Protesters Plead for Harris’ Life : Vigil: A group collects signatures for petitions aimed at repealing the capital-punishment law. Others react with disdain.

As Robert Alton Harris awaited his appointment with the gas chamber in San Quentin Prison, a small group of death penalty protesters stood vigil Thursday on a knoll outside the Ventura County Hall of Justice pleading to spare his life.

But for every passerby who signed petitions to repeal the state’s capital-punishment law, others looked with contempt on the placard carriers and uttered scornful remarks.

John Edwards scoffed when asked to sign as he returned from a lunch break to rejoin the jury on a rape case.

“I’m tired of supporting all the felons and murderers and rapists of the world,” said Edwards, a Southern California Edison Co. crew foreman from Santa Paula. “The victim of crime has no justice.”

Janet Vining volunteered her signature without hesitation in support of commuting the sentences of more than 300 California inmates on Death Row to life without parole.

“It’s just vengeful. It’s not civilized,” said the Santa Barbara lawyer, who was headed into court to file an appeal in a criminal case. “I feel that when the government kills someone they are doing it in my name, and I don’t believe in state-sanctioned killing.”

The protesters wore buttons that read “Don’t Kill For Me” and bore such signs as “The Death Penalty Is Not a Punishment, It’s a Crime.” The daylong vigil was organized by Ventura County members of Amnesty International and Death Penalty Focus of California, an Oakland-based group opposed to capital punishment.

Jennifer Harlan understood that her appeals fell on many deaf ears because of the heartlessness of Harris’ crime. Harris, who would become the first California inmate to be executed in a quarter-century if the penalty is carried out Tuesday, coldbloodedly gunned down two San Diego teen-agers 14 years ago.

“Harris is a tough one to argue the issue over,” said Harlan, a state civil rights investigator and an Amnesty International member. “But it’s not that we’re defending Harris as much as it is being against a (sentencing) system that’s been proven to discriminate on the basis of race and social standing.”

Tom Higgins, a Ventura lawyer and member of the Death Penalty Focus group, said he wanted to dispel several myths involving the death penalty.

For example, Higgins said, execution is not cheaper than life imprisonment, because of the costs of court appeals. Another inaccurate but widely held belief, he said, is that there is no guarantee of life without parole in California and that the death penalty is a deterrent to murder.

Higgins said the ultimate “myth” is that the Bible supports the death penalty. He noted that it does suggest that murderers in certain circumstances be put to death, but it also suggests, in various passages, executing anyone who curses his father or mother, commits blasphemy or adultery or defies a parent in pursuit of a life of gluttony or drunkenness.

Terri Karle, approached on her way into the County Government Center to pick up birth certificates, did not share the protesters’ sentiments.

“If someone shot one of my kids, I’d want them in the chair,” said Karle, a telephone operator from Port Hueneme, who had six sons in tow Thursday. “If it’s uncalled for, I don’t see why the killer shouldn’t suffer the same consequences.”

Protester Manny Beltran couldn’t see why more people failed to see the issue his way.

The former seminarian has been honored in the past year by government and civic groups for aiding Eric Schimmel, a mentally retarded teen-ager who lived for five days on the streets of Fillmore after being jailed by sheriff’s deputies and then released without his parents’ knowledge.

“We are in no position to take another human’s life. We are not God,” Beltran said.

Added fellow protester Virginia Streat, a Ventura high school teacher: “I think it’s two-faced to say, ‘We think that life is so precious that we’re going to kill you.’ ”

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