Capital punishment immoral
Gabe Kahn’s Garden State of Mind raised the question of do we have the right to take a life (“Punishment with a capital maybe,” July 18). My conscience tells me that the dignity of human life is lessened when the state, or anyone else, takes a life other than in self-defense or in defense of another after all other reasonable options have been exhausted. The only way I could see capital punishment as moral is if there were no means of restraining the person from committing future capital offenses.
In our country in this day and age we have the means to make capital punishment obsolete. We have every right to lock up an offender who has perpetrated monstrous offenses and throw away the key, but to kill that person while in state or federal custody seems immoral and barbaric. At this stage of human development I think God expects more of us.
Pete Saling
Red Bank
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