”

* War is hell. Driving is worse.

Since returning from Operation Desert Storm, Marines at Camp Pendleton have been driving faster and more recklessly on base.

The accident rate has gone sky-high--including a double fatal recently at “Dead Man’s Curve”--and the brass has ordered a safety crackdown.

* Charles Ross, recently retired reporter from the San Diego Union, has tentatively agreed to a request by Mayor Maureen O’Connor to become chairman of a new city Ethics Commission.

The commission (an unpaid advisory board) will study reforms in the city’s campaign and election laws and investigate complaints of unfair politicking.

Ross, 65, retired in February after 35 years with the Union as a political reporter, city editor, state editor and, finally, business reporter.

In her last State of the City address, O’Connor lauded Ross for his reporting on the failed SDG&E-Edison; merger.

* Now it can be told: San Quentin warden Daniel Vasquez paid a quiet visit to San Diego last week to confer with Louis Hanoian, the deputy attorney general who has handled the Harris case, to talk about details of the pending execution.

* Spotted in downtown San Diego:

A transient sitting at a table at an outside cafe panhandling customers as they went inside to order.

Politicians in the Mist

The San Diego City Council on Tuesday honored Shirley Strum, who teaches anthropology at UC San Diego and is known for her research in Kenya on baboons.

Which prompted Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer to ask: “Oh, are you here to study us?”

There was plenty of laughter, but Strum neither confirmed nor denied.