The death penalty raises painful questions

Re “Death Penalty Faces Tough Review,” Sept. 26

The controversy about the use of lethal injection in California and other states focuses the question of the death penalty on a very narrow point while ignoring the most fundamental contradictions of a much larger issue.

The narrow controversy is whether the death penalty may be administered humanely, i.e. with minimal physical pain. This inquiry assumes that the death penalty itself is not “cruel and unusual” by its very nature. But physical pain is only a small part of the cruelty of the death penalty. The physical pain lasts for only a few seconds.

The larger and more important issue is the psychic pain from the constant, ongoing knowledge that the condemned is going to be killed. To me, the notion of killing a person “humanely” is not only a contradiction in terms, it denies the psychic essence of a human being.

A human being cannot be killed humanely, because he or she will experience the almost unimaginable fear that accompanies the knowledge of impending death. The fact that the sentence will be carried out with a minimal amount of physical suffering could not possibly eliminate the cruelty inflicted by the sentence itself.

BENJAMIN BLAKEMAN

Los Angeles

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Michael Morales tried to kill 17-year-old Terri Lynn Winchell by choking her with a belt. When that failed, as she pleaded for her life, he pounded her head with a claw hammer. When that failed, he dragged her face-down across a road, raped her and stabbed her four times in the chest. Now his execution is being delayed because of the possibility that he might feel some pain during his lethal injection. Is this a joke?

JOHN FUNK

Hollywood