NATION CONTINUES TO GRAPPLE WITH DEATH PENALTY: WATERED-DOWN JUSTICE

The lethal injection last week of John Wayne Gacy, the Illinois man who sat on death row for 14 years after he was convicted of brutally torturing and killing 33 men and boys, revived a long-standing debate in this country over the death penalty.

Unfortunately, as Gacy's case makes painfully clear, this nation has neither fully embraced capital punishment nor rejected the idea. The argument in favor of the death penalty is two-fold: it imparts the ultimate punishment on a convicted criminal, permanently removing the menace from society, and it deters others from committing similar crimes. However, when a death-row inmate is able to avoid execution for years, even decades, with legion legal petitions and appeals over procedural technicalities that have little to do with guilt or innocence, the system is disabled.

On the other hand, when all legal appeals are exhausted and a John Wayne Gacy finally is executed, death penalty opponents are no more satisfied with the end result than proponents are satisfied with the long -- and expensive -- delay.

We support the death penalty for the reasons stated earlier. But when justice is neither swift nor sure, we are left only with watered-down justice or, worse yet, no justice. The process should be streamlined.