Monday, March 31, 2003 - 12:24 a.m. Pacific
Exonerated but never set free
By Maureen O'Hagan
Seattle Times staff reporter
 |  |  JOHN LOK / THE SEATTLE TIMES | | Benjamin Harris, who lives at Western State Hospital in Lakewood, Pierce County, is the only death-row inmate in the state exonerated of his crime. He's been held at the psychiatric hospital for six years in what was supposed to be a 90-day transition program. | |
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When the state wanted to execute Benjamin Harris, they said he was perfectly sane.
When his conviction was overturned, they locked him up for being crazy.
And recently, the state considered Harris sane enough to ask him to testify as a prosecution witness in court.
Such is the unusual tale of Benjamin Harris, the only person ever exonerated from Washington's death row.
The catch is he never went free.
In a little-known twist, Harris was taken to Western State Hospital in Lakewood, Pierce County, after his conviction and sentence were overturned. That was after a judge ruled he was mentally competent and a jury ruled he should not be confined.
"It's a very interesting case," said Laurie Lola Vollen, a visiting scholar at Berkeley, who's just begun a program to help reintegrate "exonerees" into society. "It's about using the mental-health card essentially as a tool of the state. They play it when they want to lock him up, and they deny it when they want to execute him."
Harris remains at the psychiatric hospital to this day, held for six years in what was supposed to be a 90-day transition program. That makes almost 20 years of continuous confinement.
"In essence, he's still in prison for a crime he never committed," said former state senator Neil Hoff, a Tacoma lawyer who is now representing him. Harris, he said, is neither dangerous nor mentally ill.
"They found me competent to be executed," Harris said. "Now they're saying I have all these problems. That's not the way to play the game. It's time to get on with my life."
But prosecutors disagree. Harris is not only responsible for the murder of a Tacoma auto mechanic, he's also grown to be seriously and dangerously mentally ill.
And here lies the crux of the problem: Is Benny Harris mentally ill or sane? Is he a killer or an innocent man?
Local character
The murder victim, Jimmie Turner, took two bullets that summer of 1984, one in the head and one in the neck. When his body was found near his garage in Tacoma's Hilltop area, there was talk that he was mixed up in crime and that several people may have wanted him dead.
In those days, Harris was a well-known local character who sauntered the streets in a snazzy suit and hat.
"That was my trademark," Harris recalled recently. "I was pretty happy-go-lucky back then."
Most mornings, he'd stop by the local coffee shop where lawyers and legislators went for breakfast and gossip.
"He would shake hands and walk through as if he was running for president," Hoff recalled.
Harris, who considered himself a police informant, often bragged about his connections.
After Turner was shot dead, Harris went, unprompted, to a detective he knew and said he wasn't involved. Then he said he would help them solve the case.
Based in part on Harris' information, Gregory "Gay Gay" Bonds was charged that July with murder.
|  | | JOHN LOK / THE SEATTLE TIMES | | Benjamin Harris, 55, has long been allowed to leave the grounds of Western State Hospital during the day. | |
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But soon, the cops turned their attention to their all-too-willing informant.
On Aug. 10, Harris was charged with paying Bonds to kill Turner in a murder-for-hire plot.
Within 10 weeks, he would be sentenced to death.
A mess of things
Murray Anderson, who died in 1994, was an experienced defense lawyer, but he gave Harris' case the attention of a shoplifting charge, a judge later said.
His representation, or lack of it, made a mess of things for both Harris and the state.
From the start, Anderson didn't bother to challenge the prosecutor's decision to seek death, a move that is routine and could very well have been successful, experts now say.
His preparation for trial in Pierce County Superior Court was cursory — 1 hour and 48 minutes talking to Harris and 12 hours of other work. Anderson didn't interview most of the people who could be called to testify, speaking to only three of 32 people. And, he didn't contact a single person Harris said could help him.
His assistant, Tom Haist, handled some of the key parts of the case, even though he was just six months out of law school.
Anderson later said that his only strategy for trial was this: Harris should confess to shooting Turner.
His reasoning was that the state's capital case rested solely on the allegation that Harris paid Bonds to do the crime. Without the murder-for-hire element, it was a run-of-the-mill murder case, not punishable by death. So if Harris said he did the crime, he couldn't be found guilty of paying Bonds to do it and couldn't be sentenced to death. At least, that was the theory.
"Murray forced me to make a confession," Harris said.
"It was about as stupid as it can get," said Seattle attorney Allen Ressler, who represented Harris on his appeals.
Anderson even put his client on the stand.
Harris testified that he and Bonds crept up on Turner that night, and Bonds fired first.
"After Gay Gay shot him, he flipped the gun over to Benny, Old West style, and Benny did him in," Haist recalls of his testimony. "The whole story seemed unlikely."
And it was. The police department's forensics showed that one person fired both shots, a fact that didn't come up at trial.
In closing arguments, Anderson told the jury that Harris "doesn't have the same moral code as we expect."
He also said his client belonged to "a class of men who don't work, carry guns" and "kill people."
The jury's decision was swift: guilty. And on Oct. 31, 1984, they sentenced him to death.
Bonds went on trial, too, but with a different attorney. He was acquitted.
Continued
