Readers React: Sad reality of death row

To the editor: The article (“Death row inmates to get psychiatric hospital,” June 11) states, “Under court pressure to improve psychiatric care for deeply disturbed death row inmates, state officials are moving quickly to open a 40-bed hospital at San Quentin prison to house them.”

Every bit of that sentence should shame every Californian, every American. This simple sentence has so many layers of implication, I don’t know where to begin: We are sentencing mentally ill people to death, and then not caring for them, and then being told by the courts to care for them, so that they can be well enough to be killed by the state.

This is absolutely wrong.

Steve McGrath, San Luis Obispo