Harris was born in 1972 and lived in Chicago.
In 1995, over a period of weeks, he committed a series of armed robberies and rapes on the south side, shooting his victims. Six people died, one of them in 1992. He was arrested on August 29, 1995.
The six who died were Thomas Hodges, Jimmie Bramlett, David Ford, William Patterson, Eric Watkins and James Williamson.
He was convicted and sentenced to death twice, on March 26 and October 24, 1999, in separate proceedings.
On January 10, 2003 Governor George Ryan commuted every death sentence in Illinois and both of his became life imprisonment without parole.
He is one of the four Illinois prisoners in this archive whose sentences were commuted by that single act, with Andrew Urdiales, Joseph Miller and Paul Runge, and their entries together give a fair picture of what the commutation covered: not borderline cases but the most serious in the state.
The accessible sourcing is Illinois Prisoner Review Board material and press reporting of the sentences.