DATE: Friday, July 25, 1997                 TAG: 9707250714

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A11  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: ROME                              LENGTH:   46 lines

ITALY MOURNS DEATH OF O'DELL, LEFTISTS CALL FOR VIRGINIA BOYCOTT

Flags flew at half-staff in Sicily on Thursday after the execution of Joseph O'Dell in Virginia, and the island's capital city offered a place in its oldest cemetery for the convicted rapist and killer.

The outpouring of support for O'Dell was nationwide. Leftist deputies in Parliament called for a boycott of Virginia and eulogized O'Dell as a ``friend'' and symbol of opposition to the death penalty. Newspapers in various cities lamented his death.

``O'Dell executed. No more hope,'' read the headline in the Rome daily La Repubblica. A correspondent for RAI state television, reporting live from outside the prison where O'Dell died by lethal injection Wednesday night, told viewers, ``We have lost the battle.''

The extraordinary support for O'Dell in Italy, where there is strong aversion to the death penalty but most U.S. executions go unnoticed, resulted from an appeal by Pope John Paul II for the Catholic O'Dell, and a public relations campaign by his Italian supporters.

Backing by Sister Helen Prejean, who wrote the book on which the movie ``Dead Man Walking'' is based, also helped galvanize sentiment for O'Dell, who was found guilty of raping, torturing and killing a woman in Virginia Beach in 1985. ``Dead Man Walking'' is well-known in Italy.

Up to 1,000 people gathered in a Rome square, Campo de Fiori, for a Wednesday night vigil around a giant statue of Giordano Bruno, a poet condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as a heretic and burned there at the stake in 1600. Giant screens showed the live RAI broadcast. When news of the execution was announced, some wept. A banner read, ``The death penalty is murder, not justice.''

O'Dell's bride Lori Urs, whom he married hours before the execution, said she wanted O'Dell buried in Palermo, Sicily. The city's mayor, Leoluca Orlando, had championed O'Dell's cause.

A city spokesman said the body would be buried in the cemetery of Santa Maria de Gesu, the resting place of innocent victims of the Sicilian Mafia, but also assassinated mobsters. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

O'Dell KEYWORDS: CAPITAL PUNSHISMENT DEATH ROW EXECUTION

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