Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Watered-down death penalty unfair to taxpayer

Regarding the Salt Lake Tribune story that was reprinted in the June 16 Las Vegas Sun, “Debate over death penalty renewed by Utah case”: A convicted killer, Ronnie Lee Gardner, spent 25 years on Utah’s death row before he was executed June 18 by a firing squad.

An eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth certainly seems fair to the poor victim of a wanton, vicious killer, no?

Let history tell us how far the death penalty effectively has decreased in fairness. The guillotine, which was an effective tool for dealing with executions during the Middle Ages, was replaced by hangings, which later gave way to firing squads as a method of justice in dealing with convicts; then becoming popular was electrocution, which was replaced by the gas chamber. Then, due to the ever-increasing whining by do-good politicians and others about “cruel and unusual punishment,” the death penalty was watered down to our present dream-producing lethal injection, which is also being challenged as unfair.

Notice how more horrendous and gruesome the killings have become with the softening of the method of execution. And ask taxpayers how fair California’s death row is in harboring almost 700 killers, many of whom have been on it so long they’ve “homesteaded.”

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