Cosby Verdict

Re “Markhasev Is Found Guilty of Cosby Murder,” July 8: It seems pretty clear that juries in Santa Monica regard evidence as being more valid and reliable than in some other jurisdictions where the [Johnnie] Cochran defense strategy includes some other guy did it, the police are sloppy and there were no eyewitnesses. The district attorney should insist high-profile criminal cases go to Santa Monica.

SOL TAYLOR, Sherman Oaks

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The Cosby family, and indeed all of us, should be proud of the process and final disposition of the trial. It demonstrated that a conscientious jury can make the right decision with common sense and without bias.

LARRY ZINI, Camarillo

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I am enraged by the stiff sentence given to the man who allegedly kill Bill Cosby’s son. This sentence is unjust and should be overturned.

CECILIA KELLY, Cardiff by the Sea

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Camille Cosby’s words (in a commentary in USA Today, July 8), “I believe America taught our son’s killer to hate African Americans. . . . Presumably, Markhasev did not learn to hate black people in his native country, the Ukraine, where the black population was near zero,” moved me to write this letter. It must be very painful to believe that your country contains that much hate for you. Unfortunately for the human race that kind of hate exists worldwide.

Two years ago, I hosted a ethnic Russian girl who worked a few month’s in a YMCA summer camp. I took her to the airport to see about her airline tickets home and was shocked about the things she said when she returned. She launched into a tirade about the girl behind the counter, a sweet-faced, blue-eyed blonde. I must have looked confused so she explained to me that the girl was Ukrainian and that Ukrainians are “stupid, lazy people who don’t even speak proper Russian.” She spoke of the Ukrainians coming illegally to Moscow, of them taking menial jobs. At one point she even said “they are like your blacks and Mexicans.” As a Hispanic, I was astonished to discover that hate stereotypes transcended skin color.

No, America didn’t teach Markhasev to hate; he learned it in a Soviet Union where he belonged to a hated ethnic group. It is easy to learn how to hate when you are hated. Markhasev’s hate isn’t an indictment of American society but of the human race. That is sadder still.

MARIA LEAL, Northridge