With No Objections, Let the Televised Executions Begin

I enthusiastically support Howard Rosenberg’s proposition that executions be televised (“Ultimate Reality,” July 3). Why should we be denied the opportunity to participate in that which we support? If, in fact, capital punishment is a deterrent, then prime-time viewing of the grotesqueness will certainly deter more would-be assassins.

To cover the expense of prime-time programming, let’s consider the following: For electric chair executions, let the local power company be the sponsor. For gas chamber legal killing, call upon the chemical company who makes the cyanide for funding. A pharmaceutical company should underwrite the extravaganza when death is by lethal injection. For hangings, call on the hemp producers.

And should there be an old-fashioned bang-bang by a firing squad, why not give the honors to the NRA?

JACK BLECHER

Los Alamitos

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I agree with Rosenberg’s commentary. There are three reasons to support the death penalty: (1) It is a deterrent, (2) it is constitutional and (3) it has sufficient safeguards to assure that no innocent person is killed by mistake.

In the spirit of “Survivor,” we should impose a mandatory one-year jail sentence on all the jurors, prosecutors and judges involved in the trial if it is found that the person they sent to death row is not guilty. If the individual has already been executed, the sentence would automatically increase to five years, and include the probation officers, the appeals personnel and, of course, the governor who did not grant the pardon.

If everyone is so sure that no innocent person is ever sentenced to death, why be afraid of a law that would obviously not apply to the omniscient people involved in the legal decision?

So let’s implement the “lights! cameras! execution!” that Rosenberg suggests and complement it with other games people love.

GEORGE DOMINGO

Pasadena

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It is not a farfetched idea to televise capital punishment’s end results. As one who is opposed to the death penalty under any circumstances, I think doing so just might disgust the public enough to make the sentence go into an endless moratorium.

However, it is a Catch-22 situation. We are a nation born in violence, carried through on waves of violence: burning witches; enslaving blacks; decimating Native Americans; conquering the Wild West, cowboy style; initiating Chicago-style gang warfare and having it infiltrate today’s culture, urban style . . . plus too many wars to remember or forget.

Catch-22? Televising mandated killing by the state merely would authenticate our violent behavior.

TED LEPON

Los Angeles

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Why do the media in general and The Times in particular remain so biased against this punishment of convicted criminals for heinous crimes while continuing to so blatantly support the killing of the weakest and most innocent among us?

How about an article suggesting that the media begin to portray--or even discuss fully, for that matter--the “ultimate reality” of what truly happens during abortion, rather than what we see now: the total suppression of pictures and constant watering down of explanations of abortion procedures?

DR. STEVEN R. HODSON

Santa Barbara