TAMPA -- It took 12 years for police to charge Alfred Harris with raping a 72-year-old woman and murdering her husband. It took a Hillsborough jury less than half an hour Tuesday to recommend he die for it.

In an impassioned plea for his client's life, defense attorney Robert Fraser told the jury Harris, 36, had been dealt "an atrocious hand" by life: raised by a neglectful mother who let him lie in his feces because she refused to change his diapers and permitted him to run wild.

Fraser said the state failed in its duty to rescue Harris from his dismal home life. He told the jury the young Harris was considered "just another little n-----." Prosecutor Jay Pruner heatedly objected, calling it a racially inflammatory remark, but Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett overruled him.

The jury voted 10-2 to recommend death. It already had found Harris guilty of killing Raymond Brooks, 71, with a butcher knife and of raping his wife of 52 years. Harris already is serving 234 years in prison for a similar rape and robbery. Now Padgett will decide whether to accept the jury's recommendation for death.

One of the couple's daughters, Judi Mullins, said she saw no remorse in Harris' face at any point during the trial. To her, it seemed he was smirking.

She said she wants to be there for Harris' execution. "I'll pull the switch if they let me." Mullins said her mother, now 86 and living in Orlando, would be pleased by the death verdict.

"She's still got a lot of memory about what happened," she said.

USF center to receive antiterrorism funds

TAMPA -- The Center for Public Health Preparedness at the University of South Florida will receive $1-million in federal antiterrorism funds for training health and rescue workers to respond to bioterror attacks.

The center, part of the USF College of Public Health, is among 15 centers named Tuesday to a national network of centers for public health preparedness. The network is designed to help state and local health officials better prepare for terrorist attacks.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson and U.S. Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Largo, House Appropriations Committee chairman, announced the funding Tuesday. Each center gets $1-million. Another $5-million will help create others.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began organizing the network in September 2000, but funding for it got a big boost after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent anthrax scares. USF opened its center about a year ago.

Dr. Betty Gulitz, associate dean of the USF College of Public Health, said it helps train local rescue workers, public health workers and physicians to respond to major disasters.

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