death penalty

[pinkmoon]

Not often I'm serious but with the recent cases of "whole life terms" been imposed on some murderers do we need the death penalty to be reintroduced?

[Graham]

Coincidentally enough, but I'm just re-reading A Fine Day For A Hanging, Carol Ann Lee's excellent overview of the Ruth Ellis Case from 1955. She was the last female to be executed in the UK, and according to English law as it stood in 1955, she hadn't a leg to stand on. English law in 1955 did not allow for either diminished responsibility or crime passionelle, so she was all but condemned from the moment of her arrest for the cold-blooded shooting of her lover David Blakeley. There was considerable disquiet and even outrage at the time, and her case directly led to the eventual abandonment of capital punishment in 1965.

One of the major problems with capital punishment is the all-too-real possibility of a mistake. Timothy Evans and Derek Bentley spring to mind. Plus, it is always possible that new evidence may come to light at some after an individual has been executed. I watched "HARDtalk" the other night, in which Dr Allen Ault, former warden of Georgia State Prison, discussed how he had supervised the execution of five inmates, and how he now regretted it, especially in the case of one prisoner, who spent 17 years on death row, and in that time, according to Dr Ault, became an almost-reborn individual. Yet he was executed.

The number of executions in the USA is falling year by year, as more states abolish capital punishment, and this is to be applauded. A 'whole life term' may seem cruel, but just take a look at some of the recent cases here in the UK. Yes, the State has to pay for these people to be maintained in custody until the day they die, but personally I think it's a price worth paying.

Graham

[GUT]

G'day Pinkmoon at al.

I was once a big supporter of the death penalty.

But I changed my mind when I realised how often our legal systems, get it wrong.

[Sunbury]

Timothy Evans - an innocent man executed

After reading 10 Rillington Place by Ludovic Kennedy concerning the execution of an innocent man - Timothy Evans under British Law, I had second thoughts on the Death Penalty also.

The fact that the actual killer John Christie was the main Crown Witness showed deep flaws in the Legal System of the day. The fact that after Christie himself was later executed as a serial killer, the Police and the Courts took so long to give a pardon to Evans.

[Barnaby]

To those who are not morally opposed in general to the death penalty:

If we arranged an efficient system of capital punishment in which it was considerably cheaper to execute criminals than to keep them alive (this is often not the case), and reserved the death penalty for the worst of the worst, what error rate (killing someone who is actually innocent) are we willing to tolerate? I'm thinking somewhere in the 5% range because realistically I doubt we could do much better. So I think we have to accept this or ban it. Are we comfortable with this error rate?

[GUT]

G'day Barnaby

There is an old saying in British Jurisprudence, sometimes referred to as "The Golden Thread", that states that

It is better for 100 guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to go to prison.

So you factor in the death penalty and I for one want something a whole lot better than 95%.

I am philosophically in favour of the Death Penalty, where I have the problem is the failure rate of our justice systems, I have seen too many innocent people go to prison.

I lady I know spent years in prison, for murder, she was later totally completely and utterly exonerated, if the Death Penalty had existed, I have no doubt she would have received it any as her case had been appealed to the Highest Court in the Country before new evidence was found she would almost certainly have been executed.

[Magpie]

In principle I'm all for the death penalty

In practice I'm against it for two reasons:

1) I don't trust the government (any government) to apply it justly
2) I don't believe that the government has the right to ask a citizen to be a murderer on it's behalf.

[Ginger]

To those who are not morally opposed in general to the death penalty:

If we arranged an efficient system of capital punishment in which it was considerably cheaper to execute criminals than to keep them alive (this is often not the case), and reserved the death penalty for the worst of the worst, what error rate (killing someone who is actually innocent) are we willing to tolerate? I'm thinking somewhere in the 5% range because realistically I doubt we could do much better. So I think we have to accept this or ban it. Are we comfortable with this error rate?

I think that would be an acceptable rate of error, yes. I don't think the actual rate is anything close to as high as that - pehaps a tenth of it, if that much.

Slackness in punishing criminals results in innocent people dying as well. We've had an epidemic of that this past half century. We tend to overlook it, since it's neither so dramatic nor so direct as the state mistakenly killing the wrong man, but we're just as certainly responsible for deaths resulting from our unwillingness to cull out the bad actors.

[Robert]

Hi GUT

It seems to me that the Golden Thread is more to do with a demand that a conviction should be based on the jury's belief in the defendant's guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt, rather than about methods of punishment. But in any case, the saying about 100 guilty men going free seems obviously wrong, because if you release 100 murderers they will probably murder yet more innocent people, and so the arithmetic is pretty clear.

[Errata]

I used to be for the death penalty. Not out of any illusions as to it's usefulness as a deterrence or as some righteous act, but mostly because I have never been to attached to the idea of the sanctity of human life, and if it makes the families of the victims feel better I'm fine with that. I have always believed that people can forfeit their basic rights.

But I was talking to an Italian friend, and we were talking about Ted Bundy I think, and he pointed out that if Bundy has escaped to Italy that their government wouldn't have given him back to face justice because we have the death penalty. And I couldn't deny that Italy had that right, but it bothered me because with a case like Bundy, you have a lot of families with children still missing. They don't know if their daughters were his victims or not. They don't know whether or not to stop searching for a living child. And those people deserve answers more than families of dead women deserve some kind of biblical justice. And a Bundy type not being extradited because of the death penalty is not justice.

Giving people answers is more important that giving them closure. And I'm not so attached to my total lack of concern for the fate of a killer that I'm willing to create a system in which people never get those answers.

[Sis]

I’m against the death penalty because:
- The margin of error in a wrongful conviction is too great. Many seem to be falsely convicted due to public pressure to have crimes solved especially the gruesome murders.
- As a citizen I personally could not with out good cause (self defense) take a life nor am I able to be a witness an execution. Therefore I can’t expect other citizens to do what I’m not capable of.
- I believe some criminals maybe worth more alive than dead if there is knowledge of the location of other victims and to study them.

While prisoners are incarcerated I’m:

- For the legal use of a truth serum (if it was reliable) to be used on those convicted of multiple murders such as Ted Bundy (for the purpose to gain the location of other victims).
- For prisoners being able to further their education and being able to earn an income while incarcerated.
- Against prisoners having internet access or receiving financial benefits such as disability, old age or pension benefits.

[pinkmoon]

Thy shalt not kill says the bible .

[Wickerman]

Yet the Bible has been the cause of more bloodshed & suffering than any other written work - imagine that!

[louisa]

Believe it or not there have been quite a few cases where killers on Death Row have been released. Yes, it happens. Some of them go on to re-offend and kill more people. The reason they get released varies. Sometimes the prison has a new governor who makes changes to the system. Sometimes the killer gets transferred to another 'softer' prison where parole is eventually offered, even to those whose sentences stipulated 'without parole'.

I seem to recall a case of a prison in Texas where the new governor decided that because the prison was overcrowded they would release all prisoners with the initials T-Z. A lot of killers were freed because of this.

My point is that if prisoners on Death Row had received their just desserts a lot sooner, instead of languishing in prison putting in appeal after appeal, then it would get them out of the way permanently. There would be no chance of them ever harming anyone else.

[pinkmoon]

Yet the Bible has been the cause of more bloodshed & suffering than any other written work - imagine that!

The bible also mentions about not committing adultery and that seems to have been ignored as well