Letters: Limiting death-penalty appeals is myopic, frightening
LETTER-WRITER Thomas G. Lutek writes that death penalty changes need to be made to ensure its deterrence. Lutek writes that there should be a "cap of two appeals completed in a four-year time frame, no exceptions!"
LETTER-WRITER Thomas G. Lutek writes that death penalty changes need to be made to ensure its deterrence. Lutek writes that there should be a "cap of two appeals completed in a four-year time frame, no exceptions!"
The aforementioned concept is not only frightening but myopic.
Imagine an individual convicted of first-degree murder who perennially proclaims his innocence and exhausts his "two appeals completed in a four-year time frame." Subsequently, five or more years later, another individual confesses, and that confession is substantiated by later discovered DNA. Now what? Under the "no exceptions" concept, a categorically innocent individual languishes in prison.
Due to so many exonerations in death-penalty cases, society should be as cautious as a hemophiliac in a razor-blade factory when imposing the ultimate and irrevocable penalty.
Life without possibility of parole is the better alternative.
Albert Whitehead, Philadelphia