LETTER: Death penalty is needed

Editor,

I am afraid I must disagree with Mr. Cox comments on the death penalty. I feel that the death penalty is the only way that society and citizens can protect themselves from homicidal sociopaths. Life without parole does not work because it only takes one judge to overrule the system and release a mass murder such as Kenneth McDuff back into society. 

In 1966, McDuff killed three teenagers near Ft. Worth, Texas. He shot two young men in the back of the head and raped a young woman with a broom handle. She was then strangled by McDuff by having the broom handle pressed against her throat. He was given the death penalty, but because of the Supreme Court ruling in 1972, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. In October 1989, McDuff was paroled thanks to a ruling from a federal judge, William Wayne Justice, who declared the Texas prisons were overcrowded. This, in spite of the fact that McDuff gave no indication of being reformed or changing his behavior. 

After his release he killed four additional women before he was captured in Kansas City, Mo., in 1992. On Nov. 17, 1998, the state of Texas did what it had been prevented by the courts from doing earlier and put Kenneth McDuff to death. If McDuff had been given life without parole, how long would it have been before he would have been released by William Wayne Justice or another judge like him so he could return to his murderous rampage? Kenneth McDuff is barbarous, not the death penalty.  

 Ralph B. Lantz