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The Chico chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union brought its views on the death penalty to the Bell Memorial Union on Sunday to sway opinions on the issue.
The Reverend Carroll Pickett was the main speaker at the event, promoting his new video, "At the Death House Door."
Pickett was joined by two other speakers, Greg Wilhoit, an exonerated death-row inmate, and ACLU of Northern California Death Penalty Policy Director Natasha Minsker.
Pickett was a supporter of the death penalty but changed his view after attending to 95 people in Texas who were sentenced to death and later executed.
"It is all right to become a friend to someone getting ready to die," Pickett said. "Many people on death row are good people."
Pickett's main duty while attending to death row inmates in Texas was to "seduce their emotions" so they would not resist on the way to the gurney where they would be executed, he said.
Pickett described prison employees as refusing to touch a person's body after they had been executed, then not showing up to work for two to three days after an execution.
The death penalty does not deter crime or serve any purpose, Pickett said.
"Our system in Texas is (broken)," he said. "We're trying to show people that the death penalty is abused."
Pickett has traveled to 28 states since March 3 of last year, he said. He has spoken to many senators and other political leaders to try to change their opinions.
In attendance at the event were John and Leslie Howard, who have lived in Chico since 1983. The married couple supports the death penalty if used properly, they said.
"I think some people deserve to die for what they did," John Howard said. "There's some people who do such deleterious things to other people that seem rather incurable … their actions should be reprimanded."
When someone who is not mentally ill kills an innocent human being, they deserve the death penalty, John Howard said.
"I'm skeptical that some of those people are curable," John Howard said.
Leslie Howard thinks the prison system needs to be adjusted to focus on rehabilitation, she said. The death penalty should be used only with undeniable evidence and to protect others.
"I wouldn't use it as a punishment, but more for the safety of society just because there's people in prison who could be hurting a lot of people," Leslie Howard said. "They could be hurting the prison guards."
Wilhoit was accused of killing his ex-wife in Oklahoma, but was found innocent and escaped the death penalty because of a lack of evidence. He approved of the death penalty even while imprisoned until his fellow inmate was put to death, he said.
"My friend Chuck had been put down like a diseased animal," Wilhoit said. "It was truly an epiphany. In the eyes of God, all of us are redeemable."
Graduate student Mahmoud Saad came to the lecture to learn about the death penalty and how it is used, he said.
"We need to reconsider who deserves the death penalty and what techniques they use because they described very awful techniques," Saad said.
The crowd of about 80 students, faculty and community members got a chance to ask questions at the end of the presentation.
One student came with a list of passages from the Bible, which the student claimed support capital punishment. Pickett disregarded the arguments by saying that the Old Testament is not relevant in today's society and that the student had misconstrued the other passages.
Wilhoit's experience with the Oklahoma legal system has not left him morose, despite losing time with his daughters, he said.
"I'm not bitter, I'm all about forgiveness," Wilhoit said. "I didn't get out because of the system, I got out in spite of the system."
Mike North can be reached at
mnorth@theorion.com
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