So, leaving her home in New England, the 27-year-old traveled last week to the nation's capital of capital punishment in the hopes that her voice would help shame the unforgiving system that silenced her father in 1999, executing him for the murder nearly two decades earlier of an elderly woman.

Here, she joined other relatives of executed convicts at a conference that put on display the passion and tenacity, if not necessarily the effectiveness, of the movement to abolish the death penalty on the books in 38 states.

The gathering assembled more than 300 activists and lawyers at what they said was a ripe moment in the decades-long battle over mercy and retribution in America.

"We're working in an atmosphere where I believe the death penalty is really on the decline," said Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the conference's sponsor, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

This year, the U.S. Supreme Court capped its 2002 decision forbidding the execution of retarded convicts by ruling that capital punishment is also cruel, unusual and impermissible for juveniles.

New York's attempt to revive its 10-year-old death penalty stalled in the state Assembly, and the Texas Legislature added life without parole as an alternative to the death penalty.

Perhaps most strikingly, the number of death sentences around the country continued to drop.

"I would agree with them they've had some significant victories," said Dudley Sharp, a vocal defender of the death penalty in Texas. "You'd be a fool not to observe that."

Although Sharp admires the relentless organization of the self-described abolitionists, he says they deserve little credit for any changes afoot.

Citing a May Gallup poll that found 74 percent support for capital punishment, he said there's been little shift in public opinion — although a Zogby poll reported a 16 percent increase in opposition among Catholics.

The decline in death sentences has several causes, Sharp said. Primarily, court rulings have complicated the appeals process for prosecutors and simply reduced the number of defendants eligible for capital punishment.

"The gains the anti-death penalty movement has made is not because of their efforts," he said. "It's because of judges."

With a new chief justice and another new member expected to arrive soon, the Supreme Court and its future rulings are an open question — although a majority of the remaining justices have been openly critical of death penalty procedures.

At the same time, even optimistic opponents of the death penalty acknowledge that some states could be just one highly publicized crime spree away from again embracing capital punishment.

"We're watching very closely the crime figures in New York," said David Kaczynski, executive director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty.

What holds sway?

They are doing more than watching. There was no evidence of complacency at last week's conference.

Seminars focused on winning new recruits in campuses, churches and legislatures, and discussions wrestled with nuances of strategy.

What would be the best way to sway Americans? Convince them that capital punishment is immoral? Or focus their attention on the justice system's bureaucratic flaws?

Should activists abandon confrontational protests and the kind of inflammatory rhetoric such as the bumper sticker for sale that declared "The Death Penalty is a Hate Crime"?

Whatever the solutions, activists didn't need to look far for evidence of the challenges ahead. Indeed, one sat quietly in the back row of a seminar on death penalty appeals.

There, flipping through a crisp new legal handbook, was Ori T. White, a former Pecos County district attorney who was instrumental in last year's exoneration of Texas death row inmate Ernest Willis.

Declaring Willis innocent, White paved the way for his release. And now in private practice, the lawyer is working on an appeal for a client on death row.

Even so, he still supports the death penalty in appropriate cases. "The system is capable of getting it right," he said.

Other panel discussions offered glimpses not of external obstacles but of subtle, internal divisions within the abolitionist movement.

A morning session was designed to remind its audience that opposition to the death penalty has roots in deep moral values, such as forgiveness and nonviolence.

"Before you can make the death penalty illegal, you must make it immoral," Joseph Parker, pastor of Austin's David Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, told the audience. "Our response to the death penalty must rise from the heart."

That afternoon, a political scientist advised abolitionists that publicly painting capital punishment as immoral would be less effective than attacking the failings of the criminal justice bureaucracy.

"It doesn't require a person to admit their moral code was wrong," said Frank R. Baumgartner of Pennsylvania State University. "It also doesn't require a degree in constitutional interpretation."

Afterward, as activists mingled in the corridor, it was evident that a strategic tailoring of the movement's message held limited appeal.

"I don't spend my time figuring out how to convince pro-death penalty people to be on our side," said Stephen Dear of the North Carolina-based group People of Faith Against the Death Penalty. "I think that's a waste of time."

What the movement needs to do, he said, is energize the vast number of people who oppose capital punishment.

Another activist insisted that the campaign needs to address America's sense of morality, if only to counter arguments that capital punishment is just and brings closure for victims' families.

Talking about "innocence gets you a little of the way," at least to a moratorium so that the system can be fixed, said Renny Cushing. "But at the end of the day, morality closes the deal."

Hidden victims

Firmly opposed to capital punishment even though his own father was murdered, Cushing has long worked to deny the death penalty any claim on the moral high ground.

First, he focused on debunking claims that capital punishment brings victims' families closure, rallying others like him, who opposed the execution of the convicts who killed their daughters, fathers and brothers.

His group's newest initiative highlights what he calls the death penalty's hidden victims — the families of the executed.

It's an approach that death penalty defenders say is misdirected.

Although no one denies that innocent family members suffer at each execution, the death penalty is described by its defenders in terms of individual responsibility.

They say the one truly to blame for the family's misfortune is their own son, brother or father — the convict himself.

"The murderer must be held responsible," said Mary Jane Peterson of the San Antonio Chapter of Parents of Murdered Children.

On the conference's first day, a gathering of the families of executed inmates filled the room with powerful stories of grief.

In the front row sat Babbitt, one of more than a dozen relatives of condemned inmates.

When one woman excused herself to cry, wailing could be heard through the doorway. Soon, others began fighting back tears.

Babbitt leaned against her uncle. Minutes earlier, she had been discussing the toll of the conference and a string of speaking engagements before it.

It had forced her to dwell on how her father, a decorated Marine veteran who came back from Vietnam deeply troubled, was arrested when she was 3 years old for the murder of an elderly woman in California.

All the talking also had, to her surprise, rewarded her.

"Talking about it out loud, instead of just thinking about it," she said, had stirred dormant memories "that I don't ever want to forget."

As described by his daughter, Manuel Babbitt did what he could to help raise his daughter from a prison cell while she, in turn, doted on him from afar.

She would daydream in class about him returning home from prison. And, after he was executed, she would dream of him finally free of shackles.

mrobbins@express-news.net