Buddhists protest death sentence.

Last July, the Maricopa County Attorney's office convicted a pair of teenagers in the 1991 slaying of nine Thai Buddhist monks in their Phoenix Wat Promkunaram temple. One of the boys dodged the death penalty by pleading guilty and testifying against his friend. The other, nineteen-year-old Johnathan Doody, now may face execution.

Rather than being pleased with this outcome, the international Buddhist community is advocating mercy for Doody. "We do not believe in the death penalty of any kind," says Mettanando Bhikku, a monk and visiting professor at Harvard. "We don't believe in revenge. We believe that corrections can be made in person."

That position has placed Arizona's law-and-order types in an ironic bind. Maricopa County Prosecutor Richard Romley, who continues pushing for Doody's execution, has seen his usual bloodlust constituency evaporate. Under Arizona's Victim's Rights law, friends and family of the victims can appear in court to call for harsh justice, buttressing the prosecutor's position. This time, however, the aggrieved are urging just the opposite.

Romley's position nonetheless remains firm, according to spokesman Bill FitzGerald. "We're not discussing our motivations with the media right now," he says. "We'll discuss that before the court. But we listen to everybody. The Buddhist monks who represent the temple back in Thailand as well as in the United States can express their opinion."

For his part, Bhikku says a sense of loss doesn't justify further suffering. "It was a very scary thing that happened to my colleagues," he says. "But a respect for life is the first precept in Buddhism. We fundamentally oppose the taking of life."

Wat temple members both here and abroad are scouting a new defense team for Doody, and have asked the United Nations to review possible human-rights violations. "We've even pressed the Thai parliament into sending a letter to President Clinton," Bhikku says. "We simply don't think this boy should be killed."