Despite the last execution in the UK taking place in 1964, the concept of capital punishment has never been very far removed from political and social discourse in Britain. Cries of “string ‘em up!” still frequently echo around pubs, workplaces and uncomfortable family gatherings up and down the country.
Where does this preoccupation with the death penalty as being a quick and dirty cure for society’s ills emanate from? Who still advocates its use now we’re in the supposedly enlightened 21st century? What part does human nature and human ignorance play in contributing to its continual endorsement?
History
Capital punishment has been practised in almost every society at one time or another throughout history. As I write this, 58 countries currently impose the death penalty for a variety of crimes. In the UK, the early 18th century marked an all time high for the level of executions taking place, as the government increased the list of offences punishable by death to over 200. Shockingly, this list included crimes such as stealing, sending threatening letters, sacrilege, and even cutting down a tree.
By 1861 murder was the only crime for which the death penalty could be imposed, although it took until 1965, with the passing of the ‘Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act‘ for use of the death penalty to be suspended across Britain, replaced by a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. The last execution was carried out in 1964.
Common execution methods throughout the last few hundred years have include hanging, beheading, stoning, electrocution and lethal injection. The more cruel and unusual methods have included boiling, disembowelling, sawing, and even death by elephant. As recently as June 2010, US death-row inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by firing squad in Utah.
State-Sanctioned Execution – Today
So how often do executions take place? Possibly the best set of recent data available is the Amnesty International report of 2009, which lists China right up at the top, estimated to have executed over a thousand citizens during that year. The US with 52 executions can almost rival Saudi Arabia, which executed at least 62 people. Iraq executed at least 120 citizens in 2009, with Yemen, Syria, Vietnam and Japan executing smaller numbers.
Another fairly shocking fact is that until relatively recently, the US imposed the death penalty even for offences committed whilst the defendant was under the age of 18, with the last such case occurring in 2003. Yet despite this, there appears to be a fundamental lack of international condemnation of the US for outrageous human rights violations such as these, which is perhaps a consequence of their increasing global hegemony.
The finality and cruelty inherent in the death penalty render it incompatible with norms of modern-day, civilized behaviour. It is an inappropriate and unacceptable response to violent crime.
Amnesty International
Opinion Polls, Hysteria and the British Public
So what do the British public think? Surveys on the issue are a mixed bag. One YouGov poll in 2006 concluded that support for the death penalty had fallen below 50% for the first time since its abolition. However, another survey in 2009 by Ipsos MORI emerged with a figure of 70% support for capital punishment to be reinstated. Amongst politicians, 20% of Conservative prospective parliamentary candidates would seek the return of the death penalty.
Out there in the wild-west of the internet opinions are, well… less diplomatic:
‘its ironic that as a taxpayer i am paying to protect these animals who’s victims had no protection at all they have more rights than the victim and the victims family’s bring back the death penalty lets spend the money on the nhs healing sick people not protecting murderer’s……’
‘so why can’t we put people in hot tar and through feather onto em then hang em high?’
‘£50k per year spent on keeping pedos, rapists and murderers breathing in luxury “prisons”. Just a few pence will buy the bullets to kill them..’
Bring back the death penalty – Facebook Group
These comments (abhorrent though they may be), along with the completely understandable sense of rage oft-times expressed by victims of crime and their families, seems to be representative of an instinctive human need for – sometimes blind – vengeance. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum summed up the ethical theory behind revenge when she wrote:
The primitive sense of the just—remarkably constant from several ancient cultures to modern institutions…—starts from the notion that a human life…is a vulnerable thing, a thing that can be invaded, wounded, violated by another’s act in many ways. For this penetration, the only remedy that seems appropriate is a counter invasion, equally deliberate, equally grave. And to right the balance truly, the retribution must be exactly, strictly proportional to the original encroachment. It differs from the original act only in the sequence of time and in the fact that it is response rather than original act—a fact frequently obscured if there is a long sequence of acts and counteracts.
Martha Nussbaum – Equity and Mercy in Sex and Social Justice, 1999
Miscarriages of Justice and their Impact
Let’s now look to some examples of how the death penalty can be misapplied, and the terrible consequences which can result. A perfect example of this comes in the shape of Derek Bentley. Bentley, alongside Christopher Craig, became involved in a robbery at a Croydon warehouse in 1952, which ended with Craig shooting dead a policeman. Craig escaped execution due to being aged under eighteen at the time of the murder. However, due to the English legal principle of joint enterprise, Bentley – who had a mental age of 11 and played no part in the murder itself – was hanged in January 1953. The case garnered a substantial amount of publicity, and began to shift a majority of public opinion against capital punishment.
The sentiment of the public was clearly on his side, and petitions for mercy were signed by huge numbers of people, including 200 MPs from all parties. But the Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, was known for being exceptionally blunt towards murderers’ appeals, and even the pleas of his fellow Conservative politicians in the name of political expediency failed to convince him.
Capital Punishment in Modern British Law and Culture - T. P. Uschanov
If we look at this in the context of some of the more famous miscarriages of justice since the abolition of capital punishment, it’s plainly obvious what impact this could have made had these laws remained on the statute book. If we choose a case at random, such as that of Sally Clark or Stefan Kiszko, innocent people who ended up behind bars for long periods of time were eventually released once their innocence was proved, but at least in a post-execution Britain they could not have been sentenced to death prior to their eventual exoneration.
Does Capital Punishment Represent a Deterrent?
So what about that other pro-execution argument: that the death penalty would act as an efficient deterrent against murder, rape, paedophilia and other serious crimes against society?
According to UN resolution A/RES/62/149, there is no conclusive evidence [for] the death penalty’s deterrent value. This appears to be backed up by a year 2000 report in the New York Times, which showed that rather than this acting as a deterrent, the US states with capital punishment legislation actually had higher murder rates than those without.
The threat of execution at some future date is unlikely to enter the minds of those acting under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, those who are in the grip of fear or rage, those who are panicking while committing another crime (such as a robbery), or those who suffer from mental illness or mental retardation and do not fully understand the gravity of their crime.
The Death Penalty and Deterrence – AmnestyUSA.org
Conclusions
So, to sum up my argument: I personally believe, as do many opponents of the death penalty, that whilst the state does indeed have a duty to suitably punish those found guilty of serious crime and to protect the relatives of victims, it also has a role to temper the natural human emotions which this wrongdoing provokes. As clichéd as it may sound, two wrongs really do not make a right.
An execution cannot be used to condemn killing. Such an act by the state is the mirror image of the criminal’s willingness to use physical violence against a victim. Additionally, all criminal justice systems are vulnerable to discrimination and error. No system is or could conceivably be capable of deciding fairly, consistently and infallibly who should live and who should die. Expediency, discretionary decisions and prevailing public opinion may influence the proceedings from the initial arrest to the last-minute decision on clemency.
Central to human rights is that they are inalienable — they are accorded equally to every individual regardless of their status, ethnicity, religion or origin. They may not be taken away from anyone regardless of the crimes a person has committed. Human rights apply to the worst of us as well as to the best of us, which is why they are there to protect all of us. They save us from ourselves.
The Death Penalty Q&A – Amnesty International
The list of countries who currently apply the death penalty include Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Syria. If you do happen to support capital punishment, just ask yourself this: does Britain really want to be a member of this brutal club?
There is no need to be brutal in the application of the death penalty, it is a horrible thing to have to do but killing (which is not the same as the crime of murder) should be the final sanction used against murderers.
You raise a legitimate concern on miscarriages of justice, but by the same measure how many people have been killed by people convicted of serious violent crimes released on parole or after having ‘paid their debt to society’ (strangely not their debt to their victim).
The cause of crime is criminals, and as long as criminals do not live in fear of the law (which should include them being lead to the gallows blubbering on how throwing that punch in the pub shouldn’t have killed the man who ‘looked at them funny’ and the unfairness of it all) then we will all live in a poorer society as a result.
I’ll do my utmost not to sound like a bleeding-heart liberal here, especially since my own views on this have been quite fluid in the past.
Throughout my early teens I had considered capital punishment as a possible option, however I had never really sat down and considered it too deeply. I simply saw the screaming Daily Mail headlines which landed on my parent’s doormat and leaped to the ‘sweep it all under the carpet’ based theory of capital punishment. Once I actually did some research it became clear that I could find no moral position to justify state sanctioned killing.
In essence, my view is that killing is killing and I personally do not make a distinction between the two deaths as both would be deliberately inflicted.
(Another frustration for me is the frequently used ‘eye for an eye’ argument, as though the Bible isn’t also crammed full of passages which directly contradict this.)
I don’t agree with your argument about miscarriages of justice. You seem to propose that we should accept a few innocent people being executed by the state as a trade-off for preventing several murders being committed by unreformed prisoners out on parole. Who’s to say what the ratio of innocent to guilty might be if this were the case, it could end up having devastating effects. Doesn’t make sense to me at all.
I can understand the anguish of relatives, and of course it is up to them how they would wish the murderer to be punished, but we are all (in theory) treated equally under the law based on the crimes we commit, which I think works fairly for us all. If we were each allowed a say in punishment methods I’m sure there would be plenty of people advocating the death penalty for shoplifting, as they were back in the 18th century.
In terms of deterrent: I don’t know about you, but the thought of going to prison (and the associated stigma) is more than enough to dissuade me from committing murder. Now, would I still feel the same way if the punishment of imprisonment did not exist? I would certainly like to think so, as I wouldn’t ever want to inflict suffering on another human being.
So what about those who do commit murder despite knowing the high possibility of being locked away inside or – in the case of many countries – executed. Well as I’ve said in my article, the death penalty does not seem to be much of a deterrent. Those who deliberately murder are evidently either way past the point of caring what happens afterwards, or do not have the time to stop and consider the consequences.
So how could we deal with those who do not fear the law, or who may commit further killings after release. What you say seems to suggest a lack of faith in the rehabilitation services. Might I suggest that simply because the current attempts at rehabilitation do not always work, that this is no reason to scrap the idea entirely and take what I would consider the easy way out, to execute them.
Surely a far better idea is to improve these services so they DO work. Our society seems to perceive any idea of rehabilitation as being ‘soft on crime’, which I think dooms some rehabilitation efforts to failure before they have even begun. In the same way that many attempts to curb drug use are doomed to failure because we so thoroughly criminalise the addicts to begin with.
It strikes me as throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Dont worry Jonathan, I would never consider you to be a liberal, to me you’re a bleeding heart socialist.
You dont seem to accept that there is a difference between killing and murder, which rather forestalls any kind of discussion, however…
Although being against whatever the Daily Mail is for is usually a good measure of sanity, just because the Daily Mail and the redtops usually scream with sadistic glee to string up an offender whenever it might increase sales for them, is in of itself not an argument against the death penalty.
And I read that you are still not familiar with the slippery slope fallacy.
As for rehabilitation, I agree it works and think of it as a completely moral act, however one of the most effective rehabilitation scheme (which granted never made it out of a pilot) used was essentially a form of behavioural modification using a variety of drugs including LSD – which ended up being canned IIRC by bleeding heart socialists with allegories to the ludovico treatment and such rehabilitation is only effective with non-violent offenders. The usual talk therapy is useless in regard to treating the psychopath for example, and only helps them become better liars and manipulators.
As for deterrent, I dont see the argument as relevant, all that can be done is to ensure that someone who has murdered can never murder another person again, and I am not a cruel enough to lock someone in a hole for the rest of their existence.
[...] The Death Penalty Doctrine – This piece looked at the continuing emphasis on capital punishment as an appropriate form of punishment. It looked at the history of the methods and argued that the death penalty can never be fairly or accurately applied. [...]