Death Penalty: Being considered bought back to the UK

[Cocoflower]

www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iTqjnNzRM-TiIEv0rLTXb_zb8ITQ?docId=CNG.8f872789736d127ca37fde3925b5a5bc.51

Seems House of Commons is seriously going to be debating bringing this back.

It is minefield- who should get death penalty?

The over-arching concern for me is what if they get they kill the innocent?

Is this a budget-cut saving scheme- cutting the tax payers bill on keeping inmates?

onagar, what a ridiculous post - are you for real??

'Think child murderer and you may find it easier to imagine'

Oh, right - very sensible, a country whose justice system depends upon the emotive responses of others(!)

Yes, lets kill people only to find out later that they are innocent, something which happens in states that already have the death penalty.

It will never happen. We are a civilised country but even leaving aside the moral point of view, the prospect of even one innocent person being executed ought to be plenty to put any sensible person entirely against it.

electra I can provide rational arguments for capital punishment. The point about mentioning child murderers was in response to those who do want to base a justice system on their emotions and saying "oh it's too icky to think about".

If you actually read my posts you will know that I don't actually want it brought in unless we first change the way our justice system works since it would be applied badly.

Those who find capital punishment too distressing and barbaric are apparently still okay about imprisonment. How can you justify that. If you believe that murder is murder even if the state does it then you must believe that imprisonment is imprisonment even if the state does it and be opposed to it.

Also people seem to have forgotten that we also pay soldiers to kill people. There is nothing new or surprising about killing the enemies of society.

No. No and no to death penalty. Although sadly I know people who would want it back. Two wrongs do not make a right. Plus if you make a mistake you cannot bring someone back to life.

heaven17, Two wrongs do not make a right

So you'd agree that locking someone up for a crime is just committing a crime against them and unacceptable?

So is fining them cos its just like stealing their money isn't it.

heaven17 Wed 10-Aug-11 02:16:08
"Plus if you make a mistake you cannot bring someone back to life."

Exactly. I find it very difficult to understand why anyone needs more than that comment to set them against the death penalty. Surely that's enough. The prospect of even one person executed wrongly ought to be enough.

It's irreversible.

That's the inarguable fact.

I don't think there's really any point discussing it because it would never, ever happen in the UK in a gazillion years.

So is taking say 10 years from someone's life - you can't give them back. You can just release them and not take any more away from them.

The argument is a good one and demonstrates that imprisonment is unacceptable too. The reason we still lock people up is that we have decided that sending a small number of innocent people to prison (even for life) is better than having anarchy.

In previous discussions of this I suggested that verdicts might distinguish between 'reasonable doubt' and 'Virtually certain'. I think a sliding scale might be more workable anyway.

So is there a line you'd be prepared to draw?

For example: A man shoots 50 people in a public place in front of 100s of witnesses and on CCTV. He is arrested at the scene holding the still warm gun and boasts all the way to court that he liked doing it and will do it again as soon as he gets the chance.

There is no doubt he is guilty. So how many think he should be executed and how many think he should be let out to do it again?

Locking people up is not the same as killing them. People are locked up so that they can't hurt anyone else and because they are a danger to society. Taking a life is wrong whoever does it. I don't want my children to grow up in a society that endorses state sanctioned murder. Regressive is not the word.

electra I didn't say it was the same. I said by the same logic it is criminal.

There have been news stories about people being kept locked in a house/cellar etc and we have been horrified. So we agree that imprisonment is a bad thing to do to someone. If people are going to say that the state can't do anything that a citizen can't do then we must close prisons too.

In reality the state can and does do things that citizens are not allowed to do so the "but it's still murder" argument is not thought through.

There are plenty of good reasons to object to capital punishment. It's just that when there is any debate people just repeat the ones they read last time. I might have to namechange and argue the other side myself at this rate :)

Oh and electra your statement is incomplete. We also lock people up to hurt them as a punishment. We lock them up to make them suffer.

You also live in a country that employs a large army for the purpose of killing people who do things we don't like. I don't say this is your take on it, but for some I believe this is different to capital punishment simply because it's further away.