A Question for Supporters of the Death Penalty

David

My question is why supporters want the state to have such a power. I barely trust them with what they have, I'm certainly not giving them the power of life and death.

Occasional Ostrich

Ok, Alex,
fwiw, my natural inclination would be for the death penalty to be used for a specifically stated range of offences. And no, that would not include ALL offences involving killing a person. But, once the trapdoor has swung open it's a bit late to say, "Sorry, sorry, we got it wrong."
Even if a murder were an 'open-and-shut' case (sorry, I watched too many Perry Masons when I was little!) justice would not permit us to use two different sentences for the same crime: The death penalty for a case beyond doubt, or life imprisonment, just because the evidence is 'a little bit shaky'.
So, on balance, I believe we should never reintroduce the death penalty, except, perhaps, in the extreme circumstances of war.
But I really do wish the people's view on the relative heinousness of a crime was more properly reflected before a life sentence is qualified by the granting of parole after such a limited number of years.

grassmarket

Because bringing back the death penalty would save far more innocent lives than it would take.

Peter Jackson

Yes it does bother me. Does it bother you when innocent people are murdered by people who would have been deterred by the death penalty and if not, why not?

K. Kehl

Surgeons sometimes make mistakes that kill patients on the operating table -- patients that would have lived otherwise. Sometimes these surgeons are abusing prescription meds, etc. Should we ban surgery?

Airplane pilots occasionally fly drunk, or do dangerous things like let their children play with the controls in flight -- resulting in hundreds of fatalities. Should we ban airplanes?

Martin

Yes I read it yesterday after give the link from:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/briantaylor/2009/09/legislative_programme.html?page=2#P85496260

There have been too many miscarriages of justice to justify capital punishment here and elsewhere in the world, as people will eventually discover compassion is far better than vengeance.

David Nally

Don't make it sound like abolishing the death penalty is a win win situation. How many people have been sentenced to death thru being murdered by a murderer not executed but released after 10 or so years.Until we stop releasing murderers who then go on to murder again I will continue to mantain we have a death penalty in this country. what's the difference from hanging an innocent person, and releasing a murderer who murders an innocent person. if my child,wife,sister,brother was executed I would be distraught-even more so if they were innocent. I would be equally so if they were murdered my a person who should not have been released.
I'm glad I don't have to make the decision.

Kittler

The problem with the death penalty is that it will result in fewer convictions. Juries won't have the bottle to convict. The defense will plead, that as a mans life is at stake, beyond reasonable doubt is insufficient and certainty is needed.

Michaela

Cameron Todd Willingham is not the only man that was executed that was innocent, America needs to stop murdering people full stop. The law in the USA stinks. The death penalty is not something that needs to be bought back to in the UK those that support it are no better than murders themselves.

paulme

Any system of justice and punishment will sometimes cause the death of innocent people. It may be that the innocent killed by wrong conviction and execution are more than compensated for by the innocent saved through deterrence or the prevention of repeat offences by released murderers.

Fergus Pickering

Oh come on. Everybody has thought of this. If we have a death penalty OF COURSE innocent people are executed. I suppose the Christie business was before your time. Supporters of the Death Penalty hve to look upon this as a kind of collateral damage. And of course if yoou DON'T have a death penalty then you have all those murders committed by murderers who come out of prison. How many would that be? More or less than the previous figure?

Beafeater

Miscarriages of justice do occur, as do miscarriages of mercy.
Bound to feel bothered either way, bother it.

David

"Because bringing back the death penalty would save far more innocent lives than it would take."

Evidence please.

"It may be that the innocent killed by wrong conviction and execution are more than compensated for by the innocent saved through deterrence or the prevention of repeat offences by released murderers."

So, murders will be compensated by no murders?

The basic principle of British jurisprudence is innocent until proven guilty, and that it is better for the guilty to go free than for the innocent to be locked up. Your formula turns this on hits head to one which tends to hold in totalitarian states. No thanks.

Katherine

Any form of punishment takes away something that cannot be given back. Innocent people have been executed but innocent people have also been sentenced to years in prison that cannot be returned. If someone has spent thirty years in prison unjustly you can apologise, you can pay compensation, but you cannot give them back those thirty years, can you?

Does this mean that no punishment should be allowed, because some innocent people will be punished?

Hecko

Can any of the death penalty supporter point to any evidence of its deterrent effect? This is the main argument in its favour and has no factual basis.

ndm

I just love it that the principal supporters of the death penalty are typically those on the right who are angry that the State has its hands on their wallets but are untroubled that the State has its hands on their hearts.

Fergus Pickering

Oh come on, Hecko. Of course Draconian justice has a deterrent effect. Are you telling me that if there were NO punishment at all for,say, rape, that the figures for rape would remain the same. Are you not deterred at all from travelling on a train without a ticket by the fact that detection brings a swingeing fine. And might you not ber detrred from killing your wife, however irritating she may become, by the thought that, if found out, wou will swing for it? I am not, as it hapens, an advocate of thedeath penalty, though there are some that would be none the worse for a hanging, but have some bloody sense, do. And what exactly would constitute evidence, anyway.Someone saying they would have committed murder but the prospect of execution stopped them? But people have said that very thing.

ChrisinSin

This article had a pretty profound effect on my morning, and has only consolidated my view that the death penalty cannot be justified. As another poster has commented, the lack of evidence of the deterrent effect of the death penalty means that this is just a subjective position that supporters of the death penalty will assume to entrench their lust for revenge. The bottom line for me has to be that killing an innocent person has to invalidate the capital punishment system. Locking someone away indefinitely for murder upon conviction at least allows the possibility that they could be released if new evidence comes to light proving innocence of the original offence. Reforming the sentencing system to mean that life imprisonment means being incarcerated indefinitely would be a good starting point. That's my view fwiw.

Beer Moth

ndm.

In supporting the death penalty, do I forfeit my right to be of the left?

Simon Stephenson

To me the true test must be consistency. If you are in favour of capital punishment you must be prepared to commit to being in favour of it whoever it is being applied to, whether this is someone from the other end of the country, or someone closer to home like your brother, or your son.

So if there are no circumstance in which you would support your own son being executed you shouldn't, in similar circumstances, support someone else's son being executed either.

MikeF

Moth - No, socialists tend to view crime in an ideological way i.e. as behaviour that is not merely anti-social but anti-socialist. Hence when they get power they tend towards draconian law enforcement. It is no accident that, say, the USSR and the old eastern bloc in general practiced captial punishment in political as well as criminal cases. So in supporting the death penalty you certainly do not forfeit your right to be of the left - you are in its mainstream.

Scott Cobb

Sign a petition to Governor Rick Perry and the State of Texas to acknowledge that the fire in the Cameron Todd Willingham case was not arson, therefore no crime was committed and on February 17, 2004, Texas executed an innocent man.