Dear Editor,
In a letter to the editor in The Advocate-Messenger on Jan. 17, Terry Bugg makes a fundamental error in his argument that prisoners have no right to object to lethal injection as a means of execution. The death penalty is just that; a judgment by society that some crimes are so heinous that the perpetrator deserves to die.
But since the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution bars "cruel and unusual punishment," a death sentence is not permission to inflict unnecessary pain or suffering.
Lethal injection itself represents this principle, since it was invented to replace more gruesome and less efficient methods of execution, such as the gas chamber, the electric chair and hanging.
