I have no great amount of sympathy for someone who kills another person. But people who commit murder are still people. It is not for a jury or judge or legislature to decide whose lives are to be valued and whose are not. Murder is murder, no matter who carries it out or how it is justified. Finally, executions are a ghoulish public spectacle.
People stand outside the prison drinking and partying, celebrating death.
I don't want to see that in my state. We are too good for that. Steven Martens is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Cedar Rapids. Copyright 1997 by the Iowa State Daily Publications Board. All rights reserved.