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How can we teach children a moral lesson when our own judicial system seems perverted and backward? While Jesse Jacobs may have been guilty of other crimes, he was not guilty of murdering Etta Ann Urdiales. But the state of Texas went ahead and executed him anyway [Justice, Jan. 16]. The Supreme Court needs to remember that not only does it decide issues of law, but it must also do what is right. How can the Justices sleep at night knowing they may be sentencing innocent people to death? This is just another example of how the U.S. legal system no longer holds to the idea of ``innocent until proved guilty'' but now adheres to ``guilty until proved innocent.''
Scott Mitcham Sedona, Arizona
I was a member of the jury that found Jesse Jacobs guilty of murder in 1987. I learned only recently that the Texas prosecutors had changed their theory of who was directly responsible for the gunshot that murdered Urdiales. To say that I found that news troubling would be a great understatement. At Jacobs' trial, it required considerable soul-searching before I could confidently vote for the verdict and sentence of death that the jury rendered. The news of Jacobs' execution required me to repeat that process. Yet having now done so, I am again satisfied that Jacobs' verdict and sentence of death were appropriate. Jacobs was sentenced to death because, in the unanimous opinion of the jury, the evidence produced at Jacobs' trial established his guilt and further established that death was his appropriate punishment under Texas law. I am not aware of what facts may have caused the state prosecutors to change their views when Jacobs' sister went on trial seven months later. What seems to have been lost in this discussion is the fact that under our system of justice, juries decide the facts of a case and must render their verdicts based upon the evidence before them at that time. The relevant fact is that Jacobs received the trial he deserved under the law of this country.
J. Kirk Brown Assistant Attorney General State of Nebraska Lincoln
I can't believe that you wasted an entire page whining about the execution of Jacobs. Kidnapping is a capital offense in many jurisdictions, and, as your story notes, under Texas law a co-conspirator to murder can be put to death. Jacobs was at least a party to this murder, so your sympathy is misplaced. Now the state should mete out similar justice to the 398 criminals still on death row, as a good example to timid authorities elsewhere in the country.
Frank G. Tatnall Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania
I can only agree with Mr. Bumble in Dickens' Oliver Twist, who maintained, ``The law is a ass, a idiot.'' And the biggest, most unethical asses of all are Texas officials who are more interested in convictions at any price than in justice.
Lewis Cetta Florence, Italy
Alike Under the Skin