Brown Ties Death Penalty Stance to Upbringing, Faith : Politics: She says that, like her father, she opposes capital punishment law but would enforce it.

Standing in the old Governor’s Mansion where she watched her father agonize over death penalty cases, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Brown on Tuesday said her heartfelt opposition to capital punishment is rooted in her unique upbringing and Catholic faith.

Dogged by questions about why she is against the death penalty, Brown returned to the house where she lived as a teen-ager to discuss her personal views on the issue for the first time in the campaign. The site was chosen to remind voters that her father, former Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown Sr., opposed executions but nonetheless allowed 36 people to go to the gas chamber during his eight years as governor.

“I oppose it because my father taught me it was wrong and the religious experiences I had reinforced that,” Brown said at the event staged for invited reporters at the 117-year-old Victorian house that now is a tourist attraction.

But like her father, Brown maintained that she, too, would conscientiously enforce the law. Brown said she agreed with Republican Gov. Pete Wilson’s decision not to commute the sentence of double murderer Robert Alton Harris, who was executed in 1992.

Brown said her distaste for the death penalty and her willingness to abide by the law are not contradictory.

“So while I hold my own beliefs dear, the people and the courts have spoken,” said Brown, acknowledging that she is on the wrong side of a hot-button political issue. “California’s death penalty is the law of the state. And I will enforce that law.”

Wilson wasted no time criticizing his Democratic opponent. The governor found the mansion “an interesting choice” for Brown’s 45-minute news conference because, he said, “it will recall to those who may have forgotten that her father in the exercise of his conscientious view excused about 23 people, some of whom were subsequently paroled.”

At a breakfast meeting with reporters in Los Angeles, Wilson said he sees his challenger’s position as inconsistent.

“I think if you have someone who holds what they profess to be a deep personal conscientious objection, that you have to expect . . . that they are not going to be much of an advocate for the death penalty and will find ways as did Pat Brown to avoid imposing it,” Wilson said.

It was too early Tuesday to gauge how Brown’s explanation will play in the hotly contested campaign or whether her message will assuage voters who have identified the fight against crime as the state’s top priority, according to several polls.

Before the June primary, Brown repeatedly refused to discuss her private thoughts about capital punishment, saying that the only relevant question was whether she would uphold the death penalty law as governor, which she promised to do. But Brown’s refusal allowed Wilson to portray her as soft on crime and threatened to overshadow other elements of her campaign.

Brown said Tuesday that her personal opposition is not based on a single factor, but is a distillation of family values, religious teachings and personal beliefs. “This is for me a uniquely complex and personal matter,” she said.

Pressed for a fuller explanation, Brown said it is “a gut thing. That is it as much as anything, and why it is hard to respond in the context of a political campaign which is driven by 30-second sound bites.”

At a lectern in the mansion’s ornate living room, complete with an elaborate chandelier and a 1950s-style console TV, the 48-year-old state treasurer sought to focus on the influences that forged her views.

“Because, you see, for me, the death penalty is not a political textbook issue,” Brown said in her opening statement, which she said was prepared over the past 10 days. “I literally grew up surrounded by it. I never volunteered for the assignment, nor did I have the choice to opt out. It was quite simply my life as the Catholic daughter of the governor of California.”

Brown recalled how her father, who served as governor from 1959 to 1967, would sit in a mustard-colored chair just a few feet from where she was standing and weigh the fate of inmates on San Quentin’s Death Row. He allowed 36 executions and commuted the death sentences of 23 prisoners.

She reminded reporters that “no governor in modern history,” including her brother, Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., and Republicans Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian and Wilson, “sent more people to the gas chamber, and yes, spared more lives with executive clemency than did my father.”

Brown said that after her father went to bed she would surreptitiously come down a spiral staircase and read his thick, black briefing books that laid out clemency requests.

She also described the conflicting voices she heard outside the old mansion.

At times, she would pass anti-death penalty protesters outside the house and once watched an elderly woman beg her father for mercy for her son.

At another time, she heard “thunderous boos” when she and her mother were introduced at the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley. The outcry, she said, was because her father had stayed the execution of the celebrated “red light bandit,” Caryl Chessman, who ultimately was put to death after his conviction for robbery, kidnaping and sexual crimes against two young women.

Brown noted that times have changed since the days of Chessman, when people were condemned to death for crimes other than murder. Today, she said, the state has a much tougher and more specific law that identifies “special circumstances” in which the death penalty can be applied.

Asked whether she has discussed the issue with her brother, who strongly opposed capital punishment, she said: “I’ve had very little conversation with Jerry about the issue of the death penalty.”

Her brother appointed Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, whose opposition to capital punishment led voters to remove her from office in 1986.

On Tuesday, Kathleen Brown said she would have “simple” criteria for appointing judges. “I will look for experience, intelligence, integrity, competence, diversity and a total commitment to enforce the laws of the state of California, including the death penalty,” she said.

She also pledged not to use the commutation powers “to tamper with or undermine” the state’s death penalty statute.

Wilson suggested that, given Brown’s deep opposition to capital punishment, she would use clemency powers to spare the lives of Death Row inmates.

He also questioned whether her death penalty views squared with her support for abortion rights.

But Brown scoffed at tying the two issues together.

“I think the two issues are entirely separate,” she said. “Remember, the death penalty is society’s judgment about crime and punishment. The issue of abortion is the issue of individual choice and rights of privacy.”

Times staff writer Daniel M. Weintraub contributed to this story.