Why can’t we just hang scum like this?

with DNA CCTV - the man on the bus in America killing a lone ?Polish girl whilst people looked away will haunt me forever - I would happily plug him into the mains!

Well take Lucy Letby for example. Everyone was baying for her blood after her conviction.

However now a group of eminent experts have studied the evidence and concluded that no babies were murdered at all

Given the numerous NHS hospitals in which many babies have died as the result of inadequate care this is no real surprise.

I am not saying that Lucy Letby will ever be released. The UK justice system hates admiting its mistakes. Their motto should probably be better a thousand innocent people rot in jail than one judge is made to look silly.

But at least as she hasn't been hung there's a chance.

Neither would hanging him, if that's your argument.

No. I'm not sure how that relates to your previous post and my reply to it.

And him going to prison is going to undo what he did, is it?

One of the reasons the death penalty was abolished was because juries became hesitant to bring a guilty verdict if it meant the person would be hanged.

I like that thought experiment.

'No' is my answer.

Let me refine it a bit.

If we could guarantee that the execution of one innocent person would stop all murders for a year, and that one person would be chosen at random from your child's class, would you agree to it?

True.

However in the documentary "How To Kill A Human" (BBC), the idea of a painless execution was rather poo-poohed by a big advocate in a US retentionist state.

Totally unaware of the harm he was doing for the capital punishment cause, he gave a rather creepy smile when he said "it's gotta hurt to be worth it".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/executions/

Well, no, he didn't. That's why he's going to prison.

It should come down to statistics. How many innocent people would die due to miscarriage of justice, versus how many innocent people die at the moment due to murder as criminals have no fear of prison but would fear execution. Or by murderers who are released from prison and go on to kill again.

Bringing back the death sentence doesn't mean bringing back hanging. There are other more efficient methods nowadays.

Quoting scripture, whilst fun, rarely (if ever) leads to a solution. At best someone will find an equal and opposite quote. At worst you are involved in a Holy War.

Two wrongs don't make a right. 'Thou shalt not kill'.

And who wants to encourage the sort of person willing to be a hangman? Or worse make it a job that someone might take in desperation for work.

Pierrepoints autobiography really should be on a syllabus somewhere. Not because of it's (ghost written) prose. But because it really does open a window to illuminate such questions.

The fact that he resigned over an unpaid bill is rarely mentioned. Presumably as it reduces the act of execution to a transaction. And one that the state will skimp on where possible.

Also if we manage to let prisoners out by mistake, how can be sure we wouldn't end up hanging a few by mistake ?(The gag from Blackadder about not only having the right man, but the paper to prove it springs to mind).

Because there will always be some miscarriages of justice.

You don’t know which case they are from reading the newspapers - the judge and jury obviously didn’t realise in the famous miscarriage of justice cases, and the public would probably have thought some of those we prime cases for a death penalty.

There will always, always be some.

And who wants to encourage the sort of person willing to be a hangman? Or worse make it a job that someone might take in desperation for work.

So because people die through government neglect (a government elected by the people), it's ok for the state to actively kill others, including innocent people?

What about if the government got the act together, sorted out the NHS and everyone received the treatment they needed when they needed it? Would it still be ok for the government to actively kill people using the death penalty?

I think killing people because they're ill and not responsible for their actions is positively medieval.

And we do have actual life imprisonment: Rose West, Dennis Nilsen, Levi Belfield, Peter Sutcliffe, Shipman, all got whole life orders and there are probably loads more that I don't know about.

Judges also have the power to sentence dangerous offenders to an indefinite term in prison for the protection of the public when the offence committed doesn't carry a life sentence. Maybe those powers should/could be used more widely. (Although that would probably require the building of more prisons!)

I often read judges' sentencing remarks in conjunction with the sentencing guidelines for the offence in question, and I rarely disagree with their decision. They have to work within the existing framework, they can't just think "You're a right bad 'un, I'm banging you up for ever". That would lead to a lot of appeals.

I have been on jury duty and to be honest people are pretty thick. Wanting to find people guilty because they have a ‘ feeling’ instead of basing the verdict on the evidence. I 100% get where you’re coming from OP and in ideal world where we could 100% guarantee no loss of innocent life then I would absolutely vote for the death penalty. But it’s just too risky

It does lead to some intractable philosophical conundrums.

I would class myself as definitely following a Bentham type path. However I'm not entirely comfortable with it's every side road.

Also it's telling that all the mentions of innocent people that have and will be executed by the hard wing of this thread make no mention of the families of the wrongly executed. One can only speculate, but losing a loved one in a terrible violent murder cannot compare to the absolute horror of knowing your husband, wife or child was deliberately killed knowing they were innocent.

It depends on the school of philosophy you follow. Utilitarianism would say that it would be unethical not to value the lives of hundreds of people and their hundreds of family members who would have had their lives destroyed, over the lives of one person and their family, especially if that person had been convicted of murder.

It makes me think of one of the variants of the trolley problem; would you actively pull the lever and kill one innocent person, or passively not touch the lever and allow the runaway trolley to kill twenty innocent people? Which do you consider to be morally right? Do you view the former as murder, and the latter as allowing nature to take its course, or do you view the former as taking the least-bad option, and the latter to be cowardice that results in more harm?

I've been very clear about that from the beginning, actually. Obviously there would always be the possibility of human error.

Personally, I don't see much difference between the state withholding life saving medical treatment from innocent people due to cost, therefore passively killing them (something that happens far more), versus actively killing a tiny number of wrongly convicted people.

I understand others feel differently, but weighing up the costs and benefits, I think there are persuasive arguments either way. Certainly, I think the justice system as it currently operates is not good enough.

Personally I respect people who are honest and admit "Shit, mistakes happen, but the overall benefit is worth it" over those who try all sorts of mental gymnastics to underscore their argument as "Well, we don't make mistakes in 2025".

Here's a thought experiment for fun. If it could be shown that randomly executing someone every so often (we could combine it with premium bonds to save costs) regardless of guilt or innocence actually cause a 50% decrease in the murder rate (so can be seen as saving hundreds of lives a year), then would they support it ?

"God will know His own"

I don't think killing innocent people is acceptable, regardless of whether it is done by the state or a psychopath.

Good to see you admit that your 100% guilty position is fallible and would potentially result in innocent people being killed.

I don't consider culpability relevant, personally. If someone is so dangerous that a lapse in their mental health care can cause them to stab multiple children, then they should never be allowed free again. In fact, the fact that they have zero control over their actions makes them more dangerous.

I'd rather live in a society that executed some prisoners and provided very good mental health care, honestly. Or a society that provided very good mental health care, and had actual life imprisonment, and no execution.

The very first thing a totalitarian regime does, is declare that it has solved all injustice.

Once you have that decided, then it obviously you can eliminate he undesirables. After all, you don't make mistakes do you.

Most advocates for the death penalty do it from a place of emotion (of some description). The whole point of having a legal system is to remove emotion from the process. Speaking purely for myself I am happy we take that approach to trying to keep society safe. I am not really convinced a return to the days when justice was meted out individually would improve society.