Why can’t we just hang scum like this?

[NameChangedToProtectTheGuilty101]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2k4qd8q97eo

Worse than being a killer.

Most people found guilty in a court of law are actually guilty, some of horrendous crimes.

Sounds like we are wasting time on courts, with that attitude.

It seems like your replies focusing on issues that the poster has already explained. She said she’s not for capital punishment in all situations but there are certain situations whereby she feels it’s appropriate (I share this view)

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!!

Not a fallacious appeal to emotion, but you're still trying to appeal to emotion by saying, "What if it was a person you loved?" Many people would be against their loved ones being punished even if they were guilty of their crimes. How a loved one feels shouldn't come into it.

I can respect your argument that the state allowing people to die in other circumstances doesn't mean they should actively kill people. There is definitely a difference, there. And yet of course, it means society does still (in practice) accept a degree of unnecessary loss of life.

Fair enough, that you find the idea of state-sanctioned execution horrible. I certainly wouldn't want them doing it in hot blood, though. And I strongly disagree that killing convicted murderers makes society worse than said murderer.

Hopefully the children are too young to remember

We currently have two verdicts available: guilty, and not guilty. What new verdict would you propose to cover this new standard of guilty plus?

(I'm ignoring the Scottish not proven as it's controversial and may be on the way out anyway)

Thank you! Exactly. Frankly, I'm still not even 100% convinced that the death penalty should be brought back - I'm kind of on the fence - but I can definitely sympathise with the arguments in favour of it! Certainly, in particular cases, where there's not just no reasonable doubt, but there's literally zero doubt whatsoever, it's a very tempting option.

And if the legal system were to be changed in order to bring the death penalty back, why not change it further to add a narrow category of 'guilty beyond ALL doubt' to the existing 'guilty' and 'not guilty' system?

If the evidence was strong enough which of course it isn’t in some cases yet people still get convicted and that is concerning.

For example I don’t believe Lucy Letby is guilty and I think this will come out as the biggest miscarriage of justice in history. IMO the evidence was manipulated to fit an agenda and she was scapegoated. It was circumstantial so that’s why I wouldn’t be for it in general but I don’t believe all guilty verdicts are wrong.

I completely agree!

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.

You're underestimating how it feels to be locked up

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 .

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.

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.

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.

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 ?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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

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.