Crime and punishment

So Robert Lloyd laments the fact that we would like to see criminals punished (“Where It’s ‘Legal’ to get ‘Lost,’ ” March 3). How barbaric of us! He longs for the day when Perry Mason was the hero. I can tell him exactly when things changed: the O.J. Simpson trial.

If Lloyd is a regular “Law & Order” viewer, he should know that the suspects, unless they are rich white males, almost always get a lot more sympathy than the victim. In each show we are bombarded with the virtues of gay marriage, lectures on racial profiling, snide cracks about the Bush administration and whatever else is the liberal cause du jour. You would think that N.Y. prosecutors are all card-carrying members of the ACLU.

Judd Silver

Irvine