Last week, as the U.S. Supreme Court said it would hear a case concerning the constitutionality of executions by lethal injection, walkers and a workshop for clergy tried to refocus attention on the death penalty in California - a state that houses nearly 700 men and women on death row.

The walkers had started Sept. 15 with a rousing rally in San Diego with about 50 supporters, including giant puppet images of Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Their ultimate destination was the Capitol in Sacramento, some 800 miles away.

The small group of walkers, from Death Penalty Focus, California People of Faith Working Against the Death Penalty and Amnesty International USA, had hiked north to Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties, stopping for rallies at county courthouses to encourage district attorneys not to seek the death penalty in even the most egregious cases.

Arriving in Los Angeles Oct. 4, they made their way to the criminal courts building downtown for a noon demonstration in front of the honeycomb-like high-rise that houses the office of Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley on the 18th floor.

Holding placards that read "Executions Are Revenge Killings," "We Support All Victims of Violence" and other anti-death penalty slogans, they formed a semi-circle near a huge black-and-white banner saying, "Stop Executions in the USA."

Wearing a flopping hat, Richard Carlburg, a retired aerospace engineer who spent 24 years in the U.S. Air Force, put down the little lantern with the stubby candle he and fellow walker Jeff Ghelardi had been alternately carrying for 216 miles. He told the gathered group of about 40 people that the candle was a symbol of hope to brighten up dark places.

"Can you imagine a darker place than death row?" the 61-year-old member of Amnesty International USA, declared, his voice rising with emotion through a hand-held megaphone. "Can you imagine a darker place than the mind of man that thinks he has to kill people in order to have justice?"

Carlburg said they would continue to carry the candle, which he hoped would keep the death penalty on the public's "radar screen," until the U.S. government and state of California stop their "barbaric acts" of legal murder.

Doubling the sorrow
Sister Miriam Clare Burkett, 87, came to the downtown rally because of a troubling childhood memory. When the retired Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet was nine in Santa Ana, a young man from her neighborhood was convicted of and executed for committing a capital crime. "I could see the sorrow built around it just doubled," she told The Tidings.

Another speaker at the rally, Norm Stamper, was a former police chief of Seattle and a cop for 34 years. He said the death penalty was not only unnecessary but also inefficient, taking 10-to-12 years to prosecute a capital case from arrest to execution and costing $8 to $12 million. The ex-lawman pointed out that a dozen states had outlawed the death penalty, along with almost every nation in Europe.

"I opposed the death penalty because too often, predictably and inevitably, against a backdrop of race and class discrimination, we have people who would not be on death row if it were not for the color of their skin or the size of their personal treasury," he said.

"And I oppose the death penalty," he added, "because from time to time we get the wrong guy."

The last to speak was Gloria Killian. Twenty-six years ago she was convicted and sentenced to die for being involved in a home-invasion robbery where somebody was killed. But when California's Supreme Court banned the death penalty (and before it was later restored), her sentence was lessened to 32 years to life.

Friends spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire one of the best criminal lawyers in the country, before she was eventually exonerated by DNA and other evidence.

"I think I'm one of the lucky ones," she mused. "It only took 22 years of my life, and probably most of my sanity. But as time goes on, it becomes more and more distressing because it's continuing to happen."

After nearly an hour, the group formed a circle to sing the old civil rights anthem, "We Shall Overcome." Then, heading up Temple, they began marching to their next destination - Ventura - on the way to Sacramento.

Balanced approach
Two days earlier, another small group of Californians gathered to discuss capital punishment - an eclectic mix of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Buddhist leaders who met in Oxnard.

Sitting at round tables in the Courtyard Marriott Hotel on Oct. 2, some 40 members of the clergy listened to Aundré Herron, a former assistant prosecutor in Missouri and current staff attorney for the California Appellate Project, which works with inmates on death row, stress the role faith leaders should be playing in the struggle to abolish the death penalty.

"Religious organizations and faith groups have long expressed their opposition to the death penalty, recognizing the apparent contradiction between religious faith and state-sponsored execution," Herron observed. "But while the institutional leadership has issued resolutions, edicts and official pronouncements against the death penalty, the real message and purpose of these efforts has not been effectively transmitted to or embraced and internalized by organized religions' lay membership."

Herron pointed out that capital punishment is largely used against society's "most damaged and disadvantaged" members; that it's exorbitantly costly; and that it doesn't deter crime, with the states practicing it the most, ironically, having the highest murders rates.

She also noted that in recent years there have been more than 200 "exonerations" for inmates sentenced to die. Finally, she reported that concerning lethal injection, which is used in California and 36 other states, the three-drug protocol for executing human beings falls below the standards used by veterinarians to euthanize animals.

But she said these reasons to stop capital punishment paled in significance to the theological arguments raised by the faith community.

"I think we can all agree that a core belief in God is patently inconsistent with the vengeful execution of those who offend our laws, even those who grievously injure and murder our fellow citizens," she said.

"Doesn't the death penalty violate our values of forgiveness and redemption, compassion and rehabilitation? Have we become so vengeful, so bitter and so attenuated from the inherent value of every human life that we are willing to concede that the ritualistic extermination of our errant fellow citizens is our highest, best and most God-like response?

"If we consider these questions from a faith-based perspective, the right answer -uncomfortably and unpopular as it may be - cannot be denied," she stressed. "People of faith cannot be party to the death penalty."

'Never ever done'
During a panel discussion, Rabbi Emeritus John Sherwood of Temple Emet in Woodland Hills said the death penalty is prescribed in the Talmud, Jewish scripture, including stoning for incest, bestiality and even child rebelliousness, and strangulation for striking one's father or mother, adultery and being a false prophet.

But the criteria for finding someone guilty of a capital offense is also prescribed in minute detail. No circumstantial evidence was allowed, and two qualified eye witnesses were required. Moreover, the witnesses had to carry out the execution themselves.

"In other words, it was never ever done," Rabbi Sherwood said. "We have no evidence that any Jewish religious court ever carried out an act of capital punishment - period! And today a number of major Jewish organizations have come out in absolute opposition against the death penalty.

"Our problem, like with other religions, is getting our laity to follow through with it," he added. "The numbers are increasing, but we have a lot of work ahead of us. The challenge is ours."

Dharma Holder Gary Koan Janka, a Buddhist from the Zen Center of Los Angeles who serves as chaplain in the Los Angeles County jail system, said that the Buddha's perspective on capital punishment was very straight forward: "Don't do it!"

This comes from the enlightened experience that there is no separation in the world. Everything and everybody is interconnected. He said Buddhism's precepts all boil down to "not harm."

"The Buddha taught that no one is beyond redemption," Dharma Holder noted.

The Rev. Julie Morris of Trinity Episcopal Church in Sylmar said Episcopalians were charged not only to oppose capital punishment but to actively work against it. She noted that Jesus interrupted the execution of an adulterer with the famous words, "Let those who are without sin cast the first stone."

Also Christians should not forget that Jesus himself was a victim of a state-sanctioned, legal execution of the Roman Empire.

"Finally, the Christian community holds reconciliation between God and human beings, and between human beings and one another, as our primary work in the world," Rev. Morris declared. "If we go along with the common understanding that we hear always in the media --- that the death penalty will bring closure to the families of victims --- we are violating our own theology."

The Rev. Howard Dotson of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles explained that reformed Christians believe that people are always being changed according to the word of God. He said the 77 million members around the world have been asked to provide legal assistance and minister to individuals facing capital punishment. In 2000, the federation of churches' general assembly called for an immediate moratorium on all executions.

"People say, 'Well, for especially egregious crimes we should keep the death penalty,'" he said. "Last week I buried a three-week-old baby who was killed in a gang shooting on 6th Street. I don't think Baby Louise's mom is going to get closure. And I don't think we should have the death penalty just reserved for these special crimes."

Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry noted that the Catholic view of capital punishment had been a "significant progression" in church thinking over the years. He pointed out that Pope John Paul II, in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, said the gospel of life balanced the argument for the protection of society with the dignity of all people.

"The pope connects the death penalty with other life issues," he said. "He sees a continuum from the womb to natural death. This he calls a culture of life in contrast with a culture of death, which he associates with the death penalty."

In an interview, the bishop said he was encouraged that more and more Catholics were viewing the death penalty as much of a life issue as abortion. He reported that national polls show half of all U.S. Catholics now oppose capital punishment.

"Catholics are members of society, and they're influenced by the society around us," he said. "Often times they accept things that are not really in conformity with church doctrine. So it's a constant struggle.

"But I think the mood is clearly swinging against the death penalty," Bishop Curry added. "It is part of the respect for human life."