Readers React: Death Penalty: What about the condemned’s family?

To the editor: Sandy Banks is both compassionate and complex in the way she deals with the death penalty. She describes those who have been made victims: the inmates themselves, jurors and taxpayers. (“California’s death penalty isn’t really about death at all,” Column, July 18)

However, one group is missing from her list: the families of the condemned.

We have heard many times about the families of victims who, in fact, have an honored place in our judicial system that allows them to testify at sentencing hearings about their loved ones. But what about those other families? They are equally innocent, never having asked for their roles in the story.

As horrible as the inmate appears to society, he or she still is tied to a group of people who could well love that person greatly and who did nothing to deserve their experience.

Joan Walston, Santa Monica

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To the editor: The death penalty is too serious a subject to be treated so superficially by Banks.

She gives some recognition to the reality that “criminal depravity” can be present in certain individuals. She adds that she has “met families whose lives were ruined by patently evil deeds.”

However, she attributes society’s death penalty sanction to “the instinct for vengeance that pain and horror breed.” In other words, it’s a mindless desire to get even. It is bred by feelings. It is not a thoughtful response.

However, could it be that society — in balancing justice’s scales — finds that the taken or ruined lives can weigh as much as the life of any demonstrably depraved and evil predator, and that this must be so awfully recognized by the death penalty? Or is it that the life of the human predator is more precious?

Jeremiah Flanigan, Long Beach

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To the editor: I agree with Banks’ argument against the death penalty. I would go a step further and call it legalized murder.

Evidence shows that the threat of execution hasn’t deterred heinous crimes. Those crimes are committed by irrational, deeply disturbed people. What prompts them is hard to determine.

In many cases, the injustice and inequality meted out to those living below a level of decency can be pointed to as a cause. But often such crimes are committed out of an unbalanced emotional state.

I’m not suggesting forgiveness. Incarceration and treatment might rehabilitate some, and those it doesn’t should be held in jail.

But to take another’s life based on a jury’s verdict speaks of inhumanity and a system of revenge.

Peggy Aylsworth Levine, Santa Monica