On Monday, March 20, 2000, five people died at a business in Irving, Texas, near Dallas. Robert Wayne Harris, 28, who had lost his job there five days earlier, confessed to the killings the next day. A Dallas County jury convicted him of capital murder in September 2000 for the deaths of two of the five, Agustin Villasenor and Rhoda Wheeler, and he was sentenced to death. Prosecutors charged him in the other three deaths but never brought those cases to trial. He was also charged with capital murder in the death of an Irving woman, Sandra Scott, in 1999, which likewise never went to trial.
Harris's appeals raised the selection of his jury and the claim that he was intellectually disabled and so could not constitutionally be executed. Every court rejected them, and he was executed in Huntsville on September 20, 2012.
Harris was born on February 28, 1972. The ninth grade was the highest he completed, and his youth included a juvenile commitment.
His adult record began with burglary. At 18 he was convicted of three burglaries and evading arrest, and he was also charged with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. He was placed on probation, which was revoked after he left a treatment program, and he went to prison. The sentence was eight years in Dallas County for three counts of burglary of a building. He spent most of that time in administrative segregation. He was released on mandatory supervision on May 3, 1999, and discharged from supervision on June 27, 1999.
In May 1999 he began work at a business in Irving, and he held the job for about ten months before the events of March 2000.
Sandra Gaye Scott was 37 and lived in Irving. She died in 1999, in the months after Harris's release from prison. The Court of Criminal Appeals found that Harris killed her because he believed she had taken $200 from his wallet.
Harris confessed to Scott's killing after his arrest in March 2000, and he was charged with capital murder in her death. The case was never tried. At his 2000 trial the Scott killing was put before the jury at the punishment stage as an extraneous offense; it was not a count on which he was convicted. The county in which the Scott charge was filed is not on record.
On Wednesday, March 15, 2000, after an incident at work, Harris was arrested and dismissed from his job.
Five people died in Irving on March 20, 2000. They were:
Dennis Lee, 48, of Irving
Rhoda Wheeler, 45 or 46, of Irving
Agustin Villasenor, 36, of Arlington
Benjamin Villasenor, 32, Agustin's brother
Roberto Jimenez Jr., 15
Wheeler's age is also given as 46.
Harris was arrested on Tuesday, March 21, 2000, and confessed that day to killing five people in Irving. He was arraigned on one count of capital murder, a charge that carried a possible death penalty, and a judge ordered him held without bail. Harris also confessed to the killing of Sandra Scott.
By the end of the trial in September 2000 Harris stood convicted in the deaths of Rhoda Wheeler and Agustin Villasenor. He was charged, but had not been tried, in the deaths of Benjamin Villasenor, Roberto Jimenez Jr. and Dennis Lee, and he was charged in the unrelated death of an Irving woman, Sandra Scott. Prosecutors tried the case on two of the March 20 deaths. The other charges were not tried before his execution.
The trial was held in Dallas County, in the 282nd District Court. The prosecutor was Greg Davis, and the defense lawyer was Brad Lollar, who said in 2012 that the aim at trial was a life sentence because guilt was not seriously in dispute. Harris did not deny his part in the killings.
The jury convicted him of capital murder on a Tuesday in September 2000 after deliberating for 11 minutes (also given as less than 15). His trial lawyer called no witnesses at the punishment stage and hired no investigator to look for mitigating evidence. During punishment deliberations the jurors asked for school or psychological records, and the defense file held none.
The punishment phase began after the verdict, and the jury heard evidence of his prison record and of the Scott killing. Its answers to the special issues under Article 37.071 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure led the trial judge to sentence him to death. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice received him on death row on October 6, 2000.
Harris's appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeals, which reviews every death sentence automatically, raised 17 points of error. They concerned an instruction on parole in the jury charge, the conduct of jury selection in his absence, the admission of his written statements, challenges for cause against two prospective jurors, the admission of photographs, the wording of the special issues, and cumulative error. None of the points concerned the race of jurors. The court overruled all of them, and on February 12, 2003, in a unanimous opinion by Judge Holcomb that was not designated for publication, it affirmed the conviction and the sentence of death. The Supreme Court of the United States denied certiorari later in 2003.
Harris then filed a state application for habeas corpus relief arguing that he was mentally retarded, the term used in the courts at the time, and therefore could not be executed under the Supreme Court's decision in Atkins v. Virginia. The trial court found that no fact issues required a hearing and recommended denial. Its first set of findings, signed in June 2003, was lost, and a substitute set was signed on August 10, 2004. On September 15, 2004, the Court of Criminal Appeals adopted the findings and denied relief. Harris did not ask the Supreme Court to review that ruling.
In federal court he raised the same claim. The district court approved funds for an investigator and an expert, allowed discovery of medical and school records, and in August 2008 granted an evidentiary hearing. The hearing was continued once at Harris's request. Five days before the rescheduled date he asked to cancel it and to supplement the record in writing, and he later filed no supplemental evidence. The court appointed Dr. Andrews to evaluate him independently. It then ruled that Harris had not shown by clear and convincing evidence that he was mentally retarded, and it denied his petition and a certificate of appealability.
On March 12, 2012, a Fifth Circuit panel of Judges Davis, Smith and Southwick denied his request for a certificate of appealability in a per curiam opinion that was not designated for publication. The panel held that reasonable jurists could not debate the district court's conclusion, and it rejected his objections to the absence of a live hearing and to the lack of adjustments for the Flynn effect and for the standard error of measurement in his IQ scores. The state had said that IQ test results contradicted the claim.
An execution date was set for September 20, 2012. On August 27 his appellate lawyer, Lydia Brandt, filed a subsequent state application arguing that prosecutors had used peremptory strikes against qualified Black jurors, in violation of the equal protection principle of Batson v. Kentucky, and that the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in Miller-El v. Dretke gave a new legal basis for raising the claim. Harris is Black. The state disputed the claim and said the trial record said nothing about the jurors' race.
On September 5, 2012, the Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed the application as an abuse of the writ under Article 11.071, Section 5, finding that the claim did not meet the statute's requirements. It declined to reopen the earlier application, saw no compelling reason to reconsider the claim in light of Miller-El, and denied a stay of execution. Brandt had also sought a meeting between Harris and a member of a victim's family. She said the Attorney General's office blocked it because the program required Harris to admit guilt; the office said it had lost contact with the relative.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected his clemency request on Tuesday, September 18, 2012.
The Supreme Court of the United States denied a stay of execution and a petition for certiorari on Thursday, September 20, 2012, less than two hours before the scheduled time. Harris was executed that evening in Huntsville. He was the eighth person executed in Texas in 2012.
In his last statement he told family and friends that he loved them and said, "I'm going home."
Three of the five deaths on March 20, 2000, resulted in no verdict. Harris was charged with capital murder in the deaths of Benjamin Villasenor, Roberto Jimenez Jr. and Dennis Lee, and those charges were never tried. The same is true of the 1999 charge in Sandra Scott's death. He confessed to Scott's killing, but no court entered a judgment in that case.
The jury-selection claim was never decided on its merits. The Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed it as a successive application in 2012, and the state said the trial record contained nothing about the race of the jurors. The Atkins claim was decided against Harris on the written record, after he gave up a live hearing; the Fifth Circuit held that reasonable jurists could not debate the result.
Scott's exact date of death in 1999 is not on record.
February 28, 1972: Robert Wayne Harris is born.
At age 18: convicted of three burglaries and evading arrest; he later serves an eight-year sentence in Dallas County.
May 3, 1999: released on mandatory supervision; begins work at a business in Irving that month.
June 27, 1999: discharged from supervision.
1999: Sandra Scott, 37, of Irving, dies; Harris confesses in 2000 and is charged with capital murder in her death.
March 15, 2000: dismissed from his job after an incident reported by a customer.
March 20, 2000: five people die at a business in Irving.
March 21, 2000: Harris is arrested, confesses, and is arraigned on a capital murder charge.
September 2000: a Dallas County jury convicts him of capital murder in the deaths of Agustin Villasenor and Rhoda Wheeler; he is sentenced to death.
October 6, 2000: received on Texas death row.
February 12, 2003: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirms.
2003: U.S. Supreme Court denies certiorari.
September 15, 2004: Court of Criminal Appeals denies state habeas relief.
August 2008: federal district court grants a hearing on the Atkins claim; Harris later waives it.
March 12, 2012: Fifth Circuit denies a certificate of appealability.
August 27, 2012: subsequent state application filed.
September 5, 2012: Court of Criminal Appeals dismisses it and denies a stay.
September 18, 2012: Board of Pardons and Paroles rejects clemency.
September 20, 2012: U.S. Supreme Court denies a stay and certiorari; Harris is executed in Huntsville.