Donald Eugene Harding was convicted in Arizona of three murders committed in January 1980, one in Phoenix and two in Tucson. He received three death sentences. On April 6, 1992, he was executed by the State of Arizona, which had not carried out an execution for 29 years. He was also linked to further killings and robberies in other states after he left an Arkansas jail in 1979, but the Arizona convictions are the ones that went to verdict.
Harding was born on March 1, 1949. He was 42 in December 1991, when an international human rights appeal was made on his behalf, and 43 at his execution.
He has been linked to six murders and 13 robberies between his 1979 departure from an Arkansas jail and his arrest in 1980, in several states before he reached Arizona. None of those cases ended in a conviction. A federal appeals court opinion records one separate offense in Waco, Texas, on December 18, 1979. He was also linked to at least three other killings, one in Arkansas and two in California.
In Phoenix a man named Allen Gage was killed in January 1980. Harding was convicted of that murder in a separate Arizona case from the Tucson trial. The Phoenix death came a day before the Tucson deaths.
Robert A. Wise was from Mesa and Martin L. Concannon from Tucson. Both died in Tucson in January 1980.
Harding was arrested in Flagstaff, Arizona, in January 1980, and was then charged in the Tucson and Phoenix cases.
In Tucson he was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of armed robbery, two counts of kidnapping and one count of theft. His trial there began on April 20, 1982. His public defender had withdrawn before trial and advised him to represent himself, and Dan Cooper sat with him as advisory counsel without assisting him. No defense or mitigating evidence was presented. He was convicted on April 27, 1982, and a sentencing hearing followed on May 26, 1982. The trial court imposed death on each murder conviction, finding four aggravating circumstances and no mitigating circumstances sufficient to call for a sentence of life. The sentences ran consecutively to the sentences for the other counts.
The Phoenix conviction was obtained in a separate Arizona case and also ended in a death sentence, which brought the total to three.
The Arizona Supreme Court, sitting en banc, affirmed the Tucson convictions and sentences on September 6, 1983, in State v. Harding, 137 Ariz. 278, 670 P.2d 383. Rehearing was denied on October 12, 1983. Harding had raised fifteen issues. The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in 1984. A petition for post-conviction relief under Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 32 was denied, and the Arizona Supreme Court declined review.
He then turned to the federal courts. His amended habeas petition was filed on October 16, 1985, and on April 30, 1986 the U.S. District Court in Arizona, Judge Marquez, dismissed it. The Ninth Circuit affirmed in Harding v. Lewis, 834 F.2d 853, decided in 1987, holding that his public defender had given adequate representation and that he had knowingly accepted the risk of representing himself. On appeal he had offered evidence of organic brain dysfunction and argued that he was not competent to waive counsel, and those arguments did not succeed.
An execution date of January 3, 1992 was first scheduled, and was later reset for April 6, 1992. Urgent appeals against the sentence were made in December 1991 and early 1992, noting that only the Governor can commute a death sentence, and only on the recommendation of the Board of Pardons and Paroles. Late on the Sunday before the execution, the Arizona Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to recommend clemency to Governor Fife Symington. Final appeals were rejected by the Arizona Supreme Court, a federal judge in Tucson, a federal appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Harding was executed on April 6, 1992. He was the 168th person executed in the United States since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976, and Arizona became the 19th state to carry out an execution under the post-1976 system. The previous Arizona execution was that of Manuel Silvas in March 1963. Human rights campaigners called the resumption a retrograde step and urged that no further executions follow.
Arizona had gone nearly 29 years without an execution when Harding's sentence was carried out. The United States had resumed executions in 1976 after the Supreme Court allowed states to do so, and by April 1992 Delaware had held its first execution in nearly 46 years and California was preparing its first in 25 years. Under Arizona's rules a death sentence could be commuted only by the Governor on a recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, and the Board did not make one in this case.
The killings in Arkansas and California, and the six murders and 13 robberies placed on his route between 1979 and 1980, were attributed to Harding but were never tried.
March 1, 1949: Donald Eugene Harding is born.
1979: He leaves an Arkansas jail.
December 18, 1979: An offense in Waco, Texas, later described in a federal opinion.
January 1980: A man is killed in Phoenix; the next day two men die in Tucson.
January 1980: Harding is arrested in Flagstaff.
April 20 to 27, 1982: Tucson trial; convicted April 27.
May 26, 1982: Sentencing hearing; death on each murder conviction.
September 6, 1983: Arizona Supreme Court affirms.
1984: U.S. Supreme Court denies certiorari.
April 30, 1986: Federal district court dismisses habeas petition.
1987: Ninth Circuit affirms in Harding v. Lewis.
December 1991: An urgent appeal against the sentence is issued.
April 6, 1992: Harding is executed by the State of Arizona.