‘Sentencing the Wrong Man to Die’

As I began reading Barry Siegel’s article (May 10), “Sentencing the Wrong Man to Die,” I wondered how many of the morally indignant majority who support the death penalty, like those who wrote the letters you published (May 6), would bother to read beyond the headline. I have long suspected that a willful denial of the obvious fact that the death penalty works irreversible injustice upon innocent people is a necessary part of the psyche of those who continue to support this barbarism.

However, as I continued to read, I wondered how the prosecutor of Joseph Brown, now Judge Robert Bonanno, could continue to justify the death penalty, knowing as he did that he narrowly escaped being responsible for Brown’s unjust execution. Could he continue to deny that injustice actually happened? Would he claim that the larger number of “correct” executions justifies those that are “incorrect?”

Or would he try to justify his withholding of evidence and his silence while listening to what he knew to be perjured testimony by citing a belief in some kind of higher justice that transcends the uncertainties of human knowledge?

His answer--his excuse for bald deception--was merely, “I do my job, the defense attorney does his job.”

I suppose I should have expected it, but I was shocked, physically shaking with revulsion as I finished the article. Is this not essentially the same justification used by Nazi death camp officers? Like them, Bonanno is not sorry. Nor, I am sure, are the supporters of the death penalty sorry. No doubt their only regret is that Brown was not hurried along more swiftly to his execution.

The death penalty is nothing more nor less than ritual blood-letting in the name of retribution. For retribution’s sake, isn’t justice well enough served if at least someone dies for the murder of Earlene Barksdale?

With Brown dead, Richard Blumenthal would have had to stop filing appeals. No one would have had to be asked if they felt sorry for almost executing an innocent man, and the validity of the death penalty would have been reaffirmed in the minds of those who support it.

Isn’t that what it’s all about? The death penalty means never having to say you’re sorry.

NORMAN F. HALL

San Diego