YOU ARE HERE: Central Kentucky Home→Collections→Death Penalty

Letter: Execution by chocolate pie

January 21, 2008

Dear Editor,

In her letter to the editor on Jan. 18 in The Advocate-Messenger, Jen Thompson informs us the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not support lethal injection as a means of execution. I can not help but wonder if she realizes what the motive for the Kentucky inmates who filed this lawsuit are.

I don't know of any inmates who support the death penalty. Nor do I know of many inmates who acknowledge guilt for their crimes. One of our greatest problems in this country is those who have achieved the divine right of "higher education" (educated beyond their knowledge) decide what we can and cannot do. While I don't personally like the idea that a person can be put to death by the government, I do recognize the fact the some people are just plain evil, and that's the only viable option for dealing with them.

Convicted felons in prison use the system to achieve whatever goals they can - be it a reduction in their sentence, better accommodations while in prison, or to stop a death penalty. I cannot blame inmates in prison for this, were I one of them, I'd probably do the same.

However, the fact is, the Eighth Amendment is about cruel and unusual punishment. In the minds of those that our enlightened higher educated people consider to be the uneducated masses (basically the rest of America), cruel and unusual punishment is about torture, (and yes this does include waterboarding).

We had the electric chair, and used it again in 1997, that hurt a lot of people's feelings. So we switched to the lethal injection method because it's more "humane." Now that has hurt a lot of people's feelings.

We need to realize that these people who are getting their feelings hurt about our means of execution are going to have their feelings hurt no matter what means of execution that we use - be it hanging or death by eating chocolate pie.

Randall S. Russell

Liberty

|

|

|