Appeals dragged on

Harris was sent to death row at the Washington State Penitentiary near Walla Walla, and for 10 years, appeal after appeal was rejected.

Twice, Harris came within weeks of execution, but the death warrants were stayed.

As the appeals dragged on, his lawyers began arguing that he was mentally ill. That's because mentally ill people, those who can't understand their circumstances, are not executed in this state.

Even from the start, police and others had questioned Harris' mental state. To this day, Harris holds some ideas that are indisputably, well ... odd. He believes, for instance, that the Mafia and the Ku Klux Klan may be linked to Turner's murder and that the trial judge was spotted near the scene of the crime. And there may have been some Cuban conspirators, too.

But over the years the state repeatedly fought the idea that Harris was mentally unstable, first during a hearing to have a guardian appointed and again during a hearing about his competency to be executed.

"The state argued at every juncture that he was competent, that he was sane," Ressler said.

Then in 1994, Harris' appeals reached the desk of U.S. District Court Judge Robert Bryan.

Bryan found that Harris' trial was so flawed that his guilt was in serious doubt. Anderson was to blame.

"The one person in the courtroom who is professionally obligated to display a sense of loyalty and advocacy has described Harris in such a way that left him with little or no credibility, no humanity and no means to be identified as a peer of the jury," Bryan wrote.

Bryan overturned Harris' conviction, ruling he must be retried or set free.

Prosecutors were not happy.

"This is a man who at one point admitted he killed this person," said Kathleen Proctor, of the Pierce County Prosecutor's Office.

It turned out that retrial was out of the question: Key witnesses were either dead, in prison for murder themselves, or simply unwilling to testify.

It looked as if Harris was going to go free. With release looming, the state decided on another tactic: Harris was now mentally ill.

To prove it, they used Harris' own arguments — the ones his lawyers made to save him from execution — against him, said John Ladenburg, the Pierce County prosecutor at the time.

"The argument the state ended up buying is he had become more and more mentally imbalanced in prison," Ladenburg said.

First they tried to convince a judge that Harris was incompetent to understand court proceedings.

When that failed, they tried to get him civilly committed as dangerously mentally ill, but a jury ruled he should not be confined.

But the state persisted and in 1997 got a court order sending Harris to Western State. For years, he has been in a program designed as a short-term transition for people readjusting to society.

Free to wander

A well-kept, stout and balding fellow with large round glasses, Harris does not give the initial impression he is seriously mentally ill. He speaks in normal cadence and talks calmly about current events and his case.

"Believe me, I would know if I was delusional," he said. "I've seen it (at the hospital). I don't resemble that even slightly."

His good behavior means he's earned a hospital job and has long been allowed to leave the grounds during the day.

"If he's delusional," Hoff asked, "why would they let him wander around Tacoma?"

Earlier this month, Harris received a subpoena from the Pierce County prosecutor asking him to testify against a nurse charged with molesting a patient at Western State.

Recently, Hoff has been threatening to file a lawsuit against the state and the county for wrongfully confining Harris. The threats may have had some effect. At a late-February hearing, officials said they might consider releasing Harris if they could come up with a detailed plan for life on the outside.

Hoff says that's good news. Still, he worries. Harris has health problems. He has no place to live. Would a halfway house or group home accept him? How would he pay his way?

"I haven't really tried to get him out before because there's no place for him to go," Hoff said.

While Hoff thinks Harris should be freed, he has to concede that his client's life isn't so bad.

"You take a man who's been on death row and give him freedom to go to a movie or stroll the grounds, he's reasonably content," Hoff said. "He's like the canary. You put him in a cage for 10 years and then open the cage, the bird will fly right back in there."

Maureen O'Hagan:206-464-2562 or mohagan@seattletimes.com