Your views: Weighing the question of capital punishment

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First, the death penalty does bring closure, the guilty have paid the price for their actions. They no longer have the joy of life.

Second, why are we so concerned with the rights of the criminal who committed the brutal crime? How do the victims get justice?

Third, the death penalty isn't a deterrent, it's a punishment.

Fourth, we are so worried about humane and painless punishment for the criminal. I wonder if their victims were tortured, raped and murdered humanely and without pain.

My heart goes out to Barbara Christian and I pray that we have the guts to do the right thing.

– Paula Noell, Roseville

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I don't believe in the death penalty. The individuals who end up being sentenced to death are disproportionately non-white and poor, having little access to strong defense attorneys.

Further, it takes literally years (emotional torture for the individual and their families, not to mention thousands of dollars) of sitting on death row to actually be executed.

– Connie Adachi, Oakland

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In 1978, without knowing much about the issue, I voted for the Briggs Initiative that expanded the state's death penalty. Two years later, the death penalty became more than an abstract issue to me. I suspected that my brother Manny, who had served two tours of duty in Vietnam, was responsible for a woman's death. I had to make the hardest decision of my life: turn him in or not?

When I did go to the police, they assured me that Manny would not get the death penalty. I believed them. I didn't know then that the death penalty works against the poor who cannot afford dream-team lawyers. …

My brother was sentenced to death, and meanwhile other defendants in Sacramento County, convicted of all sorts of murders, got life in prison. I learned that death sentences are often arbitrary and illogical, resulting from politicians' whims or attorneys' inexperience, rather than any sense of proportionality.

I have learned things about the death penalty that I wish I didn't know, including how families of the executed continue to suffer in the aftermath. It's time to act on this knowledge and reconsider California's death penalty.

– Bill Babbitt, Elk Grove

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I think the death penalty has no place in a civilized society. When the state carries out the death penalty, we do not show that we are above the killers, but rather we lower ourselves to their level.

– Deanna Mason, Berkeley

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I am firmly opposed to the death penalty for several reasons:

• It does not serve as a deterrent to crime, many studies have shown.

• It costs society more money for prisoners on death row (all the appeals) than it does for those with life sentences.

• Most of all, the process of sentencing someone to death is often unfair and mistakes can be made, as prisoners on death row have been exonerated.

– Barbara Drushell, Davis

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I am opposed to the death penalty. As the former warden of the Florida State Prison I carried out a number of executions and through that barbaric process learned that killing people who killed people (or perhaps didn't kill anyone) is no way to show our children that killing is wrong.

Allowing our politicians to use the death penalty as a "political tool" is something that we can control simply by placing those with a higher level of sanity in such positions.

The killing must stop!

– Ron McAndrew, Dunnellon, Fla.

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I am opposed to the death penalty.

How can you do this? Most Americans with European background are so proud of their ancestors. But, when it has to do with human rights, death penalty, etc., you completely forget where you come from.

Do you really want to be compared with China?

– Julie Menkin, Oslo, Norway

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Now that prisoners can be incarcerated without the possibility of parole and kept in prisons that offer no opportunity for escape, the death penalty cannot be used as a means to keep killers off the streets.

While many people believe the revenge allowed through killing the killers is justified, we as a society still must live with the fallout from the crimes, often without any real deep healing despite the death of the convicted individuals. Additionally, should a convicted person be found innocent later, he or she will still be alive to embrace freedom.

The company our country keeps with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Congo, as the countries that most often use the death penalty, makes me wonder about our values.

The Roman Coliseum is used now as a symbol for the abolition of the death penalty. Let us remember that this structure was once the home of brutal death for entertainment. At that time, the Romans thought this behavior was justified. Perhaps, like U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens recently admitted, we can come to believe "state-sanctioned killing is becoming more and more anachronistic."

– Stevi Carroll, Pasadena