Richard Olson, Herington, Kansas:

Based on anecdotal evidence only, my conclusion is that revenge is the sole motivation of well over half the people I have talked with who endorse the death penalty. I personally think I would prefer execution to decades of life imprisonment with no hope of parole; what joy or gratification is to be found in a life like that? But since I have zero faith in the possibility of an afterlife, execution would not speed me to the guaranteed spot in heaven (which I also do not believe in) my sincere prayer request for forgiveness perhaps secures. My best guess is that the death penalty proponents I mention above, all of whom are more rather than less religious, believe in a literal Hell, and thus desire to kill convicted murderers post haste so as to as expeditiously as possible plop them in the lake-o'-fire for the eternal torture they earned. This is a fantasy that holds no appeal for my imagination.  Of course the members of this group outright reject my claim that execution is societal legitimization of murder. Life imprisonment is in some instances necessary to confine certain incorrigible or untreatable ASPD individuals, I think, although this remorseless group is far from the majority of those who murder. Most who murder are one-time-only actors who pose no more future tendency to murder than the 99% plus who never in their lives do so. No discussion of cruel and unusual punishment should fail to include solitary confinement, itself at least as repugnant as sanctioned state murder. Solitary should never be tolerated for anything other than brief emergency purposes.

 

Nicholas S. Molinari, Brick, New Jersey:
With regard to the gist of your Essay, I see America's bloodlust as a perpetual element within this nation's DNA, its adolescent culture and its undiminished mean-spiritedness. Today's executions, mostly of black men, are to be expected -indefinitely- granted our racist history. In my view, slavery has never ended here, but merely transmuted in form. We wrongly think that the Civil War ended the issue of slavery. Wrong! Post-Civil War, Jim Crow immediately provided a dismal and despicable continuation of racial subjugation and abuse. Many decades of discrimination against black people in employment, housing, education, etc. were thought to have subsided and to have been replaced by equal protection under the law. Wrong! White police officers with trigger fingers find black men such easy targets, they simply feel compelled to squeeze the trigger for the slightest provocation, or none. Much is said about "weeding out" the crazies so they cannot buy guns and massacre groups of innocent people; but never is there mentioned "weeding out" crazy police cadets and officers whose profiles might have indicated trouble ahead, i.e., trouble for black men in their sights. So today's execution ethos, even extending to mentally deficient criminals, is true to our heritage, our national attitude and our mindset as a nation. Indeed, this is an adolescent nation, thinking and acting like immature and mischievous-malicious teenagers. Because we can no longer literally enslave black people; and because we can no longer lynch Black people at will (after doing so about 4,000 times in our history); we can at the very least take back from them their right to vote, and better yet we can execute them in the name of justice and/or God.

 

George Seaman, Evansville, Indiana:

The "that was then and this is now" interpretation of God's word just doesn't work, reverend sir. What is written is written. Why would the Lord God have told His own people to take an eye for an eye if it wasn't His eternal will. I like a lot of what you print, but you are off the mark on capital punishment.

 

Harvey H. Guthrie, Fillmore, California:

Sound and well said.

 

Kenyan Bixby, Novi, Michigan:

Re: your essay. The issue leaves me as conflicted as I've always been over the years. Your position is logical and sound, so why do I still cheer when some evil being is sentenced to die? It's so inconsistent for me, who believes that all guns and other implements used to harm should not exist and, who believes war is an abomination that allows for killing with a clear conscience.

 

Cassandra Fowlkes, Lincoln, Nebraska:

I landed here a newcomer at about the time the legislature voted out capital punishment and now the governor here is trying to get it back. With thoughtful articles like yours, maybe people will see the wrongness of it. I will be handing copies of your article around at church on Sunday. Hope it does some good.

 

Another right-on essay. My father, Frank Hartung was a prof of sociology and criminology at Wayne State University testified at the state Legislature against the death penalty at a time when the legislators were considering passing a law allowing it. The bill was rejected. Considering the alternative, I am happy for your age, but sorry to hear that illness would prohibit you from protesting. But you'd be there in spirit anyway!

 

Joel Pugh, Dallas, Texas:

I agree with you and believe that capital punishment is wrong. I believe in punishing capital gains with a higher tax rate.

 

David Carlin, Newport, Rhode Island:
To be unconstitutional the death penalty would have to be both cruel AND unusual. No doubt it is cruel; it was cruel when the bill of rights was adopted more than 200 years ago. But is it unusual?

 

Mark Bendure, Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan:

I share your opposition to capital punishment.  The best argument in its favor is that some miscreants have done such horrific things that they don't deserve the public expenditures (that could be better spent elsewhere) or public approval to sully an already sullied   world with their very existence, and if it expresses public outrage over the acts that resulted in the sentence, all the better.  Still, there are many more and compelling arguments against it.  As I recall the ten commandments, as translated in the King James edition, the commandment was simply, "Thou shalt not kill."  For true Bible-believers, of whom I am not one, that would seem to be the end of the discussion.

 

Stephanie Ray, Altoona, Pennsylvania:

Good for you for taking that long look at capital punishment. I think it does brutalize us whenever and wherever it happens. America has gone nuts on crime and punishment issues, and I, for one, am scandalized by it. Your essays come to be via a friend. They become my Friday morning treat as I almost always see what you are saying and why. I even learn something once in a while. You should charge for them.

 

Fred Fenton, Concord, California:

The surprise ending to your essay against the death penalty raises an important moral question, should life imprisonment also be considered "cruel and unusual punishment?" I believe it should. A [person I know] recently spent a night in jail on a DUI charge. He was treated in insulting ways by the guards but observed minority prisoners getting far worse treatment. He told me he could never endure more than one night of that. Yet his experience was nothing compared to the solitary confinement some prisoners are subjected to for life. Nor can we forget repeated water boarding and other forms of torture that have been administered to prisoners held by the U.S. Life imprisonment denies the possibility of genuine repentance, moral growth, and reform. It is both cruel and unjust. 

 

Susan Carroll, Pleasant Ridge, Michigan:

I have long thought that life in prison without the possibility of parole sounds much worse than a death penalty. In a way, it seems like executed criminals are getting off easy.

 

Tracey Martin, Southfield, Michigan:

I am mostly amused by cries of "justice for the deceased!" He or she is dead, permanently removed functionally from our association. There can be neither justice nor injustice for her or him. Quite the contrary, the death penalty is not about justice at all; it's about vengeance. You took from me what was mine; my grief must be assuaged by your death. Like you, I celebrate Michigan's refusal to join the general barbarity, perhaps exemplified by the quote you offer us: "A Louisiana prosecutor came straight to the point, saying recently that 'we need to kill more people." I'm confident that he did not have in mind population control. Life in prison without possibility of parole, cruel and unusual? That seems to me worth a separate essay.

 

Richard M. Schrader, Jacksonville, Florida:

Your essay on the cry for capital punishment, and the public outburst for retribution of a lion killer are linked to the same core bias...TRIBALISM! Tribalism in its simplest form is "us" against "them" with a strong sense of belonging and a sated feeling of superiority. It replaces compassion, understanding and empathy. When we sink to tribalism, we debase humanity irreparably. And that is what we have done both in this country and throughout the world.

 

Michael Fultz, Clarkston, Michigan:

Capital punishment is one of the things we do to reduce crime, supposedly. Actually, from what I've read, China executes far more people than anyone else, but they also have a lot of people. This suggests to me that a certain percentage of people in a country will commit crime, and a percentage of that crime will be violent. So, capital punishment and imprisonment don't deter crime, they merely keep criminals off the street; that's the best we can do at this moment. The reality is that our safety has more to do with the goodwill of our neighbors (and our own vigilance) than anything else, because there are too many people, and too few police.