67% Favor Life Term Over Gas Chamber

Death penalty foes contended Wednesday that support for California’s gas chamber executions is far softer than many believe, citing a poll showing 67% of state residents prefer that murderers receive a guaranteed life sentence and make cash restitution to the victim’s family.

Amnesty International and the ACLU released the poll results to kick off their final protests of the scheduled April 3 execution of convicted murderer Robert Alton Harris. He would be the first to die in the San Quentin gas chamber in two decades.

“We see this as a long-term struggle,” said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California. “Even Robert Harris, whose crime was heinous, should not be executed.”

The groups contend that the poll, which found Californians hold a complexity of views about capital punishment, demonstrates that there could be new political resistance to the death penalty, though probably not before Harris is put to death.

Like most polls, the survey conducted in December found resounding backing for the idea of capital punishment. Nearly 80% said they favor the death penalty--and 50% said they favor it strongly.

But when the option was offered of life in prison without parole, coupled with the requirement that convicts work in prison and pay the victims’ survivors, 67% said they would prefer that to state-sanctioned death.

“People don’t like to have murder committed in their name,” Ripston said.

However, she conceded that the option offered by the poll does not now exist, and that the ACLU may not condone it anyway because the organization has doubts about requiring prisoners to work.

Juries may now impose a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole. The “life-without” sentence was created by the same state law that reauthorized capital punishment after California’s old death penalty law was found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. A number of murderers are serving such sentences.

Ripston said the poll found that most people do not believe that the law means what it says. They hear about other prisoners being paroled and assume--erroneously, she says--that murderers given the “life-without” term have also been released on parole.

“If people were absolutely convinced that a murderer would not be released from prison, they would not be for the death penalty,” Ripston said.

The poll, which was overseen by UC Santa Cruz professors Craig Haney and Aida Hurtado, found almost 65% opposed to executing the mentally retarded. But half said it was all right to put juveniles to death.

John G. Healey, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said that if California resumes executions, the state will buck the trend of most Western nations disavowing the death penalty. Capital punishment, he said, is used where established authorities want to subjugate less-powerful minorities.

“The death penalty is a human rights violation,” Healey said.

The Los Angeles press conference included Pastor Ignacio Castuera of Hollywood United Methodist Church, who said the major religions in the world have spoken against capital punishment.

“The death penalty is the most premeditated crime that you could possibly have,” Castuera said.

The telephone poll was conducted by the San Francisco-based Field Institute in December--before the Harris execution date was set. The poll has an error margin of plus or minus 4.5%.