Letters to the Editor (March 11)

Bill re-victimizes victims

Editor:

The victims of violent crimes deserve to be safe from their attackers. They deserve the opportunity to put the pain and trauma they have endured behind them, and to be able to rebuild their shattered lives as best they can.

Yet the state Legislature is trying to pass a bill that would prevent this.

The proposed bill, SB 247, will override previous criminal sentences and allow early parole for all juvenile criminals, including violent criminals like Nathaniel Jouett, a mass shooter who killed two people and injured four others at the Clovis-Carver Library, and for Nicholas Ortiz, who killed three people with a pick-ax in their home in El Rancho.

Even if perpetrators such as these are denied parole initially, this bill makes them re-eligible again every two years. Because of this, no crime victim will be able to put the terrible ordeal they have endured behind them and move on with their lives. Instead their lives will be consumed by these repeated hearings, each one forcing them to re-live the memories and trauma of their attack. Each one rekindling the fear that their attacker will be set free and will come back to hurt them again.

I sympathize with the desire for prison reform and for giving people second chances, but this bill is not the correct way to do that. This bill down plays the suffering of violent crime victims, and the way that it forces these victims to repeatedly re-live the trauma of their crimes is downright cruel.

Nathan Spulak

Bosque Farms

Legislation is not right

Editor:

Because of the Democrat legislators New Mexicans have elected to represent our state, we are on the brink of turning New Mexico, once proudly known as the land of “La Familia” into a modern day Auschwitz.

This mad drive to legalize abortion of children up to the ninth month, plus the push for an expanded version of euthanasia, New Mexico’s biggest money making industry will soon be the killing of 9-month-old children in the womb as well as the killing of the elderly and the fragile, much of it paid for by our taxes, thereby, making many of us unwilling accomplices.

At this rate, we shall soon see a cottage industry of lovely vacation spots developing around abortion clinics and euthanasia centers, where families from around the globe will bring their pregnant young ladies on vacation while the pre-born child is disposed of as well as the family groups that will accompany grandma and grandpa for their last hurrah before they take them and deposit them at the euthanasia center.

New Mexico’s ancestors must be turning in their graves to know that their beloved Democrat Party is solely responsible for bringing these deadly changes to the Land of Enchantment by way of new proposed legislation which supports abortion until birth and expanded euthanasia.

The following bills, rushing in and out of committees are companion abortion bills: SB10 and HB7 and HB47, the euthanasia bill.

Marcella Melendez

Belen

Education is important

Editor:

Regarding Los Lunas student-athletes, parents plea for sports (Feb. 11, 2021). Perhaps if students and parents were as passionate about education as they are about sports, New Mexico would not be ranked at the bottom of states in education.

Dave Clark

Los Lunas