Beckie Miller kept the details of her 18-year-old son's murder to herself during her chat Monday at the Brophy College Preparatory school in Phoenix.

But the 1,200 students did not need to hear how her son Brian was shot to death, by a teen in 1991 over $10, to understand the enormity of her loss.

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"The guilt and 'what ifs' families struggle with never goes away," Miller said as some students bowed their heads. "The pain is always there."

Miller, head of the Phoenix chapter of Parents of Murdered Children, helped begin Brophy's "Summit on Human Dignity," a four-day affair tied to the school's production of Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking. The play, which explores the final days of a character on death row, runs through Saturday at the private school's Black Box Theatre.

Brophy jumped at the chance to mount the production after learning Robbins would allow only Jesuit high schools and universities willing to hold capital-punishment discussions to perform it. The request backs the Jesuits' tenets of "Men for Others" and Brophy's goal of educating students who can help enact change, said Adria Renke, the school's vice president.

"While capital punishment is an ugly topic, we would be doing our students a disservice if we didn't prepare them for these harsh realities," she said. "We're not telling them how they should think, but we want them to know how these policies impact their lives."

Students attended a two-hour forum Monday in the school's gymnasium before heading to class for further review. Speakers included lawyer Larry Hammond, who questioned the "inferior" defense secured by indigent inmates; the Rev. Stephen Barber, chaplain of the San Quentin Penitentiary parish, who spoke of death-row inmates who want to do die to "relieve families' suffering"; and lawyer Dan Maynard, who mentioned the 117 national inmates exonerated from death row.

Kent Cattani, a lawyer with the Arizona Attorney General's Office, said he valued all life but wasn't "morally opposed" to the death penalty.

"Because there's a fundamental difference between the taking of an innocent life and carrying out the will of the people," said Cattani, who represents the state in death-row appeal cases.

Lawyer Rudolph Gerber, a former Maricopa County Superior Court judge, spoke of the Bible's reference to "an eye for an eye," saying: "We don't apply this to other crimes. We don't rape the rapists, steal from the thieves or beat up the batterers."

Sophomore Dakota Serna, 15, said, "It's intense how scriptures can be used effectively to argue both sides. It really makes you question your stance on the death penalty." Freshman J.J. Micallef, 15, said, "This is the perfect play and summit for us because we should be reflecting on this now. We're the next generation that has to deal with this issue."