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Stunning the victims' family, Judge J. Rogers Padgett gives the man life in prison despite a jury's 10-2 vote for death.
By CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 7, 2002
TAMPA -- The recommendation was swift and decisive.
In February, a jury weighed Alfred B. Harris' fate in less time than it takes to watch a half-hour sitcom, voting 10-2 to put the murderer to death.
The jury heard how Harris burglarized the home of 71-year-old Raymond Brooks in June 1987, beat his head with an iron skillet, and plunged a butcher knife into his chest. How Harris overpowered Brooks' elderly wife, and raped her in sight of her husband's body. How Harris stomped on her foot to keep her from running.
But in a rare move Monday that left the victims' family reeling, a Hillsborough judge overrode the jury's recommendation and spared Harris' life, reasoning that the murder of Brooks "was not unnecessarily torturous to the victim" and "did not evince extreme and outrageous depravity."
In sentencing Harris to life in prison, Judge J. Rogers Padgett noted Brooks died suddenly, and may not have been fully aware of what was happening to him. The defense argued that the blow from the skillet stunned Brooks, or even knocked him out, before the knife attack.
". . . This killing is not one of the most wicked of the wicked for which the death penalty is reserved," Padgett wrote in his order, concluding the jury's call for death was skewed by emotionally wrenching testimony about the rape of Brooks' wife. But Brooks was already dead when that happened.
The undisputed depravity of the killer's youth also tilted the judge toward mercy. According to testimony, Harris was raised by a neglectful mother who encouraged his criminality. When Harris was about 11, for instance, he helped his mother rob men she lured into the woods with the promise of sex.
Padgett called the neglect and abuse Harris suffered "as bad as, if not worse than, any this court has ever heard," adding that he was "destined to end up where he is now."
The ruling left the family stunned.
"I don't see how he could overturn a 10-2 verdict for the death penalty because (Harris) had a bad childhood," said a tearful Judi Mullins, one of the couple's daughters. "How do you rule out what he did to my daddy and to my mother as not being heinous?"
"They wasted their valuable time for nothing," Mullins, 60, said of the jury. She said she came to court Monday expecting the judge's sentence would just be formality. "It doesn't make sense at all," she said.
Tampa Detective Kevin Durkin, who investigated the case in 1987 but had to wait 12 years before DNA technology could link Harris to the crime, shared the family's dismay.
"Justice screams for this guy to be executed," Durkin said. "Alfred Harris is a thug, and he deserves the death penalty. He plunged the biggest steak knife he could find up to the hilt (in Brooks' body). That's a brutal, brutal murder."
Harris, 36, was already serving 234 years in prison for a similar rape and robbery when he was charged with the murder.
Prosecutor Jay Pruner said that of all the death penalty cases he's handled in the last eight years, Monday marked the first time a judge has overridden a jury's recommendation for execution.
Judge Padgett said he remembered only two previous cases, in his nearly 20 years of handling death penalty trials, in which he has overridden such a recommendation.
In Florida, the law requires a judge to give great weight to a jury's recommendation for or against the death penalty, but empowers the judge to make the decision. An Arizona case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court asks whether it is constitutional for a judge rather than a jury to impose a death sentence. The outcome could affect hundreds of death cases in nine states, including Florida.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., from 1976 to 1995 there were at least 527 death sentences imposed in Florida, Alabama and Indiana. A 1996 study found judges in those states gave life sentences despite a jury's recommendation for death in 60 cases. In 189 cases, judges imposed death over a recommendation for life.
"It's certainly a distinct minority that judges are lowering it down to life," said Richard Dieter, the center's executive director.
Harris' lawyer, Robert Fraser, lauded Padgett's sentence Monday.
"He's no mamby-pamby sentencer, believe me," Fraser said. "For him to give the guy life, he obviously found (Harris') childhood and lack of structure, love and attention overrode the aggravating factors . . . This guy had a completely feral childhood."
-- Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report. Christopher Goffard can be reached at 813-226-3337 or goffard@sptimes.com.