Court on Capital Punishment

In response to your editorial:

I disagree. To me, the ultimate outrage is when a little 4-year-old girl playing in her front yard is the victim of a drive-by shooting by a teen-age gang member. When gang members, and other 16 and 17 year olds, too, know they are subject to the death penalty, some of them, at least, will refrain from killing. The Supreme Court decision is necessitated by the cruel fact that murder by teen-agers is all too common in today’s U.S.

I agree that the inclusion of the death penalty for the mentally retarded in the decision is questionable.

ELIZABETH B. ELLIS

Whittier