LETTERS: A DIFFERENT VIEW OF JUSTICE

To the editor:

As Speak Out comment published April 22 said, "Justice was done when Jack Kevorkian was given 10 to 15 years in prison. If this is a life sentence for him, then I will have no regrets, because this is just part of the justice that he deserves for the murders he has committed."

Boy, does this caller have it all wrong. I believe the only thing that mitigated against Dr. Kevorkian's being turned loose in this case, as he was in all of his assisted-suicide cases, was that Mr. Youk, the "victim," neglected to look directly into the video camera and say, "I now emphatically demand that no charges be brought against Dr. Kevorkian. Only a moron can fail to understand that the only reason I am not pressing a button or otherwise doing something to set in motion my own suicide is that I am not confident of my physical ability to do so."

Having absorbed what the caller had to say on the subject of justice in the Kevorkian affair, allow me now to say what I believe would serve justice with regard to the topic of euthanasia. Here I refer to justice as it relates to a quid pro quo exacted as a response not to a crime, but rather to a pernicious attitude -- and attitude, say, like that expressed by the Speak Out caller.

Everyone will face a death of one kind or another. My idea of justice for anyone holding similar views against suicide and euthanasia would be that their deaths be led up to by a long period consisting of unbearable pain, loss of control and a condition of helpless indignity. I think for one to be faced with the consequences of one's beliefs can educate.

DONN S. MILLER

Tamms, Ill.