To the editor:

The U.S. Supreme Court by a 6-3 vote recently upheld as not “cruel or unusual punishment” Kentucky’s law, which provides for lethal injection to executive convicted murderers.

I am opposed to capital punishment for the following reasons:

¢ Judicial error cannot be corrected once an innocent person has been executed.

¢ It should be noted that few European countries have capital punishment, but they usually do have effective gun control laws.

¢ Capital punishment is often discriminatorily applied against minority groups who are more likely to be convicted and executed.

¢ American states with capital punishment often have far more murder convictions than American states without capital punishment. Deterrence appears to be more the certainty of being caught than the severity of the punishment.

¢ Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have opposed capital punishment. Colonial Pennsylvania Quakers established “reformatories” or penitentiaries where the offenders could repent and then be restored to society. Christians do not seek revenge.

¢ Before a legislator votes for the death penalty, he should visit a prison’s death row, where the state, like a cat, cruelly plays with the human mouse before killing it. The legislator should ask himself whether he would like to do the killing that he pays someone else to do.

John A. Bond,
Lawrence