Countywide : Death Penalty foes Picket Courthouse

A handful of activists quietly protested the death penalty Friday on the lawn of the Ventura County Courthouse, hours before a federal judge blocked the execution scheduled for Tuesday of convicted double murderer Robert Alton Harris.

The group collected signatures on a petition opposing the death penalty, which they hope to send to Gov. George Deukmejian.

The demonstrators, all members of Amnesty International, carried signs suggesting that the death penalty is a crime. Harris, convicted of murdering two teen-agers in San Diego, is scheduled to be the first person executed in California since 1967.

“I believe that two wrongs don’t make a right. Human life is precious,” said Tom Higgins, a Ventura attorney who was protesting the death penalty.

“We’re asking the governor to grant clemency to Robert Alton Harris, and we want to point out that the death penalty is a human rights violation.”

Protester Robert Gips, a film and video editor from Ventura, said, “We don’t expect that being out here is going to stop Robert Alton Harris from being executed, but we hope to get people to make some changes.”

Gips said a group of Ojai schoolchildren touring the courthouse walked up and barraged him with questions.

“A number of them are for the death penalty. A lot of them felt that a killer shouldn’t live,” Gips said.

“But a number of them agreed with me that, if killing is a crime, then killing a killer is a crime.”

Higgins and protester Jennifer Harlan of Ventura said life imprisonment costs taxpayers less than the death sentence.

The cost of putting a convict through appeals, court proceedings, Death Row and finally execution costs more than simply imprisoning the convict for life, said Harlan, an investigator for the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

But Harlan said her beliefs about the death penalty go deeper than economics.

“I’ve never liked injustice or inhumane treatment of any kind,” she said.

“I don’t believe in torture, I don’t believe in killing.”

A federal judge on Friday blocked the execution, saying Harris may not have gotten competent psychiatric help at his trial.