To question my long held beliefs against capital punishment after what happened to Alesha MacPhail

[Noteventhebirdsareupyet]

Hi all,

I have recently been really shaken by the Alesha MacPhailcase and possibly because I now have a tiny daughter of my own, I am feeling really affected by what has happened.

I have always had reasonably strong views against capital punishment and have often argued that:

No one has the right to take the life of another.

When capital punishment is lawful, mistakes are made and innocent people get killed.

We are supposedly a civilised society.

Often offenders were victims first and therefore need empathy and have been failed by the system.....

However I am now shocked to find myself thinking that if a person can do the things that Aaron Campbell has done to a tiny, innocent girl and show absolutely no remorse, then perhaps instead of spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money keeping him incarcerated and then putting communities at risk upon his release, maybe we as a society should say that this person is intrinsically evil and has no place among us.

I honestly never imagined myself feeling like this and maybe it is because I am now a mother that I do. Surely people like him don't deserve a second chance and should be killed before they ruin more lives.

Am I being unreasonable to feel like this? Has anyone else had a turning point like me? I feel that my family and friends would be a bit shocked to hear me say "let's kill dangerous criminals" but this incident has had a profound effect on my outlook and I feel like I can't voice my opinions out loud.

Nicknacky pretty much what I thought. Maybe they won't say if he scores high but I doubt he is a 'full' one, has traits of them though. Although he has a fair amount of them..

Haven't read the full thread or all of the OP as I feel exactly the same. I've cried and even had to go home from a day out (I have very very severe Anxiety & Depression before anyone rolls their eyes) due to being upset over what I've read about this case. I have a 4yr old daughter who looks just like that little girl 😢

The killer is NOT a child he is 16 and if he can commit very adult crimes then he cannot be pardoned as a child @PlainSpeakingStraightTalking

This was truly horrific and I'm angry at the media for going into such graphic detail

"Her naked body lay unfound in a car park in woodlands" along with very graphic detail as to the damage to her genitalia. There should have been a warning before this was said. I was genuinely traumatised from it. Still am. Still shed a tear daily for what that poor, poor little girl went through.

Other than to protect my daughter, I don't want to exist in this cruel, cruel world anymore

I hope he lives a long, miserable life in prison and one where he is looking over his shoulder every second of the day. He is one of the worst killers Scotland has had.

Well James Bulgers murderers were sentenced as 10 year olds 25 years ago in a different country Aaron Cambell is 16 his sentencing isn't the same.

But in this case I don’t care if he decides never to murder another child again, he is never to be given the opportunity and he probably will be killed in prison

We are supposedly a civilised society.

And this is why, even if we had the death penalty, AC couldn’t be subject to it anyway as he was only 16. Although what he did was beyond horrific it’s not the mark of a civilised society to execute teenagers.

I know what you mean about this case challenging long held beliefs, it’s so awful, and I can’t imagine many people would shed many tears if he met a terrible end.

*16 year old teenagers I mean. Obv over 18 they’re fully classed as adults

He is one of the worst killers Scotland has had

And the others are....? Clue. Not the point.

Reading this thread, I really feel like some people don't understand how extreme his crime was. I still wouldn't feel capital punishment was appropriate in the vast majority of cases (although not to ever minimise the impact of other crimes), but what he did and his remorselessness is truly beyond horrific and irredeemable.

I agree OP, the death penalty is justified in certain cases. People like this should not be able to get out of prison and have a normal life again, and prison itself is not a huge deterrent these days.

Hopefully he won't survive prison...

He is effectively too young to be diagnosed with a personality disorder - I would suspect it is very likely he will have one. Plus or minus ADHD/autistic spectrum disorder. No mental health diagnosis means specifically nothing that would get him a psychiatric hospital placement rather than a prison sentence, not that there still isn't something wrong.

There is clearly a lot unreported but he seems to have been self-medicating with drugs to manage some of his feelings - he was buying drugs from the child's parents and there was comment that his own upbringing had issues.

There would be a big difference between what he is like now and what he is like in 10 years time once brain development has completed - and an even bigger difference after 27 years of prison. After that there still isn't a guarantee of release anyway - he could still be there forever.

I believe there's a place for capital punishment. He should definitely have a full life sentence with no chance of release, at a minimum. He'll strike again.

echt What’s your point about my comment?

I know the feeling, and hate the thought of truly vile people being imprisoned for so many years at vast taxpayer expense - only (sometimes) to be released well before any life term, and do much the same again.

However what I hate even more is the likelihood of the odd miscarriage of justice, the wrong person being hanged. I don't think there's any 100% certain way of ensuring that that's never going to happen - unless there's no way for it to happen in the first place.

Reading this thread, I really feel like some people don't understand how extreme his crime was

Do explain.

I think it's possible to believe it would be good if this young man was to die while at the same time realising that giving the state the right to take a life is dangerous and undesirable.

Anna Exactly how can you know better that the psychiatrist who assessed him?

echt What’s your point about my comment?

You wrote your post, not me. Look at at what you said.

Why are people making up stuff about his mental health and saying he was mentally ill?

The judge’s sentencing statement was quite clear:

According to all of the reports, you are not suffering from any mental health disorder and indeed you are not suffering from any syndrome or disorder of any kind.

I doubt he’ll ever be released but I think the judge gave him the most severe sentence he could in the circumstances.

Anyone who promotes such medieval ideas sounds like a page from an ISIS training manual.

Well that’s certainly the way to have a reasonable debate.

echt Aye ok, I stand by my comment that he is one of the worst murders Scotland has had.

I don't think anyone should be assessing whether anyone else "deserves to live". That is what killers do.
It's not wrong to hope this guy has a terrible accident though, or be happy if he does die.

Venables and Thompson aren't comparable in any way. More appropriate comparators are people like Ian Huntley and Ian Brady. It's pointless talking about capital punishment in the context of Campbell because, even if we had it, we would never use it on a 16 year old.

I think what finally put me against capital punishment was the realisation of the sheer horror of what it must be like living through that last night knowing that, at 8 a.m., you are going to be put to death: your entire being must scream at you to get away but there is nothing you can do about it. I guess there are people out there who will say, in effect, "So what, look at what they put their victims to", but it seems to me that, as a society, we simply cannot countenance that sort of outright cold-blooded cruelty in our names. It would put us at a level lower than that of the murderers concerned. Sure, if it were my child I would wish the worst death possible on the murderer, but society can't be governed by my primitive revenge reactions.

echt Aye ok, I stand by my comment that he is one of the worst murders Scotland has had

And what are those? So we can compare murders?