https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/us-capital-punishment-does-not-deter-crime/article_18ee5676-b4a0-11ee-abe4-e37300c677fd.html
There is a lot in the news about Alabama executing a man by using nitrogen gas, instead of a more common method like lethal injection, hanging, gas chamber, firing squad, beheading, or the biblically approved practice of stoning to death.
Regardless of the method used, and whether the victim suffers for a few minutes or a few hours, I am opposed to this legal form of murder by the government known as capital punishment.
And I don’t believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, as found in Leviticus.
I do believe that the punishment should fit the crime, which might be as harsh as life imprisonment.
It’s known that capital punishment does not deter crime. There is also a racial bias in who is given the death penalty, as well as a disproportionate number of poor people who can’t afford to hire a good attorney.
More than 70% of countries in the world have abolished the death penalty because it is so inhumane, and new evidence sometimes exonerates a person who was innocent of a capital crime.
Above all, capital punishment is irreversible.
HERB SILVERMAN
Charleston
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