Divergent views on death penalty debate

Re “State Will Help Shape Fate of Lethal Injection,” Feb. 23

This (near) execution has taught me one thing: If we didn’t have the death penalty, Terri Winchell’s family wouldn’t have waited more than 20 years for Michael Morales to be executed and wouldn’t have had to endure the debacle of this last week. The victim’s family serves every day of a prison sentence that a death row inmate does. Ricky Ortega, who instigated the murder, has a life sentence. Nobody has been waiting every day for him to be killed.

ERIC DEBODE

California People of Faith

Working Against the Death Penalty

Los Angeles

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It is argued that the death penalty brings closure to the victim’s family, some even say with divine approval. When Amy Biehl of Newport Beach was stabbed and killed by a youth mob while working for reconciliation in South Africa, her parents found closure by creating the Amy Biehl Foundation, including a bakery for the unemployed in the town where their daughter was killed. The parents hired two of the youths involved in the mob to work in the bakery so as to give them an opportunity to never fall back to violent revenge again.

JOCHEN STRACK

Pasadena

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If the death penalty were to be abolished, any criminal given a life sentence who twisted an ankle while confined would suffer more pain than if he had been given a lethal injection properly. Every day, thousands of patients in the operating room are given sodium pentothal or a similar agent, followed by a muscle relaxant that allows them to be operated on. They awaken with no memory of pain incurred. Starting the IV is the most pain they feel. I would not call that cruel or inhumane. The uproar over lethal injection is just bogus. It is being used to bring about the cessation of the death penalty. This should be the discussion, not the efficacy of the method.

LEONARD A. ZIVITZ MD

Fullerton

The writer is a retired anesthesiologist.