Figure in Harris Case Charged With Perjury : Justice: Career criminal testified at murder trial that resulted in execution, but recanted 12 years later.

Joey Abshire, a career crook and jailhouse informant whose testimony helped convict Robert Alton Harris of murder, was charged Wednesday with perjury for changing his 1979 trial testimony at a special 1991 court hearing over the legality of Harris’ looming execution.

At Harris’ trial, Abshire testified that he and Harris had briefly shared a jail cell where Harris admitted the July 5, 1978, killings of two 16-year-old San Diego boys, John Mayeski and Michael Baker.

Last year, Abshire said under oath that prosecutors had recruited him three weeks after the killings to pump Harris for information and sent him into the cell with Harris as a secret “police agent.” After hearing that, a San Diego judge called Abshire “a liar.” Prosecutors indicted Abshire Wednesday in U.S. District Court on five counts of perjury.

“What was at stake here were issues of life: Harris’ life, Mayeski’s life, Baker’s life,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Marian E. McGuire said Wednesday.

“Abshire committed perjury and that resulted in a tremendous delay in the Harris case,” McGuire said.

Harris was executed last April, the first person put to death by the state of California in 25 years.

“We can not tolerate, and certainly not in a case where such serious issues are at stake, a witness lying in our court system,” McGuire said.

If convicted of all five counts, Abshire, 47, could be sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. He already is serving a 16-year term in state prison in Nevada, the latest in a string of convictions that date to the 1960s, though he is eligible for parole next May, authorities said.

The perjury case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Irma E. Gonzalez. The first hearing in the case is not likely to take place until next month, McGuire said.

Abshire said at the 1991 hearing before U.S. District Judge William Enright that he could not even remember how many convictions dot his record. His best guess, he said, was 14 or 15, mostly theft cases.

Abshire met Harris July 26, 1978, in a jail cell in Chula Vista. That day, two San Diego County district attorney’s investigators learned Abshire and Harris had been talking.

The investigators immediately interviewed Abshire. He said Harris had told him he killed the boys to eliminate the teens as witnesses. That interview was recorded and turned into a 15-minute audiotape.

A few months later, Abshire testified at Harris’ trial. Harris was convicted Jan. 24, 1979, of two murders, and sentenced to die in the gas chamber at San Quentin.

Over the next dozen years, Harris pressed his legal appeals. One of his final claims alleged that prosecutors had violated Harris’ rights by secretly recruiting Abshire to obtain information at the July 26, 1978, jail cell meeting.

In May, 1991, Abshire testified that the two district attorney’s investigators had him removed from the cell he was sharing with Harris, then put him back with instructions to question Harris about the murders--in effect turning him into a secret “police agent” in the cell.

It wasn’t until Aug. 21, 1978, or later that he told investigators about the Harris confession, Abshire said last May.

Harris’ defense lawyers claimed Abshire’s 1991 testimony was proof of prosecutorial misconduct in 1978. Prosecutors denied they had made any deals with Abshire and said his 1991 testimony was full of holes.

Enright, the judge, said the 15-minute tape proved Abshire was “a liar.” On the tape, Abshire talks at length about the Harris confession. No deal with prosecutors was discussed.

Most damning, Enright said, was that a copy of the tape had even been delivered to Harris’ lawyers by Aug. 14, 1978. That made it impossible, the judge said, for the tape to contain words that Abshire had claimed were not spoken until Aug. 21.

Abshire, according to Enright, testified truthfully at Harris’ trial and recanted his story only because of an inmate code that looks unfavorably on prisoners who testify as informants.

Federal prosecutors began preparing a perjury case against Abshire “shortly after” the 1991 hearing, U.S. Atty. William Braniff said.

At one point earlier this year, the six lawyers who had defended Harris were asked to submit documents to a federal grand jury in San Diego that was investigating the perjury case.

Braniff stressed Wednesday that none of those six is suspected of any wrongdoing.

One of the six lawyers, San Diego attorney Charles M. Sevilla, said Wednesday, “I feel bad for Mr. Abshire. I know he sincerely believed in the truth of what he was testifying to last year.”