http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/870410/posts
March 20, 2003, 12:12PM
Clara Harris to fix computers, not teeth, in prison
Associated PressAfter a month at a prison psychiatric hospital, the Friendwood woman convicted of killing her cheating husband by running him over with her car has been assigned to a women's prison to serve her 20-year murder sentence.
Clara Harris arrived late Wednesday at the Mountain View Prison at Gatesville, Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Larry Todd said.
"She is cooperative and had a brief interview with the warden and indicated she would be serving her time without incident," Todd said Thursday. "She will live in dormitory-style housing and will mix and work with other inmates."
Harris, a dentist, also would be given a job at the prison's computer repair and maintenance shop, where inmates rebuild computers for school districts, he said. She is not allowed to practice dentistry.
Harris, 45, had been locked up -- first in the Harris County Jail and then in prison -- since Feb. 13, the day before her 11th wedding anniversary. That's when a jury in Houston sentenced her to 20 years and a $10,000 fine for killing her orthodontist husband, David, 44, after finding him with his mistress at the same hotel where she married him a decade earlier.
The first month of her incarceration was spent at the Skyview Unit near Rusk in East Texas.
At Mountain View in Gatesville, about 35 miles west of Waco, she'll be among up to 650 female convicts. The prison includes Texas' female death row, although the condemned inmates are isolated from general population prisoners like Harris.
Besides computer repair work, prisoners there also have agricultural and livestock handling jobs.
"She has computer knowledge, and that job seems to be one well suited for her," Todd said, adding that inmates have no Internet access.
Harris becomes eligible for parole after 10 years in prison. She could have received a life sentence but drew a lesser penalty after jurors decided she was driven by "sudden passion" to repeatedly run over her husband in a suburban Houston hotel parking lot July 24.
She didn't cry hard enough in court. Now she has to fix 'puters !
 |
Defendant Clara Harris reacts as she
testifies about her husband's affair.