Letter: Swift justice could help deter criminals

Virgil Sestini

Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.

It seems ironic that in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, the butcher of Bagdad, was captured, tried, judged guilty, allowed one appeal and executed in a short span of time, while our murderers enjoy long lives on death row.

In this country we have attorneys who use every ploy and legal maneuver in the book to prolong the lives of murderers and others sentenced to death. We have a system of appeal after appeal for those who have committed murder and other heinous crimes to the point that our justice system is laughable. Perhaps we should take an example from Iraq and allow our convicted murderers to enjoy the same swift application of justice.

Supposedly we are in Iraq to instill the values of democracy in that country; it might be worthwhile if we allowed the events leading to Saddam's execution to teach us an equally valuable lesson. The entire series of events was thorough, swift, fair and final. Saddam was given his legal day before the Iraqi bar of justice with one final appeal; his lawyers had every opportunity to fully defend their client's legal rights.

If our justice system were on a par with that recently demonstrated in Iraq, our criminals might have a greater fear of the death sentence applied in a similar swift, fair and final manner. Perhaps with real fear for quick application of the death sentence, there would be fewer propensities for drive-by gangland shootings and wanton murders that we read about every day.

Virgil A. Sestini, Las Vegas