I have been watching, with increasing unease, the state-sponsored killing spree going on at the Arkansas Cummins Unit's execution room. This week the state has carried out its first double execution in more than 16 years.

There's a rush on executions in Arkansas because its store of lethal injection drugs nears expiry at the end of the month. Got to get the maximum benefit from the investment so another crim is due to shuffle off tonight. Yep, they're ruthlessly efficient at extermination in Arkansas. When all these pieces come together it makes for a grim read.

'His breaths became deep and heavy. His back arched off the gurney as he sucked in air.” Lone reporters account of Marcel William's last moments. We were all witnesses to this latest murder.

And are the executioners – whether they be the juries, the judges, the politicians who sign off the death warrants or even those who attach the intravenous lines to the victims, morally superior to the people they are killing?

One is illegal taking of a life, the other is legal taking of a life but they are both murder nonetheless.

And I am eternally grateful that since Walter Bolton was hung at Mt Eden jail on February 18 1957 for murdering his wife Beatrice no one has been judicially murdered in New Zealand. Every time there is a grisly killing in New Zealand, and there will be those, there are the knee-jerkers who want to bring back the noose. Thank goodness the calls pass as quickly as they go up. We are above that barbarism.

W Somerville, Otumoetai.