Texas Murder Trial of the Week!!!

[Dooby]

I can't believe I haven't posted this sooner-The flattened philanderer dentist.
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Cheatin' husband didn't merit death
02/11/2003

By JACQUIELYNN FLOYD / The Dallas Morning News


David Harris isn't around to defend himself, but the available evidence suggests that he may have been a bit of a jerk, that he was vain and selfish and shallow.

He cheated on his wife, then candidly told her he was entitled because his girlfriend nagged him less and had a better body. He told his wife that, by comparison, she was loud and pushy and fat, that she paid too much attention to the kids.

He grudgingly agreed to end the affair to keep his marriage and family together. But instead, on the evening of the promised breakup, he took his girlfriend to a hotel room – in the same hotel where his wedding had been held 10 years earlier.

You can't blame David Harris' wife for being mad. He was a jerk.

But being a jerk isn't a capital offense. David Harris, a prosperous orthodontist, was killed on the spot in the hotel parking lot by his wife, Houston dentist Clara Harris. She ran over him either once (according to the defense) or at least three times (according to the prosecution) with her silver Mercedes-Benz. She knelt on the pavement and apologized to her crushed, bloody husband while he died.

With a news menu of grim and substantial world events staring us all in the face, the Clara Harris murder trial going on down in Harris County is a juicy, frivolous, deliciously entertaining side dish. It's ripe-to-bursting with operatic characters: cheatin' husband, vengeful wronged wife, vixenish mistress.

It's set in the palmy suburbs of Houston, where Drs. Harris & Harris were raking in the cash with an expanding chain of dental offices. A sympathetic parade of bit players – dental hygienists and orthodontic techs – have taken the stand to testify that the Harrises had a model marriage until the slutty new receptionist made a play for the boss.

What a potboiler! There's even a deep-down little vein of you-go-girl admiration for Clara Harris, who did what, after all, so many betrayed wives may have contemplated. She sure showed him, didn't she?

That's why the news-as-entertainment industry loves this trial so much. David is constantly called the "philandering husband," and even Clara's own defense lawyer, though sticking to an it-was-all-an-accident defense, suggested that even if it weren't an accident, well, he had it coming: "When you see the man that you love in the arms of someone else," he told reporters, "that has such a deep emotional impact on you."

The New York Post headlined the case "Mad Wife at Wheel," while CBS' online news used the shorthand "Mercedes Trial." Late-night TV hosts mined the case for its comedy value. One online columnist suggested Clara should be freed as a warning to potential adulterers.

But the truth of the matter is that crushing somebody to death with a car is a pretty unfunny act. It sure wasn't very funny to Mr. Harris' teenage daughter, who had been enlisted as an ally to her stepmother, who excitedly rode along to witness the dramatic denouement at the hotel. She was in the front seat, screaming for her stepmother to stop, and felt the wheels bump over her father's body.

I like a juicy, dramatic trial myself, but I can't help but believe the tone surrounding this one would be less flippant if an enraged man had killed his wife in the same manner. He would be a bully, a control freak, a monster.

The lame excuse that "you made me so mad that I couldn't help myself" is the classic defense of the abusive man, and it isn't acceptable. A man who kills his wife and defends himself on the grounds that she drove him to it is and should be a target for outrage, but it has to cut both ways. If men can't plead provocation, women shouldn't be able to, either.

Our society does, in fact, deal differently with men than it does with women, every day, in about a million subtle and not-so-subtle ways. To paraphrase the noble closing speech made by Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, the one place we should all stand as equals, even in an inequitable society, is in the courtroom.

Clara Harris could get life in prison. But even if she's found guilty, the jury could decide she acted with "sudden passion" and sentence her to as little as two years' probation.

I'm honestly not sure what sentence I think she deserves, other than to suggest it ought to fall somewhere between those two extremes.

But I think that, as they deliberate, jurors should consider whether their decision would be the same if the roles of Clara Harris and David Harris were reversed.

If the answer is an honest "yes," they'll have done their job.

[LRB]

Maybe SenorFrog can change his latest trick thread from "Who do you have buried in you back yard?" to "Who would you like to run over with your Mercedes Benz?".