‘Proper Punishment’

Your editorial (June 19), “Proper Punishment,” was not very proper in its conclusion that “slumlords” should be punished.

Dr. Milton Avol is guilty of no crime, unless capitalism is a crime. His tenants don’t have to live in those particular buildings, but they obviously choose to do so with their own free will. Either Avol or his manager had to approve these tenants’ applications to live there in the first place. Such approval does not give these tenants any special rights to live there permanently or to enjoy any conditions other than those the landlord chooses to provide. Let them move if they don’t like it!

I admit that I was vaguely amused by Judge Veronica McBeth’s sentencing Avol to spend 30 days in his own run-down building. But the fact remains that he is being deprived of his rights by a liberal Jerry Brown-appointed judge who wants to implement her social views by tearing down the long-held belief in this country that a person has a right to dispose of his property as he sees fit.

I urge Judge McBeth to release Dr. Avol and strike his conviction--a true miscarriage of justice--from the record books.

TED BROWN

Glendale