Correspondence
SULLIVAN, WALTER F. & DOYLE, KEVIN M. & SUNDERLAND, JIM & CRAIG, PAUL & DINGERSON, LEIGH & WILSON, R. C. & GOW, HAVEN BRADFORD & Lyon, John
CORRESPONDENCE Morsels of gore New York, N.Y. To the Editors: I would love to believe Richard Dieter ["The Death Penalty Dinosaur," January 15] when he argues fiscal concern will help ease capital...
...R.C...
...PAUL CRAIG Two-edged swords Washington, D.C...
...As the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover observed, "The professional law enforcement officer is convinced from experience that the hardened criminal has been and is deterred from killing based on the prospect of the death penalty.'' A 1970-1971 study by the Los Angeles Police Department buttressed Mr...
...First, it helps deter crimes like premeditated murder...
...Maybe we have developed a sense of humanity that will rightfully place capital punishment in the company of the dinosaurs...
...Dieter uses statistics to argue that the death penalty is dying on its own...
...From my seventy-three years of living in a Catholic environment, I see a church that has not felt this duty to be an important priority...
...Most of the states follow this Rambo solution...
...If the odds were high that they would be executed if convicted of murder, it seems reasonable that capital punishment could be an effective deterrent...
...For a few moments I wondered if my job as Director of the National Coalition to Abolish(continued on page 254) CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 226) the Death Penalty isn't kind of trivial...
...The USSR, Iran, South Africa, and China kill their citizens through capital punishment also, but none of our allies does...
...That society which cannot deal efficiently with the perpetrators of heinous crime works for its own demise...
...This afternoon I read the excellent article about capital punishment by Richard Dieter...
...JOHN LYON The society's right Arlington Heights, 111...
...To the Editors: It is obvious that Mr...
...It encourages two opposed reactions, both of which are inimical to its continued existence: (l)Anomie...
...The study revealed a 5-1 ratio of deterrence over non-deterrence as reported by those in the best position to make such a judgment: the criminals themselves...
...To the Editors: I share Richard Dieter's stubborn confidence [' 'The Death Penalty Dinosaur," January 15] that one day "the American people may well combine to strike down once and for all the notion that there is a clean and proper way to kill another human being under the state's total control...
...Their fate is to be buried up to their necks and stoned until they are dead...
...JIM SUNDERLAND Civilized or not Mt...
...KEVIN M. DOYLE Down with death row Richmond, Va...
...Ninety-nine criminals participated in the study, each giving his reason why he committed his crime unarmed or did not use his weapon...
...The high cost of capital trials, the subsequent appeals, and the housing of death-row prisoners over relatively long periods of time sound costly indeed...
...bishops' twenty-five-year-old statement about the duty of public authority to help correct the evils of unjust discrimination...
...To the Editors: The death penalty is justified for two reasons...
...Thank you for this editorial reminder that our current federal administration is also insensitive on this issue...
...What price won't the public pay for the real thing...
...HAVEN BRADFORD GOW American Federation of Police Discriminant church Stow, Ohio To the Editors: Your editorial "Time to Do Right," [January 29] noted the U.S...
...But, rather than eliminate the death penalty, wouldn't it be better to redistribute the odds...
...To suggest that prisoners guilty of heinous crimes belong in the same category as innocent victims of the Holocaust is repulsive...
...Can anyone look at the basic contours of either our present system of interminable delays on death row or a system of liberalized life-sentences and say that the laws are just-that is, beautiful...
...The marks of Catholicism - one, holy, catholic, apostolic, and white - are unlikely to be altered in a church that almost ignores racism in its teaching obligation...
...He follows up with, "The Holocaust...
...To the Editors: I would love to believe Richard Dieter ["The Death Penalty Dinosaur," January 15] when he argues fiscal concern will help ease capital punishment into extinction...
...Despite the polls with their misleading results, the support for the death penalty is a mile wide but an inch deep...
...This approach does little to strengthen any argument against capital punishment...
...2) The pre-emption of the function of the state by sub-groups within the state who will do justice for the aggrieved: the "brothers," the clan, the Mafia, Cosa Nostra, or the vigilantes in general...
...Second, the death penalty is justified on moral grounds...
...But consider the energy and resources devoted to the simulation of violence and death in popular media...
...WALTER F. SULLIVAN Bishop of Richmond A Rambo solution Denver, Colo...
...Furthermore, I am grateful to him for reminding all of us who claim to be "pro-life" of how important it is to rededicate ourselves to the struggle so that the day, when the death penalty achieves dinosaur status, will come soon, before many more of our sisters and brothers on death row join the tragic company of those for whom it will have come too late...
...Here in the United States, the fate of the two thousand men, women, and children on death row is to be gassed, hanged, shot, electrocuted, or injected until they are dead...
...WILSON...
...Dieter is against the death penalty, but it is less obvious why...
...After all, we are certainly more civilized than the Pakistanis...
...However, I don't think it will happen if we pursue some of the thoughts expressed in "The Death Penalty Dinosaur...
...However, one could conclude that rather than eliminate capital punishment, the state should speed up the process...
...If capital punishment is a relic of a more barbaric past, we need to attack the idea of the death penalty without resorting to arguments that may strengthen the position of those who want to keep it...
...To me even abortion is of lesser evil consequence...
...Dieter writes about the supposed deterrent effect of capital punishment: "If they (criminals) really weigh the odds, they'll realize that 1 out of 200 murderers receives the death penalty, and that at present far fewer are executed, some many years down the road...
...It is hardly a surprise that this administration's policy of resolving conflict through violent means should extend to a tiny number of people who commit homicide, mainly the poor and minorities...
...But of course he may just be writing for liberals...
...Of course not...
...Dieter refers to the number of persons waiting "to be gassed, hanged, shocked, shot, or injected...
...LEIGH DINGERSON The stale's duty Sheboygan, Wis...
...To the Editors: This morning I read in the Washington Post about two twenty-five-year-old Pakistanis who had been sentenced to death...
...Hoover's observation...
...The state should not be in the business of killing people...
...The anomic individual withdraws into hopelessness, retiring from public concerns, for "there is no justice...
...Calvary, Wis...
...Their crime was adultery...
...Consider the hours spent before televisions and movie screens devouring every last morsel of gore...
...Survivors of Nazism, or relatives of those who suffered and died in the death camps, must, I would think, be greatly offended by Dieter's comparison...
...To the Editors: Richard Dieter's hope that the death penalty will be relegated to the same grave as dinosaurs needs to be heard by Americans, especially our Catholic community...
...But some of these could just as validly be used to support legal killing...
...To the Editors: Maybe Richard Dieter is right...
...If society has the moral right and obligation to act in collective self-defense against aggression emanating from without, then society likewise has the moral right and obligation to defend itself against aggression emanating from within...
...Charity also must be displayed towards the victims of crimes and their families...
...The journalistic opening and the rhetorical close of his article suggest that he is arguing an en-thymeme, the suppressed premise of which would perhaps not be agreed upon by all his readers: That all Christians worth their gospel salt must be against capital punishment...
...But are the two systems so different because of the way the condemned spend their last few minutes of life...
...When, for example, someone has raped and murdered a child, capital punishment is an act of retribution and demonstrates that a society and legal system genuinely are dedicated to pre-, serving and protecting the rights and safety of the people...
Vol. 115 • April 1988 • No. 8
