Will Britain Ever Reintroduce the Death Penalty?
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With all the Brexit shenanigans in Britain, other news often vanishes under the radar before anyone has noticed it is even there. Most alarming, when this happens, is when it is something that people really should be made aware of for one reason or another. A certain call to reintroduce the death penalty in the UK is, I think, a case in point.
Lincolnshire MP John Hayes wrote to Secretary of State for Justice David Gauke back in November 2018, “to ask if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals to reintroduce the death penalty to tackle violent crime”.
Now, it has to be said, violent crime is certainly on the increase, even to virtually epidemic proportions in some areas, but reintroduce the death penalty?
I have often joked that, if I were in power, I’d employ police marksmen to shoot anyone damaging the environment by illegally dumping rubbish. But actually I’ve never thought that the death penalty was a good idea.
When a country or, in the USA, a state calmly and coolly, and in sound mind, decides that it’s going to kill someone, that’s actually premeditated murder. And when they administer the lethal injection in front of an invited audience of priests and officials on a sort of stage, well, it’s just bizarre.
The people who actually suffer most from the death penalty are the parents and children and so on of the executed person. It isn’t anything other than pure punishment with an aftermath of pure devastation visited on families when the families of the victim(s) of the murderer have already been devastated.
I can think of many many people who could and, indeed, perhaps should have been removed from the scene, so to speak. Moors murderers Hindley and Brady along with Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe for a start. I wouldn’t have lost any sleep had they been other than a nagging doubt that I was not comfortable with ‘the state’ committing premeditated murder, even against such scum bags.
Besides, what if I was ever in charge? I can think of any number of people who could be removed in such a way that nobody can really explain what had happened.
Donald Trump, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, various hard-line Muslim fanatics, most human rights lawyers, anyone who wears a onesie, people with beards, anyone who claps along to the awful oompah music at the Horse of the Year Show, everyone who watches TV show ‘Eastenders’.
That’s the main problem with a country having a death penalty. Those in charge can get carried away and get it wrong. Posthumous pardons, Royal or otherwise, mean nothing to the wrongly executed – and it has happened.
In the USA for example :
Cameron Todd Willingham, in 1992, was convicted of arson murder in Texas. He was believed to have intentionally set a fire that killed his three kids. In 2004, he was put to death. Unfortunately, the Texas Forensic Science Commission later found that the evidence was misinterpreted, and they concluded that none of the evidence used against Willingham was valid. As it turns out, the fire really was accidental.
Ruben Cantu—Cantu was 17 at the time the crime he was alleged of committing took place. Cantu was convicted of capital murder, and in 1993, the Texas teen was executed. About 12 years after his death, investigations show that it was likley Cantu didn’t commit the murder. The lone eyewitness recanted his testimony, and Cantu’s co-defendant later admitted he allowed his friend to be falsely accused. He says Cantu wasn’t even there the night of the murder.
That’s just with a legal death penalty as well. Once a country gets a taste for it, how long before it gets a taste for quiet assassination of perceived trouble makers? There is always a danger that you end up with a Uday Hussein like character feeding hookers to his pet tigers and making old men dance between gun shots.
No. The death penalty, whilst occasionally tempting, is not a good idea. It is also not a good idea that so few even know that MP John Hayes is pushing for its reintroduction in the UK. He will probably fail but people should be aware that he is even trying.
Now, where did I put that wood and piece of rope I was thinking of introducing my annoying neighbor too?
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Albert Pierpointe owned a pub in my home town of Oldham in Lancashire (just north of Manchester). It was called “Help The Poor Struggler”
It’s long gone now.
There’s a really good movie on DVD called The Last Hangman, the story of the last British executioner, Mr. Pierpointe. I recommend it highly.
Well, since since a number of studies have shown there is no deterrent effect of capital punishment, and the cost is actually approximately 1/3 more then a 21 year spending his/her life in prison, capital punishment may also be a related cause of violent behavior. This last item is based upon the theory that over time people actually become numb to the horror of taking the life of another person. The statistics are a bit harder to come by because it has become so commonplace in countries like America where killing another human being is merely another occurrence in everyday life. Life is cheap in America unless it is someone noteworthy who is killed or unless they they are killed in large quantities. For example, in most death penalty states in America the mere, garden variety killing of one’s neighbor because he, or she just pissed you off is no longer a capital offense. It must be done within the context of another crime such as rape, robbery, kidnapping, or a drive by shooting, or the victim must be “special person like a police officer, prosecutor, judge, or a prominent citizen. But just to get up one morning, walk out your front door and shoot and kill the guy standing on his front lawn, well, he is just unlucky.
ONG I watch Eastenders, no seriously I am addicted to that show as well as Emmerdale. I got into it because of my Glasgow friend but have kept it up, much to my shame so I should be killed 😉 That being said, I have been protesting the death penalty since my teen years, up to and in front of San Quentin where they murder people here in California, because it is barbaric and does not deter anything, only thing it does is deter that one person from killing and if we locked them away with no possibility of getting out it would be the same thing and for the record, less expensive.. It’s one of the things we are number one at, state sanctioned murder, we’re right up there with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia yayay for us.
Besides the fact that no deterrence can be demonstrated, there is, as you mention, the occasional “accidental” state murder of an innocent person. All that can be said for this barbaric practice is that it’s emotional satisfying to those who confuse revenge with justice.
Florida’s new governor recently pardoned 5 people who were falsely accused, but they’re long dead now. I don’t care what the accused is guilty of, the entire principle of government killing in cold blood demeans us all.
It does, and as you point out the death penalty is not a deterrent, and it also costs more to execute someone than it does to incarcerate them for life.