Readers React: Expedite executions to keep California’s death row inmates from going insane

To the editor: We put mad dogs to death. However, people who act like mad dogs are put in cells or rooms and kept alive at great expense for the rest of their natural lives. Why? (“On California’s death row, too insane to execute,” June 5)

California death row inmate Ronnie McPeters and everyone else who committed the crimes he did should also see the same fate.

The problem we have is the lesson learned by killers in California that they are more likely to die of old age than to be executed. In addition, families impacted by the loss of a loved one because of a killer deserve justice.

Don Evans, Canoga Park

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To the editor: My question after reading the article on apparently insane condemned killers is were they competent enough for the execution to be carried out at the time of sentencing? If so, that sentence should still be valid.

Long-term incarceration is awful, disgusting and dehumanizing, and insanity may well be the only defense for some. But the vast majority of the crimes for which people are on death row are “crazy” by any normal standards in the first place.

Doug Stokes, Duarte

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