My only stand is on behalf of better writing. I take no sides in the debate over capital punishment, which gives rise to today's point.

Too often, articles on Google News say someone is to be executed by lethal injection or is sentenced to be put to death by lethal injection. In each case, lethal is redundant. An injection that kills is lethal to begin with.

This type of redundancy also shows up in references to past accidents and disasters: deadly tsunami that killed ...; deadly crash that killed ...; fatal crash that killed ...; fatal accident that killed ... As awful as these events are, there is no need to point out in the same sentence that something that kills also is deadly or fatal.