Victims given death sentence

Regarding the editorial, “The end of the death penalty”: I am writing this on behalf of all the victims over the years whose life was cut short by senseless, violent crimes. I heard the words compassion, and innocent people put in jail for murder. First of all, there is one thing which was missing from the editorial. The victim. They were not murdered humanely, or compassionately. They received the death penalty! Nobody seems to remember, or care how they lost their lives. We seem to forget them and concentrate on the poor perpetrator. I guess we can feel sorry for the poor person who grew up under less than ideal circumstances, we certainly live in a less than perfect world.

As far as being innocent, thank God now, we have DNA and other state-of-the-art things to make sure as humanly possible to prove innocent people not guilty. Regardless, the majority of us can go through our lives untouched by the sheer horror of knowing that our son, daughter or loved one died begging for their lives. No, our loved ones are fine, but it goes on. Every night we hear about shootings or stabbings of innocents, but now we just take it in stride. We need to remember that the victims are dead. They will never be able to live out their lives, so we worry about their abusers, and watch as the taxpayers shell out millions in appeals, so they can continue to live another 20 years or so. I wonder if Inslee has even thought about the victims. I doubt it.

Holly Hausmann

Snohomish