Court on Capital Punishment

Once again, I am struck by how the debate over capital punishment (editorial, “The Ultimate Outrage,” June 27) misses, in my opinion, the most basic issue: Can a truly civilized society legitimize and institutionalize the taking of lives? Anyone’s life.

Thus, it becomes irrelevant and specious to argue whether it is more or less moral, or more or less appropriate, or is “cruel and unusual punishment” to execute teen-agers rather than adults, or cop killers rather than little-old-lady killers.

I have never heard an argument in favor of the death penalty which made sense. The manifest content of most of the arguments seems a thin disguise covering the underlying pursuit of vengeance, another example of outcome (ends) clouding the issue of process (means).

Why, people ask, should we pay to house criminals over the course of their lifetimes? Because society must be protected from those who would do it or its component members harm, and killing people is not the way a civilized society ought protect itself.

SANFORD M. REDER

Los Angeles