O.C. Views on Execution Span Wide Spectrum

After only a few restless hours of sleep, Lori Milas drove to her Garden Grove office early Tuesday to post a sign on the window, notifying her customers that the small medical billing business would be closed “due to personal convictions of the owner.”

Milas, 39, of Garden Grove, who had been watching the events surrounding the execution of Robert Alton Harris unfold on television since 4 a.m., said she needed to express her opposition to the death penalty and to mark the state’s first execution in 25 years.

“It always feels like life just goes on after something like this,” she said, admitting that she still felt stunned. “Everyone picks up and keeps on going. But an execution is a very final thing. I needed some time to think about it and pray.”

For the most part, Milas’ reaction to Harris’ death in the San Quentin gas chamber at dawn Tuesday was the exception in Orange County.

One of those who rejoiced was Kay Brenneman of Anaheim, whose 12-year-old son was sexually assaulted and strangled in 1981. The killer, Robert Jackson Thompson, is on Death Row.

“I was relieved,” said Brenneman, who also stayed up most of the night, watching the televised coverage of the execution. “I feel like my son’s murderer stands a chance of dying. Last night was a sign that others on Death Row are going to die.”

Other supporters of the death penalty, such as Tom Malcolm, president of the Orange County Bar Assn., said the 14-year delay in delivering the sentence produced mixed feelings.

“It’s a complicated issue,” Malcolm said. “When you see it happen it still creates some concern. . . . I’m sure all of the stops and the starts that occurred must have caused him all sorts of emotional agony. . . .”

Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates expressed similar concerns that the process should proceed more swiftly but focused attention on the emotional toll to the victims’ families.

“I have a great deal of compassion for the family of the victims and the anguish they experienced during the 14-year-or-so period during which justice did not take place,” he said. “I just wish that the system didn’t take this much time.”

Orange County Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi expressed relief that the execution was finally over.

“I think it was long overdue,” Capizzi said. “In my opinion we have spent far too much time, energy, newsprint, et cetera, et cetera, than was necessary. It’s been 14 years since those two lives were violently snuffed out and it’s a sad indictment of the justice system that it’s taken 14 years to impose the appropriate penalty.”

U.S. Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) agreed that the Harris execution had been needlessly delayed for too many years by constant appeals. “Society has a right to expect there will be reasonable finality to judgments in criminal cases,” he said.

The congressman defended capital punishment, saying that it was a deterrent to premeditated felonies and murders committed by inmates serving life sentences.

But opponents of the death penalty, such as Milas, disagreed that capital punishment was an effective deterrent.

“The death penalty is not a solution, and it doesn’t even serve justice, I don’t think,” Milas said. “It’s just more violence. If the goal is to stop killing, then killing isn’t the answer.”

UC Irvine criminology professor Arnold Binder agreed that the death penalty did not achieve the goal of reducing crime.

“There’s no question that it doesn’t have an effect,” Binder said. “You have states that are side by side, like Minnesota and Wisconsin. One has the death penalty, the other doesn’t. Yet the rates of crime are overwhelmingly identical.”

But Binder said supporters of the death penalty generally argue that if it deters one murderer, then it is worthwhile.

“Clearly, support for the death penalty has to do with a desire for vengeance, retribution and a feeling of justice,” he said.

A practicing Catholic, Milas said her position did not simply reflect the church but is rooted in her belief that life is beyond value and holds the potential for redemption.

“I just believe that every life has the possibility of being redeemed at some time, and I wouldn’t want to shorten a life by one second,” Milas said. “I do not believe that someone has the right to take the life of someone else.”

Dana Cody, executive director of the Christian Action Council, an Anaheim-based anti-abortion lobbying group, admitted that her opposition to killing fetuses obscured her feelings toward the death penalty.

“Most Christian people are for the death penalty, I think, because they feel that it’s something commanded by God,” Cody said. “I don’t have an opinion either way. I don’t know. I just don’t think there’s an easy solution.”

A clear opponent of the death penalty, Sister Louise Ann Micek, a nun who serves as a chaplain at the county’s jail for women, said she was saddened by Harris’ execution and hoped that it would prevent future juries from issuing the death sentence.

Micek, who administers to Cynthia Coffman and Maria del Rosio Alfaro, both of whom face possible death sentences for murder, said: “I just hope that the next juries that have to meet on capital punishment will think this out much better in the future.

“In the past, when the death penalty really wasn’t operating, the sentence seemed almost an abstract thing. But now that someone really has been executed, my hope is that juries will in the future see things differently and sentence people to life without parole rather than to death.”

Dick Herman, a Newport Beach attorney who is active in the American Civil Liberties Union, deplored Harris’ execution and said statewide revulsion over it may eliminate capital punishment altogether.

“My personal reaction is shame that California has joined the ‘Death Belt,’ that group of Southern and archconservative states that practice the death penalty,” he said. “It is not at all in the tradition of California.”

Yet, the uncertainty expressed by Leslie Morrison, 31, of Costa Mesa, reflected that of others.

“I’m not sure how I feel about it,” Morrison said. “I don’t like the state taking the place of God, but I also resent having to pay taxes to keep guys like him alive, even behind bars for life.

“There just seems to be no easy answer. I guess people feel they have to get revenge. If a member of my family was murdered, I guess I’d feel that way, wouldn’t you?”

Times staff writers Jeffrey A. Perlman and Kristina Lindgren contributed to this story.