Bring back capital punishment?

[LittleMaroonRidingHood]

This thread was prompted by the news item about a possible discovery of the remains of a victim of the 'Moors Murderers'.

Should Capital Punishment be re-instated for murder ?

YABU - The value of the offender's life should not be negated by the offender's crime.
YANBU - When someone sets out with intent to deprive someone of their life, then they automatically forfeit the right to get any older.

Yes I’m absolutely fine with females being executed.

There are female murderers that are equally if not worse than men , not sure why you even asked this to be honest ? Do you believe in women being exempt ?

I think there are definitely people who deserve to die for their crimes. But that does not mean I believe in capital punishment. The two don’t go hand in hand. There being power in the law and justice system to take someone’s life is too risky in my opinion. There’s always room for error - and just one person convicted and put to death unfairly is too many.

That so an interesting point. What sort of mind do you need to have to want a job killing people?

I think mostly weirdos for sure. But I think there would also be those who would take the job because they believe in it being done properly if it has to be done, in as dignified as possible a way.

I feel there are people around the world that commit (or sanction) so many atrocities that they do not deserve to live.
I wonder if Hitler would have been executed-I like to think so.
Saddam was.
On a smaller atrocity scale, yes, I'd be pro-death penalty providing the evidence was irrefutable and the death penalty sentence was not chosen by a jury (who are influenced by the media) but rather an impartial board of professionals. What a job! Can't see it happening though.

No it didn’t, it had been abolished just before they were caught. They would have been hanged if they had been on trial the year before.

No. Apart from the fact it's not a deterrent, every country that has it, will have at some time executed innocent people. I don't want to live somewhere where this is considered ok.

The point was that the death penalty was in force for their crimes while they were committing them…ergo it did not deter them.

Absolutely not. Even if only 1 person in 10k was executed incorrectly then that’s 1 person too many. For that reason only, that’s why we shouldn’t have the death penalty. I think that life without parole is under-used in this country though. To me, that would be a fate worse than death anyway.

If the moors murderers had been hanged , then the body of Pauline Reade would not have been found so for that reason alone , it was better they were not hanged. At least Pauline’s family were finally able to give her a decent burial. Let’s hope that Keith’s family are able to do the same at last.

No. And no torture either. I'm horrified that people would be suggesting that.

I think I would support any change that would allow criminals to opt for the death sentence in some circumstances - eg if they had been sentenced to life imprisonment and knew they had no realistic prospect of release.

I read the biography of a professional hangman family. Three generations. And in it, it was clear they prided themselves on using the weight and height of the convict to calculate the exact length of rope and drop needed to deliver an instant painless death by breaking the neck. They’d also adjust this based on the actual piece of rope because back then the ropes were hemp which is a natural fibre and so every rope of of a slightly different thickness and had different tensile properties. They also recorded how to treat the prisoner during the execution. Using gentle tones of voice, body language. Having a hanky so they can wipe tears, give them moments to compose themselves.

Not all hangmen were like this though, there were many that were utter cold hearted hacks and many prisoners died very hard deaths with them in charge.

I didn't understand that comment either.

If I saw someone kill or abuse my child I would kill that person if I could.

Just curious, as I do know some women who think when men murder children, they’re always evil but when women murder children they were always made to do it by a mental illness. As in always. No exceptions.

No, don't be ridiculous.

The only people who want the death penalty are uneducated idiots who think papers like the Daily Mail "tell it like it is" and that Priti Patel should be PM.

Psychopathy isn’t a mental illness.

@PhillySub No, which is why the victims/families of victims don't decide punishments for offenders. The judge when sentencing will always consider victim impact statements as PART of his/her decision.

I'm not a softie - I believe in consequences, but I am against capital punishment because:

There have been many recorded miscarriages of justice (Timothy Evans etc) and you can't bring people back from the dead. Still awful to serve a long sentence if you're innocent, but at least you can be freed and compensated financially.

Capital punishment makes us all killers, and I don't want to be one.

And less nobly...frankly, hanging IS too good for some people. I want them to sit in prison for a long time and think about what they've done. I would like Fred West to be sitting there, but he took the easy way out.

Also, I imagine that the police and psychologists would value the opportunity to question serious offenders further. I realise that psychopaths like Brady can find gratification in withholding information, but while they are alive it's always possible that more information might be obtained, or other murders they've committed may be able to be assigned to them (eg Levi Bellfield) and more bereaved families obtain some kind of peace.

But it is a mental disorder.

Exactly.
There was an interesting case a while back. A guy randomly killed a couple of kids. The red-top newspapers launched into their usual 'bring back hanging' frenzy, a large part of which was the standard 'if it was your kid, you'd want the guy to swing' angle. And of course, as they always do, they tried to get the family to say as much, so that they could trumpet that the child's mum demands that we "string 'em up." Because, who's going to suggest that the victims' family don't have a really decisive say in this?

And then the family issued a statement saying that they were completely against capital punishment, and that they felt that, in the terms of their faith, they should seek to forgive.

There was a short stunned silence from the papers - and then they started to run articles suggesting that the family were unhinged by grief, they were religious nutcases, and no one should pay any attention to them, poor things.

Trying to stop people from murdering by committing murder is fucked up.
and it is used disproportionately against people of colour.
we’re better than that.

Also the people commenting they want prisons to be more like brutal concentrations camps, even ignoring the ethical issues, to run such as system would be hugely expensive in terms of staffing, have major issues of staff safety (which is a big enough issue now in prisons) and the sort of people attracted to work in such as system are exactly those who shouldn't be.

Albert Pierrepoint, the last hangman, wrote an autobiography, in which he said that he didn’t believe that the threat of the death penalty had prevented even one murder, ever.

No I am really against it. It doesn’t bring the murdered person back, it’s been shown not to act as a deterrent and there is a very real risk that an innocent person could end up being put to death by the state. Our current government seem right wing at the moment so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is something they try to reintroduce.

Have you read Justice on Trial by Chris Daw KC?

He argues that, in order to make society safer and reduce recidivism, our prison system should be made more like Norway's. The focus there is that the vast majority of prisoners will be released one day, so their time in prison should be spent preparing them for that day. They say that that prisoner could one day be your neighbour.
Their philosophy is that being denied freedom of movement and choice but being imprisoned IS the punishment, and then environment in prison should be as much like normal life as possible.
Actually, he goes much further than that! But you get the idea. And it works.
There's a really good documentary on Netflix where a Norwegian prison warden goes to visit an American prison and visa versa - well worth a watch!