Why can’t we just hang scum like this?

Not at all, it's clear in all those cases that they killed people. But that doesn't automatically make them totally culpable.

In the case of Rudukabana, he had been under the care of MH services but stopped engaging with them. He wouldn't have been under their care if he wasn't unwell, so I couldn't be confident that he was 100% sane and responsible for his actions. Adam and Saadallah had also had involvement with MH services. In a different climate, they may all have succeeded with a diminished responsibility defence had such been put forward.

These cases remind me of the Valdo Calocane case. The enquiry into the MH services involvement with him found failings in his psychiatric care: Valdo Calocane MH report . Of course, we'll never know if things would have been different if there had been a more assertive approach to his care and treatment, but it raises a question.

I worked in a non-medical role with MH clients for 18 years. Over that time, services were cut and cut, and clients who used to have regular contact and input from MH professionals were getting nothing unless they went into crisis, someone noticed, and they engaged with services. My colleagues and I were often the first to raise concerns with local MH teams, because they weren't getting regular support. It really shouldn't be down to homelessness, resettlement and welfare rights staff to raise alerts about the deteriorating mental health of people who are under the care of mental health teams, MH services should be checking it out themselves.

I really wouldn't want to live in a society that fails to address deteriorating mental health in people who are already under the care of mental health services, and then executes those people when it all goes tits up.

In the Bendall case, it rather looks as though probation dropped the ball, again because they were overstretched and struggling. Bendall: probation review

But this is what happens when governments cut funding for these essential services. There was a time when mental health and probation services had assertive outreach teams that would monitor clients regularly and get them admitted to hospital or recalled to prison if they considered it necessary. That work just isn't being done these days.

Albert Pierrepoints autobiography (which few here have or will read) is a good starting point to address these questions.

When you learn he used s a "special" strap for certain victims (including Ruth Ellis) you suddenly feel a little less settled about the role of executioner.

Even he acknowledged that not a single person he hanged deterred anybody from killing. Although post-Gove who cares what experts think ?

I admit the recent Nuremberg film does raise some fascinating and disturbing questions. It may shock some, but I'm not really a fan of capital punishment. And that has to be absolute. Not ever. In any circumstances. However I am also not weeping salt tears for the Nazis who were executed. And even though there was an established abolitionist movement before the war, it probably didn't recruit many members in the late 1940s.

I'm fairly certain people already challenge convictions and appeal sentences based on the quality of the evidence? I don't think only having the death penalty as an option for a small range of cases would change that.

And no, cases aren't cut and dry for the most part. Which is why I don't think those cases should be eligible for a hypothetical death penalty.

Which is precisely why I said there is a chance that a very small percentage of innocent people might be executed. It depends on whether society as a whole thinks that is an acceptable risk or not; opinions on that, in the past and now, have varied.

It doesn't matter whether I believe they were guilty or not. What I do believe is that human falibility coupled with corruption could result in an apparently irrefutable case that fits your criteria.

I'm not PP, but to answer this point: it's not about whether I think they're guilty (because I do) but because there aren't two grades of "guilty" when it comes to a conviction. There is just guilty.

Rudukubana is just as guilty, in law, as the cases PP mentioned at the time they were convicted.

If a conviction of murder carried a death sentence, then both Rudukubana and the less certain cases would both face the death penalty. Even though Rudukubanas conviction, for the sake of argument, is more "certain".

If you start introducing grades of doubt into convictions and say "well person A is clearly guilty of murder so they can get the death penalty but person B is less definite so they can go to prison for life" then you leave the door wide open to those "less certain" convictions being challenged, and you end up with only the rare cases like Rudukubanas being convicted of murder with everyone else walking off scott-free.

You CANNOT devise a sentencing system based on the assumption that cases will always be cut and dry because they are not.

You keep bringing those cases up over and over, but they're categorically not what I'm talking about, and I've made that very clear. Those, from what I know, are cases based on forced confessions and shaky circumstantial evidence that could be falsified or misinterpreted (and was).

The cases I have mentioned, the perpetrators were mostly literally caught in the act of stabbing people. Do you truly think they might not have been guilty? Really? If so, I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree, because I think being caught while actively stabbing someone, with other victims strewn about, and then admitting it afterwards, is 100% conclusive.

Nobody thought it was possible the Birmingham 6, Guildford 4 etc didn't commit the crimes they were convicted of because the evidence was infallible. They were convicted because of poor science, corrupt police and racism. I believe that these are ongoing issues so because of that, and coupled with the proven unreliability of witnesses, we cannot ever say we are 100%.

So, do you genuinely think it's possible that Axel Rudakubana didn't do it? That Badreddin Abadlla Adam didn't do it? Or Khairi Saadallah? Damien Bendall? Marcus Arduini Monzo?

These are all just cases I found from a quick Google search where it is undeniably, incontrovertibly clear that they committed the crimes. They were mostly apprehended by the police literally in the act of stabbing people, the exception being Damien Bendall who called the authorities to tell them the heinous things he'd done - which he obviously had done.

Of course, there won't be many cases like that where a person's guilt is undeniable and obvious - but those are the only sort I think should really be considered for state execution, should the death penalty be brought back.

Go tell that to the toddlers he abused. He is absolute SCUM.

Some cases and convictions are 100% right and safe. At what point do we say yes they done it because there is video evidence in every room, 10 whitenesses, they admitted it etc etc…. Do we still say ‘It might be wrong?’ Come on now!!

Given the rapid pace of change in all things digital, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of video evidence being manipulated in the future (if it's not already possible) and witnesses can be bribed or mistaken or deliberately misled. We know that people make confessions that aren't true and that murder convictions have been set aside as a result.

The Guildford Four, Birmingham Six, Maguire Seven, Tottenham Three, M25 Three, Bridgewater Four ... were all convicted, beyond reasonable doubt, on the basis of evidence that was considered infallible at the time but which was found to be flawed years and years later. And that's just the cases that became causes celebres, there may well have been others that are less high profile.

We can't see the future, and science advances at a rapid pace. We have no way of knowing if what is considered rock solid proof now will turn out to be anything but at some point in the future.

We also know that people make false confessions, so even if they admit it I wouldn't be happy for them to be executed.

there have been a lot of innocent 'no doubt' people murdered by the state, even more suffering long stints incarcerated for crimes they didn't commit. False confessions are also a massive and now well known psychological phenomenon.. Are you aware how many unwell people even come forward and claim responsibility for crimes they definitely didn't commit? How many innocent people is it ok to kill to justify to have the 'right' to kill the one about which you have no doubt? I am not speaking to this case at all. Just capital punishment is impossible to justify, which is why it is banned across the civilised world. Not even in russia does the state kill 'criminals' (murder anti-regime activists aside (!)). And let's not even get started about america...

Witnesses can come up with a common interpretation of an event that is incorrect. Victims can mistakenly identify someone and video is easily faked today.

The Birmingham 6, Guildford 4, Maguire 7 etc were all supposedly rock solid cases.

Cases like this really test my opposition to the death penalty

My opinion is routed in two parts: 1) the chance of an unsafe conviction. 2) I feel it’s uncivilised and revenge is not a legitimate basis for justice.

i think over the years many evidential barriers have lifted: advances in DNA and video technology make convictions in some categories of cases much more definitive.

morally I find it abhorrent, but increasingly I’m finding that depends on the case at this point, if you sexually abuse small children in the most horrific ways I don’t think I can put forward a good argument for why you should live.

Fair enough. I still think there are a small number of cases where it's pretty damned clear thanks to the number of witnesses, surviving victims, and on top of that, DNA evidence, video evidence, and/or confession, all coming together to build a rock solid case.

I'm also not sure why there shouldn't be a category for incontrovertible guilt for the worst crimes were the death penalty brought in, just as I'm not sure why life sentences aren't actually life imprisonment currently. And as to the latter, I think if life sentences were actually life imprisonment for certain crimes (murder, child sex abuse, rape), fewer people might be tempted by the idea of a death penalty.

Do you not understand that for most people, if they didn’t their kids would have no roof over their head or go hungry and cold?

Don't be so simplistic and judgemental.

Someone arrives on the scene of the stabbing, panics, grabs the knife, pulls it out and potentially looks like they are stabbing the victim when the witness spots them.

Witnesses lie, witnesses misinterpret, witnesses make mistakes and that includes police witnesses. You just have to look at the corruption issues recently in the Met to realise that a police witness may not be as pure or reliable as you seem to believe. And that's before you get in to mistakes and misinterpretation.

The accused is either found guilty or not guilty. There isn't an option for really, really guilty.

This is an interesting point about video evidence.

On another note, I haven't seen much consideration on this thread of capacity and responsibility (apologies though - I haven't quite read the full thread).

Mental illness is often a factor in violent crime. If someone has murdered someone beyond any reasonable doubt, but they were e.g. erroneously discharged by the social care system before diagnosis and therefore weren't on the right meds, whose fault is it? There's a lot of incredibly tricky nuance, and one person's incontrovertible proof is another person's grey area.

Also for those that say yes to hanging . Whose job will it be to pull the handle and watch their necks break or strangle to death and to get them off the rope afterwards likely covered in piss and shit ?
Someone has to do it so why not you ?

No one is 'scum', no matter how terrible their crime.

Regarding hanging, I can't be all that unusual in thinking that spending years in our barbaric chaos-ridden prisons is a worse punishment than being executed.

In the case of the Birmingham 6, it wasn't falsified, but the forensic tests were flawed and mis-identified microscopic particles from playing cards for explosive traces.

The falsified evidence was the false statements, subsequently discredited when a procedure called electrostatic deposition analysis (ESDA) was developed.

One of the reasons I'm so opposed to the death penalty is that science that was once considered infallible is now known to be anything but. We can't see the future and processes currently considered safe may well turn out not to be.

We are entering a post-truth era, where deep fake will pose a massive challage to the legal system. We say we know somebody has done something because we have video evidence, I imagine in a very short period of time that is going to become a very muddy area indeed.

They do , I worked in one . They do their sentence , get released , commit again and end back in prison .
Paedophiles are on their own wing , and do not mix with the rest of the population .
" Celebrity " paedophiles get murdered by fellow inmates for the notoriety of the act .

You're underestimating how it feels to be locked up

Is prison really enough punishment though.
They still get meals, beds, showers, tvs etc, in fact if your homeless its a good option.
Apart from losing your freedom its not really harsh conditions inside is it.
You dont have to sleep on the floor, break rocks all day etc.
Maybe if it was harsher, less people would be in there.
I think the feeling that prison is too good for them, is true in alot of cases.