Googie Rene Harris Sr. was sentenced to death and nephew Joaquin Latee Leal III was ordered to prison for life without the possibility of parole on Friday, Jan. 10, for the 1998 strangulation murder of Harris’ wife in Jurupa Valley — a crime for which Cheek’s framed lover spent 20 years in prison before being exonerated.
Superior Court Judge Bernard J. Schwartz, at the Riverside County Hall of Justice in Riverside, imposed the sentences recommended by the jury that convicted the men.
Prosecutors said Harris was angry with 32-year-old Cheek and her lover, her co-worker Horace Roberts Jr., and feared she would take his “dream house” in a divorce.
Harris, now 68, was eligible for the death penalty because of special-circumstance allegations of lying in wait and murder for financial gain. Leal, 58, was also accused of lying in wait, but jurors spared him the death penalty.
Four members of Cheek’s family spoke to the court. From the jury box, Leal looked at them with his one good eye — he lost his an eye in an accident years ago — while Harris never turned around from his seat at the defense table.
“You allow this other person over here to manipulate you into harming someone over a house?” Anthony Cheek, Terry Cheek’s brother, shouted at Leal.
“Men don’t move like that,” Cheek continued. “We move on. We don’t take nobody’s life for a piece of merchandise. It is my hope and prayer that when you see Terry — you probably won’t because you going the opposite way — but if she was to see you, that she would choke you and strangle you each and every one of you every day. And come back alive and strangle you again.”
Harris did not speak on his own behalf. Leal’s attorneys had said he would not do so either, but at the last moment, he rose and spoke as his voice quivered.
“I don’t know where to start,” Leal said, addressing Terry Cheek’s family and in particular Cheek’s daughter, Tynisha Weaver, who called him a psychopath. “I’m not the psychopath you think I am. You never seen it in me.”
Leal wiped a tear with his shackled hands.
“I don’t know what to say,” Leal said.
Judge Schwartz described strangulation as more of a “personal act” than a shooting because it involves contact with the victim.
“This was a troubling case,” Schwartz told Leal and Harris. “It is additionally troubling in this court case because we not only have the decedent, Mrs. Cheek, and her children and the family, but we also have an individual who was framed for a murder that he did not commit and served 20 years in state prison.
“I can only imagine the pain and distress that he must have felt being locked up in a state prison facility for a crime he knew and in fact did not commit, and having to live day to day in that scenario,” Schwartz said.
Harris, Leal and Harris’ son Googie Harris Jr. were arrested in 2018, 20 years after they let Roberts take the fall for killing Cheek. Harris Sr. testified against Roberts in his three trials — the first two ended with hung juries — and spoke at one of Roberts’ parole hearings.
Roberts was freed from prison and declared innocent after improved DNA technology pointed investigators toward the three defendants.
Harris Sr. and Leal were convicted partially based on the testimony of Harris Jr. The younger Harris testified that he was present when his father and Leal strangled his stepmother in the garage of their Jurupa Valley home, but that his role was only to assist Leal with dumping Cheek’s body at Lee Lake near Corona.
In exchange for Harris Jr.’s testimony, the District Attorney’s Office dropped a murder charge, and Harris Jr. pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact. He was sentenced to one year in jail.
