Death Penalty Arguments

* Re “The Death Penalty: Who Wins When the State Sanctions Killing?” Ventura County Perspective, July 23.

Where I part company with writer Nathan Tierney is in considering the young to be innocent. Vulnerable they are, but not innocent.

My wife and I raised two children, and I taught for 34 years at all grades from third to junior college. The young begin life selfish--it’s the normal instinct of living things. To change that characteristic requires painstaking education from parents and community.

Fortunately for humanity, success occurs most often, but sometimes what we think of as adult behavior never happens.

The most caring, or perhaps the most naive, among us never stop trying to make a bad apple good, but I believe there is a time to stop spending good resources for lost causes. We do not do it for wayward dogs or any other animals that threaten us.

Many, as Tierney mentioned, worry that some innocent person might be wrongly executed. I worry that any innocent person might be incarcerated at all. That is why I believe our justice system must be as infallible as possible.

Perhaps the money used to care for murderers and their endless appeals could be better spent on improving our justice system as well as our educational system that failed.

My heart bleeds for the murdered vulnerables whom a civilized society promised to protect rather than for the wild animals among us who somehow never learned to care for others.

How anyone can stand in the rain to protest a murderer’s demise while his victim lies in the grave and his family mourns is beyond my understanding. But they, and Mr. Tierney, don’t understand my way of thinking either.

JAMES GOBBLE

Simi Valley