A timely reminder that when it comes to idiocy, the Tories can give Labour a run for their money.
An MP has asked for the ‘potential merits’ of the death penalty to be reconsidered by UK Parliament as he calls for it to be reintroduced.
Sigh… There aren’t any. Sure, it would be nice to top some of the most violent killers, but that would merely be revenge on the part of the state. And, really, do we want to grant an incompetent state with the power of life and death over the accused? Really?
So we have the certainty that there will be innocents executed. We have the absolute certainly that it will have no deterrent effect on Jihadists – which is one of the reasons this cretin is asking for it – as they welcome death and it will make even more martyrs for the cause. Nor is there any evidence whatsoever that it acts as a deterrent in ordinary murder either. After all, it didn’t stop it when we had the death penalty. Indeed, murder has been a fairly common crime throughout history despite the death penalty being in place.
Mr Hayes, who represents South Holland and Deepings in Lincolnshire, used the case of Westminster killer Khalid Masood to illustrate his point.
No, the best way of dealing with people like this is to kill them in the act, thereby saving lives. Which is precisely what happened. So, er, he didn’t get to trial, so the sentence is somewhat irrelevant.
The only rational case in favour is that some of the most violent and evil people will be removed permanently. An appealing prospect, I agree. However, the downsides are too onerous.
It is true, however, that sentencing frequently does not reflect the severity of the crime and life without parole for premeditated murder should be used in lieu of the death penalty. That way, should the system have got it wrong, then there is the possibility of release. A posthumous acquittal is pointless.
There is also the unassailable logic that state sponsored murder doesn’t cease to be murder just because the state says so. I also agree that miscarriages of justice are so prevalent that the death penalty can’t be considered for that reason alone. Mr. Hayes needs to take the time to imagine himself falsely accused of murder with the real possibility of the death penalty hanging over him.
Every time the discussion crops up, that’s exactly what I do. I think about Edith Thompson and Timothy Evans for example.
A posthumous acquittal is pointless.
Quite so, LR, and the truth is that it wasn’t an acquittal but a pardon, as if you had done it and were being forgiven for doing it.
Longrider writes: “No, the best way of dealing with people like this is to kill them in the act, thereby saving lives. Which is precisely what happened.”
And in the case of the non-judicial execution of Jean Charles de Menezes, at the choice of then Police Gold Commander Cressida Dick?
Whilst being definitely against the reintroduction of capital punishment (by anyone, outside of major war), it strikes me that these things are more difficult than Longrider makes out.
Best regards
Not really. The two cases have no similarity. Jean Charles de Menezes was not carrying out acts of murder whereas Khalid Masood was, making him a legitimate target. The key part of my comment was “in the act” so pretty straightforward, really.
Alternatively one could think of the innocent victims of those murderers who have done their time and then been released only to kill again. If the death penalty had been imposed first time round these people would still be alive. Thanks to PACE and advances in forensics the likelihood of miscarriages of justice in a capital case would be significantly lower nowadays.
I covered this point in the OP:
People place far too much faith in forensics and seem to believe that DNA evidence is infallible. It isn’t. If you fancy the risk of facing a capital penalty for a crime you didn’t commit because the forensics “prove” you are guilty, good luck to you. It’s a chance I am not willing to take. “Significantly lower” is not good enough. Not even close to good enough.
Again this is something we wholeheartedly agree on. The death penalty is barbaric and out dated. Surely we have moved past this by now. Oh and the argument about DNA etc…. well, I’d contest that planting someone’s DNA at the scene of a crime is easier than placing fingerprints and we have had fingerprint tech for over a century now. The long and short of it is if we had carried on with State Murder we would have killed too many innocents…at least somewhere in the high tens of numbers if not into the hundreds.
A trick now quite often used by various burglars and break-in artists of the more intelligent nature is to quietly visit seriously dodgy pubs well outside normal hours, and collect cigarette ends whilst being careful not to get one’s own DNA on the fag-ends.
Then, whilst burgling a place, the burglar is careful firstly not to smoke themselves, and secondly to place cigarette ends throughout the property where even the doziest CSI can spot and collect them.
When the crime is investigated then lazy police officers may well choose to follow the planted evidence and fit-up criminals thus implicated with the crime, as opposed to skeptically investigating the crime scene properly.
To really be put off capital punishment, spend an hour or three exploring http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org
Agreed. Giving the state powers to kill people is a step too far
I object to my taxes being wasted on a great many things, but keeping people in prison for their crimes is not one of them
I strongly agree.
I also think that somehow publicising the miserable and pointless lives of miscreants who will never now be released because of their crimes would do much more to deter other such criminals.
An autobiography of a hangman I read once seems also to hint at what capital punishment eventually evolves into. The hangman (or rather his assistant) notes that on the day of an execution other prisoners in a jail were always confined to their cells to prevent disorder, and that prisons always had a distinct atmosphere to them that was otherwise absent.
The actual execution would be a fairly noisy affair, not from the victim crying out but from the purposefully noisy operation of the trap mechanism. This echoed throughout the jail, and always caused great agitation.
The hangman argued that doing this in the presence and hearing of prisoners, most of whom would be career criminals rather than chance offenders, acted as a strong deterrent to these career criminals against casual murder.
In other words, capital punishment does have a deterrent effect, but only on other criminals and not on the general public, and certainly not on the usual target of a hanging, the crime of passion murderer.
I still do not think that this is a good enough argument for capital punishment to justify the chances of miscarriages of justice. Rather, a system similar to the medieval oubliette whereby prisoners who are never to be released are segregated in fairly comfortable but escape-proof surroundings, there to while away their days pointlessly. Interviewing some for TV would also be a fairly reasonable idea, just to bring home the sheer horror of knowing that one would never be free ever again because of one’s crimes.