Following the risible, tabloidesque campaign by Guido Fawkes to bring back the death penalty, it seems that the government’s e-petitions site proved popular on this particular matter.
The return of the death penalty heads the list of demands, with dozens of separate campaigns calling for it.
It amazes me that people are so swept up by the emotions surrounding the issue that they forget history. Let’s have a brief reminder of history for a moment. Edith Thompson, Derek Bentley, Timothy Evans, The Guildford Four, Stefan Kiszko, Sally Clarke – I could name others, but my drift is clear. All of these people were convicted of capital offences and all were innocent of the crime – or there was no proof that they were directly responsible. Some paid the ultimate price. Yet the populist call for the state to take lives – even those of the innocent – continues apace.
However,
However a petition opposing its return was the most popular one six hours after the site launched.
Thank goodness for that. Just because lots of people want something, it doesn’t mean that it is a good idea or that we should do it.
The state lacks the competence to ensure that those tried for murder are actually guilty without any doubt. Beyond reasonable doubt is far too lax for the taking of a life and too many innocents have gone wrongly to the gallows in the past and too many have spent the best years of their lives rotting in a prison cell for something they didn’t do as a direct consequence of a flawed justice system.
Seriously, we trust these people to get it right every time?
Dream on.
“Seriously, we trust these people to get it right every time?”
Can we trust these people to get it right… at all?
If they thought executing a suspected child-killer would get them votes then, to them, whether he was innocent or not wouldn’t matter in the slightest.
Thankfully as of the evening of Friday 5 August the ‘Petition to retain the ban on Capital Punishment’ is currently number 1 with 13,224 votes and the ‘Restore Capital Punishment ‘ petition with just 7,227 supporters is beaten in to 3rd place by the ‘Keep Formula 1 Free To Air in the UK’.
Not that any ‘petition’ is sure to be debated, let alone adopted. But is it good to see that there are some people out there prepared to show these gobby bigots that they do not have their fingers on the pulse of anything other than their own twisted egos.
Yes, innocent people have been sent to the gallows. This is an argument against capital punishment but it is not a moral argument and you shouldn’t pretend that it is.
Innocent people have been killed by killers released after X years who would be alive had those killers been hung. If the number of these exceeds the number of innocents hung, hey presto we should bring back capital punishment?
What do you do with murderers and what is “the state” allowed (morally or otherwise) to deprive them of?
I thinked about this a few days ago, about capital punishment. It’s something extremelly drastic but also needed in some cases, I mean, think about the rape cases, if you have a daughter you must understand and know what I’m talking about. It’s really hard to take a decision, life is a gift from God, but some people just don’t know how to appreciate life and do such stupid things.
The state cannot be trusted to get the right result over a prosecution for littering. Trust them with a death penalty?
I wouldn’t trust them with a peashooter.
Execution is so final.
I didn’t and made no attempt to. My argument is a pragmatic one, not a moral one. As for what to do with murderers, life should mean life. That this hasn’t happened is not an argument in favour of execution, it’s an argument in favour of life meaning life.
Voyager, quite refreshing. There’s even a nice little irony that Guido’s campaign is less worthy than F1.
“Edith Thompson, Derek Bentley, Timothy Evans, The Guildford Four, Stefan Kiszko, Sally Clarke – I could name others, but my drift is clear.”
All those poor innocent people, all found guilty by a jury, some of them more than once.
Drift clear?
Not one of those people was guilty of murder. Juries do wrongly convict. Drift clear?
Your faith in the ability of juries to get it right every time is touching, but misplaced.
I didn’t and made no attempt to. My argument is a pragmatic one, not a moral one
But it is a moral argument and rightly so for that is what is called for. I don’t know why people are so scared of making moral arguments. Do they think people will mistake them for a god botherer? Raping the innocent of their DNA is also a moral matter and those that advocate it are sewage, the slime of humanity. There may also be ‘pragmatic’ arguments against a compulsory DNA database but at bottom it is a moral argument
I am opposed on moral grounds – the state has no moral right to take the lives of its citizens. I simply wasn’t making that point on this occasion.
Life meaning life was tacitly promised when capital punishment was abolished and the clamour for its return I think is an expression of, for want of a better word, a feeling of betrayal on the part of many people.
If a life sentence does actually mean life, it means you will die behind bars. You will never, ever get out. Your world will be the acre or two of your prison. Presumably you could be tottering around the exercise yard at 100 in your zimmer frame.
If I had murdered somebody and was given the choice I’m not sure which I’d prefer.
We clearly disagree fundamentally on the subject of capital punishment. I think my position is a moral one, as clearly do you, but I’m not sure which is morally superior to be honest or even if that should be the basis for argument.
I’m anti death penalty but only for the reasons that we can’t be sure of guilt, only beyond any reasonable doubt, which has been inadequate, as we have seen many times.
I don’t see it as the state taking the lives of their citizens, rather them acting as the agents of citizens who have collectively decided that this is the punishment they require for this particular crime (whatever it may be). Whether the citizens have the right to take the life of one of their own is another discussion but that is the correct one to have, unless you are living in some sort of dictatorship, police state etc., where it may well be the state murdering their citizens.
So, new technology such as DNA testing does need to be considered as regards establishing guilt because unless you want to rely on conspiracy theories, at some point the evidence is going to be there beyond any doubt whatsoever, leaving only the moral issue I mention above. Here I do think that this is a matter for the majority to decide on, whether we like what they decide or not.
This was why I carefully avoided making a moral argument. There are plenty of pragmatic ones that should rule out the death penalty – and it is perfeclty possible to be morally in favour yet decide to oppose on pragmatic grounds.
AWM – elsewhere, Angry Exile has made an excellent case for not allowing the state this sanction.
I really can’t gainsay that sentiment. Go read it all.
LR pointed us to:
If you love liberty the answer is straightforward: you must never, ever entrust the state with any power that you would not also be happy giving to a homicidal dictator.
Yeah it’s crossed my mind but I can’t help but think that if you believe that is the government we have, or could have, then why wouldn’t you think they would just bump off the people they don’t like anyway? Who needs all that boring legal procedure stuff after all when you’ve got MI6, the SAS and other ‘three letter’ organisations no one has even heard of… You’re not giving them a power they don’t already have in reality, legal or otherwise.
I used to support the death penalty, until I had the pleasure and honour of working with the mother of one of Robert Blacks victims.
She went on TV head to head with Anne West, mother of one of the moors murderers victims. West wanted hanging returned whilst my friend did not, arguing that knowing that the murderer was locked up for good should be good enough for a civilised society and that civilised societies should not descend to the level of murder.
Many will remember that poor Anne West died an early death, completely broken by what had happened to her child and living only to see the noose tighten around Brady and Hindleys necks.
My friend had a more positive attitude, living for her remaining children and making the best of the better things that life threw her way.
Just a normal woman, but truly inspirational.
I realised that if SHE would not support the death penalty, then how could I?
Life meaning life was tacitly promised when capital punishment was abolished
When was this promise made and who made it? I was alive at the time and don’t remember it.
If a life sentence does actually mean life, it means you will die behind bars
Judges already have the power to impose whole life tariffs. Levi Bellifield has just received one. Why do the supporters of capital punishment continually misrepresent current sentence guidelines? When people talk about restoring capital punishment they always mention child killers and serial killers. Well these people already get whole life tariffs. The Yorkshire Ripper has been inside for 30 years and he ain’t coming out.
You will never, ever get out. Your world will be the acre or two of your prison. Presumably you could be tottering around the exercise yard at 100 in your zimmer frame
So you want that punishment for every single murderer, do you? ‘Cos I can tell you that didn’t happen even when we had capital punishment. Condemned prisoners who had their death sentences commuted were eventually released on licence. Fact. If you want full life sentences for every single murderer, regardless of the circumstances, then it’s about time the death penalty lobby became a bit more honest about its true motives. because it never says this out loud. Even Staines’s e-petition refers only to child murder and murder of police officers being capital murder.
So, new technology such as DNA testing does need to be considered as regards establishing guilt because unless you want to rely on conspiracy theories, at some point the evidence is going to be there beyond any doubt whatsoever, leaving only the moral issue I mention above
DNA and scientific evidence is as capable of distortion and misrepresentation as any other kind of evidence. More so, in fact, as most people are scientific and mathematical ignoramuses. There is widespread misunderstanding about how common DNA false positives are. The reality is that they are quite common (less than 1 in 100,000), because of the restricted number of data points stored in the NDNAD. There will never be a time when we can be 100% sure that someone committed a crime, except in wholly exceptional circumstances, such as the Norway mass murderer. In the vast majority of cases, the jury will be left to consider circumstantial evidence and mistakes will continue to happen.