Readers Express Ire in Pollard Case

Tim Rutten’s column on Jonathan Pollard is a journalistic classic (“Tempering Justice With Compassion,” Jan. 16).

While in no way exonerating Pollard for passing U. S. secrets to Israel, Rutten correctly raises questions concerning the harshness of the life-without-parole sentence given Pollard--something not being laid on America’s most notorious spies such as Robert Walker, much less on those who spied for our allies as did Pollard.

As a Christian minister who fights anti-Semitism and other bigotries, I have raised the same questions as has Rutten.

I commend him for his reminder that only when there is a marriage of both justice and compassion can a legal system avoid the folly of sentimentalism or the opposite “glinting, blood-stained abstraction . . . that cuts but does not heal.”

Pollard cooperated with authorities who promised him leniency. But under then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger’s prodding, Pollard was buried under the weight of a sentence that was out of all proportion to similar crimes.

Why? What is being hidden under the slippery guise of “national security”? Why 23 hours in solitary for Pollard every day?

FRANK EIKLOR

Costa Mesa