To the editor:

Professor Mike Hoeflich’s column in Wednesday’s paper raises a provocative question. He asks what image Saddam’s trial and execution gives the world about American justice. I submit it does nothing more than to confirm what the rest of the world already knows about American justice.

They know we are the only civilized nation that still kills people when they are bad, something we do with fervor – especially in Texas, the home of our current president, where minors and mentally retarded people are killed.

They know that in America the rich literally get away with murder (Robert Blake, O.J. Simpson, etc.) while the poor receive court-appointed attorneys who are sometimes so bad that they sleep through the death penalty trials, yet the conviction and sentence stands.

Third, they know that embezzlers and thieves in corporate cultures can steal hundreds of millions from the poor and face virtually no time in jail while the poor man who steals a loaf of bread with a “three strikes” record can spend the rest of his life there.

More than any of this, they know that in America the rich have become obscenely richer while the poor continue to suffer, and, frankly, no one cares.

Saddam’s death and hanging merely confirms what the rest of the world already believes, rightly, about America’s system of law and economic justice.

Patrick Nichols,

Lawrence