SueZann Bosler witnessed her father being stabbed to death, just before the assailant plunged the blade into her skull. It happened in the parsonage of her father's Carol City church in 1986.

Yet, she is an ardent opponent of the death penalty.

The Hallandale Beach resident is expected in Washington this weekend with as many as 500 activists from across the country -- including a half-dozen from South Florida -- who began a four-day fast and vigil in front of the U.S. Supreme Court midnight Thursday that is expected to continue through Sunday.

The eighth annual "Starvin' for Justice" commemorates two key anniversaries in America's uncomfortable relationship with capital punishment.

June 29 marks the 1972 decision in which the high court found the death penalty was applied in an arbitrary and capricious manner and forced all states to rewrite their death penalty laws.

July 2, 1976, is the date when justices allowed executions to resume.

Coming four days and four years apart, these decisions, and the reality of the high court's combustible effect on the issue, is what is placing these activists as close to the marble front steps of justice as they can get.

"The death penalty is one of the issues that shows us how fickle the court is. The law is the same, but what's changed is the people who're interpreting those laws," said Abe Bonowitz of Jupiter, a co-founder of the Florida chapter of Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

"We want people to realize, to be educated on how, no matter what the [state] laws are, the Supreme Court is the ultimate authority."

For the Florida activists, the event comes in the midst of a climate that appears to be warming to their cause. It was helped dramatically by the tale of Frank Lee Smith, a Death Row inmate for 14 years, who died there of cancer in January 2000 -- 11 months before DNA evidence exonerated him of the rape and murder of an 8-year-old Broward County girl.

The case caused outrage, including a rally in March on the steps of the state Capitol and a Florida Bar request that the state Supreme Court allow DNA testing upon request.

The Legislature voted this session to give voters the chance to affirm the death penalty in the state Constitution, while Gov. Jeb Bush signed a bill preventing the execution of mentally retarded prisoners.

"What it really showed to most Americans," Bosler said of the Smith case, "is there is something going on here."

Bosler's assailant never did get to Death Row, though in his first two trials he was sentenced to death. Those rulings were reversed by the Supreme Court and, on the third try, James Bernard Campbell was found guilty again.

But Bosler -- a national figure by then -- was publicly crusading for a life sentence, and that's what Campbell got.

Campell stabbed the Rev. Bill Bosler 23 times on Dec. 22, 1986, in a robbery attempt, as the pastor and his daughter carried Christmas gifts into the parsonage at First Church of the Brethren.

At first, SueZann was angry, but over time the anger dissipated, she said, as she became free to see Campbell as a human being created by God.

"I never had so much hate for anyone in my life," she said. "But I finally broke through that and realize I can't change what he did, but I can change how I feel about him. ... Killing him only diminishes me, you, all of us."

Besides fasting, activists in Washington will leaflet passers-by, participate in street theater -- including a mock execution -- and rally for abolition at a candlelight vigil.

The Rev. Clay Grimsley, of Anointed Fellowship in West Palm Beach, said cases such as Smith's prove the United States needs to adopt alternatives to capital punishment.

"[We're] asking everyone to give pause," he said. "Do we really want to trust our government with the power to kill citizens?"

Marian Dozier can be reached at mdozier@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6643.