May 7, 2017

Retired deputy DA became an expert in keeping bad guys in prison

FAIRFIELD — Jack Harris does not remember the incident that changed his life – a life in which he would literally become an expert at keeping bad guys behind bars.

What he does know is that without his wife of 46 years, Kim, and their nine children, that life may have been lost.

“She is my lifeline,” Harris said. “The love of my life.”

Crash takes away life in policing

“I loved being a police officer,” said Harris, who went to work for the Concord Police Department in November 1972, though his lack of a college education nearly kept him from being hired.

“They wanted education. The wanted a (bachelor’s degree), preferably, an (associate’s degree) for sure, or some reserve experience or military experience as (military police), and I had none of that,” said Harris, who was finishing up his AA at Diablo Valley Junior College at the time.

He started his career in patrol, then went to traffic control where at times he served in the motorcycle unit.

Then one evening as he was on his way to class on his own bike, and heading up Highway 4, past what is now the Bay Point cutoff and where the two lanes merge into one, Harris had a bus in the lane to his right when he noticed a man on the side of the road waving his arms frantically.

His attention diverted, Harris ran his bike at 55 mph into the man’s Ford Mustang, which had died in the left lane against the center divide. Harris was catapulted over the car.

At least that is what he was told, a story he heard from the bus driver.

“I don’t remember anything,” said Harris, who was also told he received last rites on consecutive nights at the hospital.

“My wife is still mad at him, but I tend to blame myself,” Harris said about the Mustang’s owner.

Eventually, Harris had his right leg below the knee amputated. Still, he saw a future in policing, perhaps as a crash scene investigator or at some desk job. But he also suffered severe damage to his left arm, and that is when he hit bottom.

“I never understood how close I was to dying . . . so the lowest point was when I realized how severe my injuries were and I was going to lose my leg and my arm was mostly paralyzed,” Harris said.

“I kept wondering what I was going to do . . . I was panicked about what I was going to do to support my family,” he said. He and his wife had four children, and the fifth was on the way. “My motivation was my wife.”

Marching into the legal profession

Like many cops, Harris admits he did not have much affinity for attorneys, and particularly defense attorneys.

But a captain in the Concord department was an attorney, and a lieutenant was studying to be a lawyer, and it gave him a new direction, although he was not sure it was what he really wanted to do.

After all, even as a young boy in Bellaire, Texas, he wanted to be a police officer.

“I think it was always an attraction growing up,” said Harris, adding that an opportunity to do a ride-along with an officer while at Diablo Valley sealed that passion.

Harris, already on the force but completing his bachelor’s degree, had taken a course in Constitutional Law, in which the professor told him he wrote like an attorney.

“I was insulted because I was a police officer,” quips Harris, but he admits he enjoyed delving into the theories of law.

Having earned his bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice from Sacramento State, he still had the challenge of getting into a law school. At that point he had never even heard of the Law School Admission Council or the standardized test he needed to take.

He scored extremely high, and enrolled at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento. It was a challenge paying for law school, and a dispute with workers compensation did not make that any easier.

Three years later, in May of 1982, he graduated in the top 16 percent of his class, though he had hoped to break the top 15 percent.

Then Solano called

Harris had volunteered to do research for the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office, but having moved to Fairfield, the commute was difficult and costly. After a little pushing, he convinced the Solano DA’s office to let him use its library. His supervisor was a deputy district attorney named Mike Nail.

Harris later had done some work for the Sacramento County District Attorney while in law school and had gotten his first experience in trial work. He was hired after passing the bar exam.

“My last daughter (the eighth child), Shannon, was born the day after the last day of the bar exam,” Harris said.

“Then I got a call from Mike Nail. He had just been elected and was taking office in January 1983, and he asked me if I wanted to come to work for him,” Harris said. “So on Jan. 3, 1983, I started working for Mike and I’ve been here ever since.”

That included working under four district attorneys and doing virtually every kind of work a deputy district attorney could do.

But it was in the prison crime unit – keeping bad guys behind bars – where Harris made his biggest mark. It was work that ultimately led to a case involving a longtime California inmate who wanted out of the system. He had nine in-prison convictions.

“This guy would not hurt corrections staff, but he attacked other inmates,” Harris said. “He reminded me of Mr. Clean. He was huge, a bald, black inmate and he nearly castrated another inmate.”

The inmate told the Texas Rangers he had information about a robbery-murder, and when the officials came to hear what he had to say, the inmate confessed to the killing.

Harris ended up going to Corpus Christi to testify about the inmate’s history in the California prison system. It marked him as an expert, a status he would bring back to California where he has testified upward of 40 times.

“I had been a police officer, so it didn’t bother me (to testify) at all,” Harris said.

Still, it is rather rare for a deputy district attorney to be qualified as an expert – in this case on 969B Packets, which in essence establishes the defendant’s penal history. It is technical, detailed work.

Harris has twice testified for the defense, including in a case involving Thero Wheeler, one of the founding members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Time to retire?

Harris, who had applied for judgeships in the past, said it is not really his idea to retire, but health issues from a spinal infection and other office circumstances have led to his departure.

The infection was caused by dirt and debris that stayed in his body from the motorcycle crash. It put him in bed for four months, and weakened his back to the point that he must use crutches or a cane to get around.

But sitting around is not really his way.

Harris said he plans to spend more time with his 24 grandchildren, the most recent born in April, and his two great-grandchildren.

But he also hopes to volunteer with the county Office of Emergency Services and work with – or for as it were – his son, sheriff’s Sgt. Jackson Harris, who was born during the first year with the Solano County DA’s office.

“But they have to do a background check,” said Harris, who was a Concord police officer, a deputy district attorney in Sacramento County and for 34 years has been a deputy district attorney in Solano.

Article Authored by Todd R. Hansen - in Daily Republic May 7, 2017