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 ?

I mean it definetly wouldn't bother me if they brought it in for peadophiles and child killers...

Yes. A lot of things are too complicated for the uninformed to vote on. Look at the damage the "We've had enough of experts" group did to the country. There's plenty of topics that should never go to referendum. Deciding on state sponsored murder should absolutely not be left to the public.

Sally Clark and Angela Cannings were convicted of infanticide. Would you have put them to death?

I've asked this question of lots of pro-death penalty posters. Not one has answered.

Are you going to be the one to actually answer?

So what crimes are you killing people for?

Paedophiles, rapists, murderers yrs. If 100% proven guilty (death, cctv, caught in act). There shouldn't be a place in earth for scum like that

She did the same on her last thread, about prisons in heatwaves.

What about Andrew Malkinson? Who was freed after over 15 years in prison?

Are you wanting two levels of guilty? One where the death penalty is possible and one not?

No. It's not what civilised societies do.

Surely everyone is 100% proven guilty?

Are we saying we have to have a unanimous jury? Because you'd have to change the jury rules.

Really? Even if your son was wrongfully convicted of being a paedophile? You'd not be bothered?

Referendums are often seen as the epitome of democracy - everyone has a say right? In reality, they are anything but. A decision is made by the often uninformed masses who then have no responsibility for delivering on that promise. So yes, the mice will vote to bell the cat but who will enact that? This is why you have party politics. You vote for the party you broadly believe in, they are then responsible for policy and you vote them out if you don’t like the policy. The mess that was the Brexit referendum is a case in point.

then why have democracy ?

No. The death penalty is nothing more than revenge, and does not even deter people from committing the worst crimes anyway.

But it stops them from going on to commit any more crimes.

They will be in prison. That will stop them.

No, I don't think I could ever be in favour of the death penalty, for two reasons.

1. The potential for a miscarriage of justice. There have been several cases in my lifetime of men jailed for 10+ years for rape, murder or manslaughter, and it has then been proven without doubt that they were innocent.
2. I can think of nothing worse than being locked up in prison for life, with no possibility of parole. Waking up every day, knowing I would never walk free again.

However, that does mean that there are crimes that I consider merit a life sentence where life does mean life - you're there until you die of old age / natural causes, no matter how long that takes.

I think it is alot more uncivilised to treat taking a life lightly as the UK currently does with murderers getting out after very light sentences (sometimes to murder again which those against the death penalty don't seem bothered about).

It's true that it might be helpful for preventing the grooming in the first place. Although I'm not sure what policies and protocols have been, or could be, put into place to prevent young men being 'groomed' to join rape gangs.

And unless abuse that included fear for their life unless they obeyed was part of the grooming, I don't think it should be taken into consideration at a trial at all. It feels like muddying the waters, and trying to soften what they did by painting them as victims.

I'm all in favour of getting our country back by brutalising it through a reintroduction of the death penalty. We are a Christian country after all. Public hanging is the best method because it acts as a deterrent. There's nothing to beat walking to work on a crisp Autumn morning and seeing a corpse swinging in the breeze. As we are after all a Christian country, I also support the public branding of women who commit adultery - see Hawthorne 'The Scarlet Letter'. Each community needs to install stocks in a prominent outdoor space so those who err can be captured, put on display, humiliated, and pelted with leftovers that would otherwise be destined for the swill bucket.

Also on my to-do list as a Restore Britain candidate:

• reintroduction of military service
• forced sterilisation of women with mental illness
• banning abortion
• rags to replace tampons, sanitary towels, mooncups and other nefarious devices and contraptions for the orderly management of menstruation
• sewing of Binka samplers on a Wednesday afternoon in all schools to practise cross stitch
• mass deportation of anyone whose skin is darker than Pantone Colour of the Year Cloud Dancer 11-4201

Things are going to feel so much better when we have state-sanctioned murder, especially for those left with the death of a fellow human being on their conscience.

that is a puzzlement

Yes but they will be let out. And often much sooner than they should be.

If someone is in prison for a crime heinous to warrant the death penalty, then they will not be coming out anyway.

Unless you think the death penalty should be there for lesser crimes too? In some countries, something like drug dealing gets you bullet to your head.

Japan has a lot of nasty violence at times, extreme racism, and very extreme issues over the decades around very strange things. But the society is one of extremes, the culture itself does make a lot of crimes less likely. It would take a lot more than a pointless single sentence to try and scratch the surface of if the corrupt and objectively horrifying death machine for anyone innocent or not, is related to the core cultural aspects of crime, and if it is whether it is a result of it or causes it as you are trying to suggest.

The thing you mention I think is the entire point they were making, it makes no difference to an extremely violent society.

Personally, I think infanticide by a mother in the postnatal period is quite different to something like, say, Preston Garvey's death.

So I wouldn't think that execution would be appropriate, even were the death penalty available.

The death penalty seems most appropriate for cases where recidivism (murder or brutal violence) seems so likely and unavoidable that the person has a whole life order, where the person has killed multiple people, in cases where torture and sadism were involved (whether the victim was murdered in addition or 'just' assaulted/raped), and in cases involving child sex abuse where it's clear that rehabilitation isn't possible.

The safest way to avoid high numbers of MOJ would be having an even higher bar to reach for that particular sentencing – off the top of my head, things like video evidence of the person's actions, or DNA evidence plus it being confirmed no other person was present at the time, for instance.

MOJ are undesirable, of course. But as I've said, multiple people (often babies and children) are killed each year by dogs, and we still allow dog ownership, so clearly society is fine with a certain level of avoidable deaths.