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.

You’re not being unreasonable to question your own beliefs. That is why we don’t make rules in the heat of emotion. I have had many tussles with family members about morality punishment vs rehabilitation. I firmly believe nobody has the right to take a life and it is not justice. My clearheaded self knows this and wants to believe in rehabilitation and if that’s not achievable than a safe and secure prison service.

I’d be lying however if I said that when I was following the case I didn’t ponder if it would be better to just put these kind of people down like violent animals. I couldn’t sleep after watching the sentencing and hearing that poor mother’s scream of pure anger and despair.

But again. We don’t make the rules based on emotional reactions and we are all the better for it.

echt Holy Fuck, we are discussing the rape, torture and murder of a 6 year old girl and my person opinion is what you are most annoyed about?

Get a grip.

I'm sorry UnspiritualHome, I can't take on board the idea that a night of terror for a monster like Aaron Campbell should mean he is given the right to possibly be free and enjoy any kind of existence after what he has done.

It's a really interesting debate though and I have appreciated everyone's input. Many more considered responses than I was expecting.

I do think hormones are playing a part in shaping my view as a PP mentioned, tears keep rolling down my cheeks as I breastfeed my daughter and wonder what on earth the world has come to.

I empathise with your feelings, I think the horror and anger of realising just what some people can be capable are horrendous.

However, even these days with modern evidence there can still be wrongful convictions, and that alone stays my mind, because even one persons being executed wrongly is one too many.

I do however think our prison system needs changing and I would support the reintroduction of life meaning life, and using prisoners like him for hard labour or some kind of life long indentured service where they dont get to spend their life living off the tax payer, but instead have to work every day of their sentence... it should be a punishment.

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

I haven't seen one single person suggesting that he should be pardoned.

Saying that a particular murderer probably has severe mental health issues is not the same thing as saying that all people with mental health issues are potential murderers.

@echt Why is this case beyond horrific and irredeemable? Must I? Others may want to skip this post.

He took a sleeping 6 year old from her bed in her family home. In his own words, as soon as he saw her he knew what he wanted to do. He carried her out of her home, and as she started to wake up told her that he was her dad's friend and have her his coat to keep her warm. He then took her to a secluded spot, raped her, inflicting something like 117 separate injuries to her body and the worst damage to her genitals that the pathologist had ever seen. He then took off his clothes and threw them in the sea, returned home for a shower, then returned back to the scene of the crime another couple of times. He put the family through the ordeal of a drawn out court case, throughout which he lied and even tried to blame the dad's totally innocent girlfriend.

Later, after being found guilty, he admitted the whole thing and told a social worker that he'd found it hard to stop laughing during the trial. At the end of the judges sentencing remarks, he turned and smiled at Alesha's mother.

That is why I say it is beyond horrific and irredeemable. Why do we pay to keep such a person alive? How is it moral and right that this person maintains his right to breathe and live after having taken the life of another, a totally vulnerable child, in such a way?

I would never support capital punishment for almost all cases. But this is a case where he is guilty beyond doubt, and if he ever was released he would always be a danger.

Are we, society, EVER going to address and tackle the impact of violent porn?

This wee girl's mother, I can't get her out of my head.

It pains me to say this, but I agree. Wasting 100s of 1000s of £ on this piece of filth is terrible. That money could be spent on things that we need, like doctors, nurses, police, schools, hospitals etc.

Bring in death row, like in the states. Give them 3 years to prove themselves innocent (most won't, as forensic testing is top notch, and it's very unlikely anyone would be executed when innocent.) When we had the death penalty 60 years ago and beyond, some people were executed and found to be innocent later, but that is unlikely to happen now.

This thing who killed this young girl was pure evil. A twisted, sick, perverted psychopathic murderer, and he doesn't deserve to breathe the same air as everyone else.

And there a few more the same as him who don't deserve to go on living.

What he did was abhorrent, and it is very upsetting to read about it. I understand the visceral reaction that you can have to such stories as a parent.

However, our justice system should not be based on emotional reactions. It would not be the mark of a civilised society to execute a teenage boy. No matter what he did.

@ASAS I totally agree. It makes me scared for the future how readily available extreme material is and the potential damage it is creating.

tears keep rolling down my cheeks as I breastfeed my daughter and wonder what on earth the world has come to.

Although mercifully rare, there’s always been bad fucking bastards though. I remember Robert Black’s victims going missing and obviously before that there were the Moors murderers. The circs of this case are shocking due to the levels of brutality by one so young but it’s sadly not unique in terms of its wicked crimes over the years :(

@AnnaMagnani please don't say he has undiagnosed autism or ADHD. He does not. This has all been thoroughly looked into. He has no mental illness.

He saw an "opportunity" to rape and murder a 6 year old. The worst case a crown prosecution staff member had seen in 40 years of work. Policemen in tears on the stand on what they saw.

He us currently in Polmont Young Offenders Institute in isolation. The other inmates have tried to gas him in his cell through the vents, this was before the trial started

This was an horrific crime and I think we all feel terribly for the little girls family and friends - its unimaginable what they are going through. I dont support the death penalty though and still dont. When he comes up for parole - if he ever does - his risk will be assessed - I doubt he will get out ever.

I don’t agree with capital punishment. It doesn’t work as a deterrent, it costs more (in appeals etc) than life imprisonment, mistakes happen and innocent people are killed, and it is applied disproportionately to people in society who can’t afford to defend themselves, young black men in the US, those with intellectual disabilities..

I can't take on board the idea that a night of terror for a monster like Aaron Campbell should mean he is given the right to possibly be free and enjoy any kind of existence after what he has done.

OP, you're talking about two different things. The point about the night - or indeed several weeks or months - of terror prior to death is that it is not something that we as a society should do to anyone because it is horrible, cold-blooded torture. We would be stooping to the killers' level, and indeed below it. The possibility of freedom is a totally different issue and the extremely strong likelihood is that Campbell will never be free - but if he is, it will be because people who know far more about it than we ever will do have decided that it is appropriate.

You also personalise this issue by applying it to Campbell. How about applying it to the likes of Judith Ward, Stefan Kiszko, Sally Clark or the Birmingham Six? And how do you factor in the fact that, even if we had the death penalty, we wouldn't apply it to a 16 year old anyway?

My DC were babies when Jamie Bulger was murdered, and I had nightmares for months after. I felt dreadful for bringing innocent lives into such a cruel cruel world. I completely get where you are coming from OP.

I personally think we need to address prisons and how prisoners are kept. I'd go for solitary confinement 24/7, no TVs, radios, gadgets, books, technology of any kind. Basic food rations, and no gyms/exercise equipment only manual labour doing gardening or cleaning. And mostly importantly, no contact with the outside world AT ALL for their entire sentence, visitors/letters/the works. They need to be left with their own thoughts to consider the consequences of their actions and make prison somewhere that no one ever wants to go. I think that would be far more effective than capital punishment.

The reality is that he is likely to be attacked by other inmates because they hate child killers or abusers more than anyone else. He will have teeth knocked out etc as soon as any other prisoners get to him (which they will). I think it’s likely that he will kill himself which is better than capital punishment.

When we had the death penalty 60 years ago and beyond, some people were executed and found to be innocent later, but that is unlikely to happen now.

I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. People put extraordinary faith in forensic and scientific evidence, but it really is not as foolproof as people think. The records are littered with people who, since the abolition of the death penalty, have been wrongfully convicted on the basis of scientific evidence.

Jane That’s ridiculous and all it would achieve would be boredom which in turn would lead to unrest and violence and exacerbate mental heath issues. And then we let them out into the wider public?

JaneEyre07 - so in those conditions you realise they will literally go insane but not before trying to kill the guards

Every reasonable person is shocked by this case, and any other case involving the murder of a child or indeed any other human being. I find it distasteful that you are making it so much about you and your feelings. You're not the only person with a young child and being so doesn't give you some special relationship with this case nor does it give your opinion any more weight. You're implying that you somehow get this more than the rest of us. Just how offensive do you think that is?

JaneEyre07, think about whether you would want to work at the prison incarcerating people for life in the conditions you describe. These would be people who have been put into a position where they have no incentive whatsoever to behave or reform, and for whom it would be impossible to impose any greater punishment than the one they are already undergoing. They would have all the time in the world to plot how to get their revenge. Would you want to be their nearest potential victim?

Is his girlfriend still standing by him?

I don’t understand the outrage and prisoners getting xboxes and tv etc, if indeed this is a thing and not just out of the pages of the DM. A gilded cage is still a cage. His punishment is the deprivation of his liberty and that he has no chance of a normal life. Which is of course as it should be, but I don’t see how removing a tv and an Xbox would actually make his punishment “worse”.