This is in response to Josh Eskow’s letter “The Snipers Must Pay.” It was immediately clear that Josh’s argument was a poorly conceived straw man, in which he claims that the alternative to killing a person is to put them on Leno and give them a book deal…please. The argument is not whether they should be removed from society, but rather once removed from society should they be killed.

Some people like me support the death penalty in theory, an eye-for-an-eye sounds like a fair justice system. Unfortunately, it is far too common for innocent people to be found guilty due to false evidence from dishonest police officers or by biased juries. If only guilty people were killed, there wouldn’t be a problem. However, the continued life of one innocent person is more important than making sure these people are killed. Why is there objection to a life imprisonment without parole? He correctly questions whether attitudes would be changed if a relative happened to be one of the sniper victims. How about if one of your relatives was unjustly found guilty of murder and sentenced to death? This is an issue where theoretical decisions on ethical practices need to be tempered by the fact that the system is not perfect, and an imperfect system in this case can mean government-sponsored murder.

Mark Schomer CAS ’01