LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Killer forfeited his rights

1/23/2014

News accounts of the execution of Dennis McGuire mentioned that the method used to kill him possibly violated his constitutional rights (“Killer, rapist gasps for air for minutes before dying; 2-drug combination is used for first time,” Jan. 17).

McGuire was executed for the 1989 rape and stabbing death of a pregnant newlywed. Nothing was said about her constitutional rights or those of her unborn child, who also died.

He took away their rights, and in so doing relinquished his.

The McGuire family said it plans to sue the state over what happened. They had better pray that I am not called to serve on that jury.

JIM COPLEY

Fostoria

 

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McGuire should have suffered

You said in your Jan. 19 editorial “Egregious execution” that as McGuire’s execution was carried out he convulsed, gasped, and snorted, he opened and closed his mouth, and his stomach rose and fell for 15 minutes. Some people are in an uproar about this, but what about the poor girl he raped and killed?

Did it take longer than 15 minutes for him to kill that girl? How would you like this to happen to your child?

The execution should have taken longer, and he should have suffered more.

JANET MINKOWSKI

Temperance

 

Death penalty point of revulsion

I was born in Toledo but have spent most of my adult life in Michigan. I moved back to Toledo a year and a half ago. It is jarring to move from an adjacent state that does not have the death penalty to one where its use seems to be taken for granted, at least by a majority.

There are great things about living in Ohio. However, it is a personal source of revulsion that the death penalty is still in use here.

Years ago, I saw a question that sums up the most rational response I’ve come across to those who support the death penalty: Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?

THE REV. ROBERT SCHRAMM

Oblate of St. Francis de Sales Parkside Boulevard

 

Children need to think of victim

It is too bad that McGuire’s children could not have watched the last hour of life of Joy Stewart, the young woman he killed (“Family calls Ohio execution ‘torture’; Man’s children vow to sue after father gasped in prolonged death,” Jan. 18).

BETTE JONES

Sylvania

 

Victim’s relatives should sue kin

McGuire’s children want to sue the state over how his execution was carried out. The victim’s relatives should sue McGuire’s children. He got what he deserved.

McGuire’s children call the execution cruel and unusual punishment. What do you call what he did to his victim?

Ohio let McGuire live longer than he should have.

PAUL DRAIN

Bowling Green