By CHRIS LADNER

I believe very strongly that there should be capital punishment. The Supreme Court recently declared that capital punishment is a cruel and unusual way of carrying out justice. To me, this is a completely idiotic ruling. Since August 27, there have been 58 cases of homicide in Chicago and the suburbs. It seems that there is no fear of murder. Taking an innocent man's life seems to be nothing any more. None of these have been solved and they are getting worse and worse.

Perhaps the most brutal is the case of a young mother and her child, found slaughtered in the city of Mt. Prospect. The child had not even seen three years of life. It is a sick society when a man like this is allowed to go free.

The readers of this paper may think that an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" policy is unjust and primitive or it won't bring the dead person back, but is it justice when a person who so openly and wantonly destroys human life is allowed to just go to prison and then perhaps be paroled and set out on the streets?

One of the worst things about these murderers is the fact that many of them have been in and out of prison literally dozens of times. If they had received a stiff prison sentence from a less lenient judge, some people would be alive today, instead of six feet under.

With this new Supreme Court ruling, many notorious killers will have their sentences commuted to life, and others will probably be paroled after 20 or so years and be treated with a nostalgic feeling, as if they were heroes instead of murderers. One of the worst cases of blind justice is that of Richard Speck, the Chicago killer of eight student nurses in the summer of 1966. When that happened and he was convicted, he was given the death sentence. In 1972 he is still on death row, but now the ruling has graciously spared his life.

When you stop and think about it you will realize that our Supreme Court surely has a peculiar idea of justice. Somehow I wonder if their views would change if one of their loved ones was lead like a lamb to the slaughter and brutally murdered.