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In his family, Keith Harris is known as the favorite
uncle who will take a few of the nieces and nephews for the day, go to the
nursing home and hang out with the aged aunties, even bring their favorite
pets to visit. In his neighborhood, he’s known as the guy who
will do lawn care for anybody who needs help. After he mows and edges the
grass, he’ll give the neighbor a ride to the store to pick up
medicine or groceries.
At his job as a maintenance worker with the U.S.
Postal Service, Keith is the employee who is never absent, never tardy,
always smiling and upbeat. If a co-worker has an illness or a death in the
family, Keith buys a greeting card, makes sure everybody signs it, and
takes up a collection for that person. In fact, Keith is so steadfastly cheerful, so
relentlessly optimistic, so purely positive that his girlfriend, Helen
Burrage, admits that he occasionally grates on her nerves. “He makes a positive situation out of
everything. Sometimes I’ll get angry because I’m upset about
something, and he takes it and makes it a positive!” she says. What makes Keith’s attitude so remarkable
is his undeniable right to feel just the opposite. If anyone ever had a
good reason to feel angry at the whole world, it’s Keith Harris. In 1978, Keith and a friend were accused of robbing
Freddie’s Shell station in Caseyville and pumping seven bullets into
the cashier. No physical evidence linked them to the scene; their arrest
was based solely on the cashier’s account. In fact, there was
evidence that they didn’t commit the crime. The Freddie’s stickup turned out to be the
second of a series of 11 armed robberies with a tally of 15 shootings and
stabbings, including nine fatalities. Keith had an airtight alibi for all
of the other robberies, but by the time the real robbers had been caught
and confessed he was already in prison. He was a 119-pound teenager when he
was sent to the Menard Correctional Center — the state’s
largest maximum-security facility — he served 22 years and 100 days
for a crime he did not commit.
Didn’t I tell you he had reason to be bitter? At the time he was sentenced, the judge had added 10
years to the statutory 40-year term. Doing research in the prison law
library, Keith discovered that only juries, not judges, have the right to
enhance sentences. He filed a writ of habeas corpus and won release in May
2001. Keith, though, wanted more than just liberty; he wanted to clear his
name. His case had already come to the attention of the
Downstate Illinois Innocence Project, then a fledgling group of University
of Illinois at Springfield students. Working year-round and long past their
graduation dates, they collected a mountain of evidence of Keith’s
innocence and presented it to the Prisoner Review Board. In January 2003,
as then-Gov. George Ryan was leaving office, Keith received a full pardon
based on innocence. I first met Keith in 2002, as he was preparing to
appear before the board [see “The Wrong Man,” Oct. 3, 2002]. I
talked to him a few days after he was pardoned — in what seemed like
a long-distance phone call from my desk to Cloud Nine — and I saw him
again a few months later at a banquet, where he was one of several
speakers.
At the banquet, I noticed something different about
Keith. He was the same guy I had interviewed a few months earlier at his
home in Belleville, but the exoneration had given him an almost
celebritylike aura. People stood in awe when he was introduced. Here was a
man who had been to hell and back and had not only survived but actually
returned with a smile.
Five years later, Keith has made a lot of speeches,
but he hasn’t bothered to become practiced or polished. He’s
got an East St. Louis accent, his own quiet style, and no index cards to
remind him what to say. “I learned real early: You’ve got to
forgive,” he says. “If you don’t, and you hold onto the
malice, your heart will harden and nobody will want to help you. But if you
give it away, you’re free.”
He has a civil suit pending, but he’s not
worried about its progress. He’s more concerned with taking care of
his mother, his nieces and nephews, his neighbors and friends. “This
is what I got out for — to help,” he says, “so
that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Contact Dusty Rhodes at drhodes@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2007.
