
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 17, 1994                    TAG: 9406170025 
SECTION: FRONT                     PAGE: A18    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: Medium 
DATELINE: 940617                                 LENGTH:

THE DEATH PENALTY IS MURDER

{LEAD} I am saddened by the Norfolk-area petition to support a tougher death penalty throughout the state (``Victim's family asks governor for help, news, June 1). The petition was signed in response to the 1993 murder of Judy Greer by Mark Christopher Poe. My heart goes out to Ms. Greer's family, and I truly wish I could erase all of the pain and sorrow that has come to them over the past year.

Under no circumstances do I condone this brutal murder or any other murder. But I believe that the death penalty will not provide us with the correct solution.

{REST} The death penalty will not solve the problems of crime and violence in our nation because it does not deter crime. An FBI publication, ``Crime in the United States,'' shows that murder rates in states that have abolished the death penalty have averaged 5.1 murders per 100,000 people; states still applying the death penalty have averaged 9.1 murders. The irreversibility of the death penalty means that once the punishment has been imposed, it can never be corrected. In a recent study published by the Stanford Law Review, 350 people were mistakenly convicted of capital crimes from 1900-1985. Of these innocent people, 139 were sentenced to death and 23 were executed.

The death penalty is applied in a racially discriminatory manner. Of the 242 executions carried out in the United States since the 1976 reinstitution of capital punishment, only one white person has been executed for the murder of a black person, whereas 80 black people have been executed for killing a white person. Since 1972, 85 percent of those executed were convicted of killing white people; in the same period, almost half of all homicide victims were black.

States with the death penalty have reported that the actual cost of an execution is substantially higher than the cost of imprisoning a person for life. The Wall Street Journal has estimated that New York and California could save $75 million and $125 million respectively by not having the death penalty.

The state-sponsored, premeditated and cold-blooded killing of humans accomplishes nothing for society. The death penalty is not justice; it is murder. An eye for an eye makes the world blind.

DAN CHESHIRE

Virginia Beach, June 14, 1994 by CNB