Person of the Week: Sister Janet Harris

April 21, 2006 — -- Sister Janet Harris has spent her adult life working with and fighting for children, and she's undertaken a decade-long campaign on behalf of one particular California youth, Mario Rocha.

In 1996 the then-16-year-old Mario was charged with murder and was awaiting trial when Sister Harris was the chaplain at Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles.

"I thought, 'Oh, Mario's going to get off, they're not going to convict him on the word of one witness who had been drinking,'" Sister Harris said.

Despite her faith, Mario was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

"When he was sentenced, I was too shocked to cry," she said.

After getting over her shock, Sister Harris read the transcript of the trial and was convinced Mario's lawyer had been grossly incompetent. She began working to get Mario a new trial -- interviewing witnesses, hiring a private investigator and convincing a high-powered law firm to represent him.

"With Mario it was so egregious, so horrible that I said to myself whether I win or lose, I am going to fight for justice," Sister Harris said. "His life was stolen by a system that's flawed. A system where we need to look out and say: Have we lost our moral compass?"

For Sister Harris, working to free Mario was a natural progression.

She was born in New York City in 1930 and recalls feeling she was called to become a Sister of the Presentation after high school. She soon started teaching, which led to her work with troubled teens and gangs, later making her way to Juvenile Hall where she concluded gang members were not viewed as "individuals."

Sister Harris meets many kids in Mario's situation and admits she can't help them all. But for her, Mario was different.

"He had the courage to tell the truth. He never put embroidery on anything he said," she said.

She was further struck by his maturity and integrity while watching Mario attend a writing class at Juvenile Hall where he wrote a biographical play and had fellow juvenile offenders perform the work.