AIBU to ask whether the death penalty should apply for certain crimes in the UK?

[PenelopeJoanSterling]

Because the topics got mixed up on my previous thread i thought id ask here, for certain types of crime in the uk, would you be either for or against the death penalty for certain crimes and why ?

No, our system doesn't prevent or deal with miscarriages of justice sufficiently well.

It’s much more expensive to have death penalty than not due to all the legal fees fighting appeals costing more than housing them for life

No never.

its a strange human folly that we try and fight against out natural state to eliminate what we don’t like. It never works.

criminals are defined by a legal framework, informed by morality and victim impact.
But that is just a legal framework. Criminals have always existed and always will. People have always been inclined to rape and murder- when this is ordered by a governing power we call it war. When an individual decides to do it it’s a crime. Fair enough, I’m sure we’d all rather neither or them did it.

But what we need to accept is we will never eliminate it. Killing murderers does not eliminate (or reduce) them.
Our instinct to kill them is the same as theirs to kill others and we need to recognise it’s two sides of the same coin.

also to drive home the legal framework point- there are countries where people are given the death penalty for adultery.
Don’t open that box, because you don’t know where it leads. The death penalty is medieval and unsophisticated. It’s murderers murdering murderers

Would you be happy is you or someone you loved were the person wrongly convicted because of one of these minimal errors?

So you are, in effect, okay with murder.

The definition of murder is as follows:

The unlawful killing of a human being under the King’s peace, with the intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm.

The execution of innocent people would be murder. You’d be okay with that?

One issue with the death penalty (of many) is that it would make juries slower to convict. This would be particularly the case in the UK where the majority of the population are against it. So effectively you raise the bar for conviction for the most horrendous crimes, potentially allowing serial killers et al to go free because the jury didn’t want their blood on their hands.

We don’t have degrees of guilt in the criminal justice system and for good reason. I.e we don’t have ”probably guilty” and “absolutely certainly guilty” so as to separate murderers into prison and execution groups. And even when there has been absolute certainty of guilt at the time, there are miscarriages of justice. The Andrew Malkinson rape case is a recent one in the UK.

Curtis Flowers recently in the US. If you heard a brief summary of the evidence (loads of eye witness accounts) you would probably be sure he was guilty. He wasn’t and if he had been executed we would likely never have known that as he wouldn’t have lived to clear his name.

Look at what goes on in America. Do you really think better tech and forensics help there.

It's a big fat no from me for that reason amongst others.

I believe I stated my position pretty thoroughly in my post.

People die preventable deaths all the time - they fall through the cracks constantly.

Police don't protect them from their abusive husbands when they seek help, social services don't take them from their parents when they should, they get refused medical treatment that could save their lives because it's not publicly funded, they get blown up in wars overseas as collateral damage, they kill themselves because the mental health system is overloaded...

Life is cruel and unfair, and people die every day who could be saved/who shouldn't die, and if the worst thing we had to worry about was an extremely rare wrongful state execution, we'd be doing pretty well as a species.

Although as I said, I still do believe it's too risky to give the state those powers, lest they use them for nefarious purposes.

That’s a lot of words to say you’re okay with murder.

The ramifications outweigh the benefit of death penalty but if it were brought back I would like it for crimes against children the most. Instead we waste taxpayer money on pedophiles’ “rehabilitation” only for them to come out and reoffend.

Excellent point. And there's no real way round this either. The nature of the jury system is that we don't know why they make the decisions they do.

People always cite the US but Singapore and Japan also have the death penalty. Those are two countries with much lower crime rates than here and I would argue more orderly societies with much less drug use. Having the death penalty actually makes society more civilised as deters crime and shows that certain crimes are taken seriously unlike in our sometimes barbaric society. And I remember reading about 20 years ago (so will be more now) that around 100 people have been murdered by murderers who were released after their sentences so these people would be alive if the death penalty was still in place. Having said that I would not trust the current justice system and we are very divided as a society unlike Singapore and Japan which are much more homogenous so would not want it in the UK now.

Yes. Because it works so well at reducing crime in the USA. That's why they have a whole industry of hideous huge maximum security prisons which yield massive profits for unethical fuckwits. Prisons full of people (often vulnerable) serving decades long sentences for crimes such as drug use or theft.
People remain on death row for years. So it's not about saving money.
As many other people have pointed out, miscarriages of justice happen.
Imagine your loved one finally being absolved of a crime they didn't commit but spent years in prison for.
Imagine they'd died in prison before that happened.
Now imagine they were killed. And still pleasing they were innocent.

And the ones that weren't innocent?

Who decides which ones die and when?

When we routinely murder people and claim it's legal and ethical, well, what does that do to us as a society?

And let's imagine we do bring it back and it does reduce the numbers of serious crimes? Well, it works so well there! Maybe we should roll it out for burglary, and shoplifting! (But not tax dodging, good heavens no)

I'm confused as to what point you think you're making by throwing around the word 'murder' as though it's somehow bothersome? Yes, there are situations where deliberately killing people is a good thing, and there are situations where killing as collateral damage is unavoidable and considered acceptable as long as it's minimised as much as possible - for instance, during wars. Calling it murder means very little outside of a courtroom.

Anyway, you're wrong, as I understand it - even if the person is wrongly convicted, it's not murder as it's legal. It's a wrongful killing, but not murder.

For murder and rape (especially of children).
India execute for gang rape and rape of children.

It would be murder.

The lawful justification would be based on the fact they’re guilty of a crime. If they’re not, that justification is removed.

Definitely. I don’t want to pay the cost of imprisonment for rapists and pedophiles. If you fail that badly at being a decent human, you can be sent back for scrap afaic.

I think the issue is that people frequently confuse correlation with causation.

Culture, and how homogenous a nation is, seems to have much more to do with crime rates than whether or not there is a death penalty.

Legally speaking, it's not murder. If it was, everyone involved in sentencing and carrying out the execution would be convicted of aiding and abetting, and committing a murder.

As it's legally sanctioned, and carried out in good faith that the conviction is correct, it's not murder.

I'm not sure why you're so hung up on the term 'murder' though? Is it somehow better if someone is killed and it's not murder? Does that make them any less dead?

I used to be firmly against the death penalty for the reasons stated already, principally miscarriage of justice.

However I increasingly think that yes, it should be an option. Not a regular option, not as a normal penalty if you are found guilty of x, but there as an option that can be specifically applied for and decided upon on a case-by-case individual basis for individual crimes. Because there are crimes that warrant death, and there are crimes when there is no doubt whatsoever about who did it, and there are crimes where you just think why are these people being left alive, why do the ordinary working people - men and women - have to pay to keep them alive for the rest of their lives? Some of these people - well men let’s be honest it is nearly always men - should never be released ever, and we can just end it and end the need for permanent protection and fear.

I admit this is in the context of overcrowded jails, and in the context of a misogynistic society where David Lammy can say that if we don’t release sex offenders out of jail the prison system will collapse with overcrowding, prompting two chains of thought: 1) who should be locked up for public safety if not sex offenders? clearly that doesn’t matter to a man and 2) why is there so much of it going on? But why should we pay to keep serial paedophiles and murderers alive for 40, 50 years, when there should never be any chance of release for public protection?

The possibility of miscarriage of justice is always, always talked about and it is a very real fear in a society where no one can ever fully trust government and law organisations: but then women have to deal with miscarriage of justice that is male sexism and misogyny every single day so where’s the justice in that?

You only get mumsnet view rather than the wider general public.

I couldn't agree more - especially in regards to viewing the situation from a feminist perspective.

I just find it quite funny that those who want the death penalty because they’re outraged by things like murder are actually just advocating for it themselves. Your comments are incredibly callous

Absolutely not.

It doesn't work as a deterrent.
It costs more than life imprisonment.
Too many innocent people will die.

People like this delight. End the arguments about whether we should extradite him to another country to prey on girls there. Get rid and let the sun shine a little brighter.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly0ly30384o
Or this scum.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-64038743

Does anyone want them released and living next door?