Regarding Amit Chaturvedi's Feb. 10 letter defending the death penalty, "It's called justice, not revenge": Since the powers that be make mistakes on a regular basis in foreign policy, health care, education, social welfare, agriculture, economics etc., ad nauseam, what makes Chaturvedi think they don't do that in the administration of so-called justice?

There is more than one case of the wrong person being executed in the United States and no doubt Japan, and in Britain when the death penalty existed there. The book "10 Rillington Place" describes how the wrong man was hanged for a series of murders in London. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

barry ward