DRUG WAR'S PRESUMPTION

To the Editor:

Re "Baptists' Plane Was Identified as Drug Carrier" (front page, April 22):

You report that the State Department said the American missionary
plane shot down in Peru had been mistakenly identified as a
drug-running plane. But in the United States, people are presumed
innocent until proved guilty. The police don't have the right to kill
suspects at will because they believe that they may have broken the
law. In this country, we leave punishment to the judicial system. The
punishment for smuggling drugs is not the death penalty.

The only way to determine whether a plane is carrying drugs is to
board it. Determining whether or not the right people were killed
while sorting through the wreckage is wrong.

MARC LIBRESCU
Fair Lawn, N.J., April 22, 2001