Wife who ran over husband with the Merc gets 20 years
February 16 2003
The Sun-Herald
The Texas jury that found dentist Clara Harris guilty of murder for running her cheating husband over with a Mercedes-Benz sentenced her to 20 years in prison, bringing her tale of love gone sour to a close on her 11th wedding anniversary.
Harris, a 45-year-old native of Colombia and former beauty queen, sank into her chair, put her hands over face and wept after state district judge Carol Davies read the jury's decision, reached after six hours' deliberation.
Three of the nine women on the 12-person jury also cried, as did Harris's 17-year-old stepdaughter Lindsey Harris, whose dramatic testimony was the key to the prosecution's case.
Clara Harris could have been jailed for up to 99 years but the jury found she had acted in "sudden passion", which put the maximum at 20 years.
The mother of four-year-old twin boys will not be eligible for parole until she has served 10 years.
Harris ran over orthodontist David Harris, 44, on July 24 last year in the parking lot of a Houston-area hotel where he had gone with girlfriend Gail Bridges. She claimed it was an accident but prosecutors said it was intentional.
Lindsey Harris told the court how she had witnessed her father's death from the passenger seat of the Mercedes. Her stepmother had clearly intended to run over her father, she said.
According to testimony in the three-week-long trial, the Harrises were happily married and running their lucrative dental practices until early last year. That is when David Harris began an affair with Ms Bridges, his office receptionist. He agreed to stop seeing her after eliciting promises that his wife would lose weight and get breast implants. He told her he would break up with Ms Bridges over dinner on July 24.
But a suspicious Clara Harris found her husband and his lover at a hotel that night, striding out of the elevator, holding hands and smiling. Enraged, Harris charged in swinging at and striking Ms Bridges until her husband, a martial arts enthusiast, threw her to the ground.
After the brawl, David Harris told his wife their marriage was "over" and left to escort Ms Bridges to her truck. That was when Clara Harris, accompanied by her stepdaughter, wheeled her Mercedes towards her husband and ran him down, prosecutors said. Harris then backed the car up and ran her husband over several more times.
Lindsey Harris has filed a wrongful death case against her stepmother.
After her father's death, Lindsey said, her school grades dropped and her interest in cheerleading evaporated. She broke up with her boyfriend and is estranged from her grandparents - David Harris's parents - "because they forgave Clara for what she did".
"I don't know why they're doing this to my poor dad," she said.
Lindsey testified that in the weeks following the murder, the numbness slowly turned to depression. She sought help from a counsellor and medication but it was all too much.
"I tried to slit my wrists, more than once," she said. At this, Clara Harris took a sharp breath and began to cry.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Lindsey," she called out, standing as the weeping teenager and jurors were led from the courtroom.
Harris has cried throughout the trial, annoying prosecutors who claimed it was a bid for juror sympathy. Denying a prosecution motion to remove Harris from the courtroom for this latest outburst, Judge Davies told the red-eyed Harris: "I will give you one last chance. Don't blow it or you will be out of this courtroom."
"Thank you, your honour," Harris said softly.
Gerald Harris, David's father, took the stand on Thursday to explain why he still supports his daughter-in-law. He denied Lindsey's contention that his son's multimillion-dollar estate was the motivating force.
"This tragedy was a very strong blow against our family," said Mr Harris, a former high school principal. "But God forgave us for our sins. We feel like a member of our family has erred and that we should forgive that."
"She is a member of my family and I would not turn away from her," he said.
Private Investigators, Police Testify at Dentist's Trial
Monday, January 27, 2003
HOUSTON â?? A private investigator hired by Clara Harris the day before she fatally ran over her husband with her Mercedes-Benz testified Monday she still appeared in love with the man despite his suspected philandering.
"You could tell she really loved her husband," private investigator Claudine Phillips said as the second week of the murder trial began. Harris, herself a dentist, is accused of intentionally running down husband David Harris in the parking lot of the Houston-area hotel where the couple married a decade earlier on Valentine's Day.
On July 24, Clara Harris found her husband at the hotel with a former female employee, who she believed had set out to "trap" her 44-year-old husband.
Prosecutors allege after her husband spurned her, Clara Harris intentionally ran him over numerous times.
Defense attorneys say Clara Harris "lost it" and it was an accident when she struck her husband with her silver Mercedes. They say Clara Harris only wanted to keep her marriage and her family together.
Phillips told the jury that Clara Harris hired Blue Moon Investigations on July 23 to follow her husband and his confessed mistress, Gail Bridges.
Clara Harris blamed herself for the affair and her marriage collapsing, Phillips testified. The private investigator said Clara Harris told her she had been paying more attention to her 3-year-old twin boys than to her husband.
"It was like she opened up the door of her home for this woman to come in and steal her husband," Phillips testified. "I could tell she cared about her husband. I could tell she cared about her children."
Phillips said Clara Harris hired the firm to follow her husband on the night of July 24 and then to follow Bridges for the next two days. Clara Harris told the private investigator she thought Bridges was after her husband's money and that David Harris was being deceived and couldn't see clearly because he had fallen in love.
Specifically, Phillips testified, Clara Harris wanted more information about Bridges' relationship with a woman she reportedly lived with.
"Is it fair to say Clara Harris believed these two women were involved in a lesbian relationship?" defense attorney George Parnham asked Phillips.
"Yes, she told me that," the private investigator testified. "She wanted some documentation of that to show her husband."
Clara Harris wrote a check for more than $1,500 to cover the three days of surveillance.
Later, the first police officer on the scene testified that it didn't appear that David Harris had been hit numerous times.
Then prosecutor Mia Magness asked Frank Reyna, an officer in the normally quiet Houston suburb of Nassau Bay, how often he's seen bodies that have been struck numerous times. He replied he'd only seen it in movies.
Prosecutors used the appearances by Reyna and Detective Theresa Relken to show jurors evidence they gathered at the scene, including a tooth dislodged from David Harris' head, a bloody shirt button and blood-soaked towels a bystander used to wipe the orthodontist's face as he lay dying.
Bridges seemed stunned and was unresponsive to questions after the collision, leading police to send her to a nearby hospital, Reyna said. Clara Harris sobbed before she was handcuffed and taken away.
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Originally Posted by bluebear71
her over the edge.
