Stopping an execution because the victim had died (horribly)

[Domino]

A jobseeker

[Domino]

Bloke called Chindamo, who stabbed teacher Mr Lawrence to death outside his school, was jailed indefinitely.

He’s out again in a few days after promising not to do it again.

 

The scrote who stabbed teacher Anne Maguire to death in a school classroom the other day will probably move into the newly empty cell.

 

Wait a minute, maybe they were both innocent.

 

Fucking maggots.

[Amadeus]

I'm perfectly comfortable with the state exacting a "revenge killing" on someone who raped and murdered an 11 month old child. Sorry you don't agree, but I don't think sitting them down on pink beanbags and trying to get in touch with their feelings to understand them is really fair and just.

 

And in those countries that don't have the death penalty this kind of stuff still goes on so I dont think talking to them is really deterring them either. So if we can agree that there's nothing that can be done to deter this type of person, then I don't really have an issue with them being murdered by the state, ideally in a long, drawn out and horrific way.

 

I'm against the death penalty for a number of reasons.

 

Firstly, no person has the right to take another person’s life. Yes, there are exceptions such as self defence obviously, but killing the killer puts the executioner on the same level as the criminal. They even record Homicide as cause of death for executed inmates. Plus, it gives people like George W Bush direct control over life and death (when he was governor). That surely can never be right. In those cases it’s often more about politics than actual justice. "There are doubts about this guy's guilt? Nevermind. Killing him will show me as hardline governor and that's popular around here in Texas..."

 

Secondly, I think locking them up in a concrete box for the rest of their lives is a harsher punishment. They’ll die anyway. We all will, eventually. Let them rot alive in a neon lit concrete hell, where all they can do is stare at the walls for year after year after year. It’s like being buried alive. Nobody knows what happens after we die. Maybe it’s the big Jesus dance in heaven, or maybe it’s just lights out. Let them wait to find out. It’s cheaper, too. Executions cost a lot of money.

 

Thirdly, this is the US of A we are talking about here. The best legal system money can buy. Remember the Affluenza case? He killed four people. If you don’t have money then it’s simply tough shit. Those two in the news now might be guilty beyond reasonable doubt, but many others were and are not. The risk of executing an innocent person is too high with a legal system as screwed up as theirs. Go and watch 14 Days in May. It’s on YouTube. It’s one of the most disturbing films I’ve ever seen: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhHutCNkjEc

 

There are too many people within the US legal system who can’t be trusted with a piece of string, nevermind a decision over life and death. It’s also proven not to be a deterrent. In the end, anyone committing a serious crime is either not in the right frame of mind or not expecting to be caught in the first place.

[Domino]

 

I'm perfectly comfortable with the state exacting a "revenge killing" on someone who raped and murdered an 11 month old child. Sorry you don't agree, but I don't think sitting them down on pink beanbags and trying to get in touch with their feelings to understand them is really fair and just.

 

And in those countries that don't have the death penalty this kind of stuff still goes on so I dont think talking to them is really deterring them either. So if we can agree that there's nothing that can be done to deter this type of person, then I don't really have an issue with them being murdered by the state, ideally in a long, drawn out and horrific way.

 

 

Let them rot alive in a neon lit concrete hell, where all they can do is stare at the walls for year after year after year. It’s like being buried alive. Nobody knows what happens after we die.

 

 

How utterly naiive if you think that's what happens, or what could happen.

The majority of posters in this thread would be up in arms.

[Lonan3]

"You can trace it all down through the history of man. You can trace the burnings, the boiling, the drawings and quarterings, the hanging of people in England at the crossroads, carving them up and hanging them as examples for all to see.
We can come down to the last century when nearly two hundred crimes were punishable by death, and by death in every form; not only hanging—that was too humane—but burning, boiling, cutting into pieces, torturing in all conceivable forms.

"You can read the stories of the hangings on a high hill, and the populace for miles around coming out to the scene, that everybody might be awed into goodness. Hanging for picking pockets—and more pockets were picked in the crowd that went to the hanging than had been known before. Hangings for murder—and men were murdered on the way there and on the way home. Hangings for poaching, hangings for everything and hangings in public, not shut up cruelly and brutally in a jail, out of the light of day, wakened in the night time and led forth and killed, but taken to the shire town on a high hill, in the presence of a multitude, so that all might see that the wages of sin were death. . . .

"Gradually the laws have been changed and modified, and men look back with horror at the hangings and the killings of the past.

 

"What did they find in England? That as they got rid of these barbarous statutes crimes decreased instead of increased; as the criminal law was modified and humanized, there was less crime instead of more. I will undertake to say, your Honor, that you can scarcely find a single book written by a student—and I will include all the works on criminology of the past—that has not made the statement over and over again that as the penal code was made less terrible crimes grew less frequent. . ."

 

Clarence Darrow.

[Barrie Stevens]

Youtube has five minutes of uncut footage showing the actual hanging of SS Captain Amon Goethe.

 

They make a right hash of it! It takes three goes to get him dangling as on the first two attempts his feet hit the ground so they set him up again. Even on the third go he is still twitching and their method seems to be strangulation rather than the long measured drop.

 

They have sort of shallow pit and rope with someone pulling on it.. Our dear old Albert Pierrepoint was much more efficient it is said..I read his book.

 

Youtube also has footage of a man being taken to the guillotine in France. It is I think acted but it illustrates the terrible dilemma and angst not only of the prisoner who is bricking it but also the torment inflicted upon those staff and officials whose duty it is to carry out capital punishment.

 

And there is the rub! Not many people in UK and Europe anyway would want to be involved today.

 

Those who hanged James Hannratty back in the 1960s or whenever it was I think 60s... (Recent DNA tests show he was guilty)..Well they have left written accounts and really were devastated by what they had done. One officer recalls going back to a still warm cell and clearing up the still warm tea cup and looking at Hanratty's possessions...All of the staff were very disturbed by the process which was really at the end of the day a legal charade...

 

Anyway, the guillotine footage is very emotional...Get on Youtube and have a look chaps!

[Lonan3]

“It is said to be a deterrent. I cannot agree…. I do not now believe that any one of the hundreds of executions I carried out has in any way acted as a deterrent against future murder. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.”

 

From the autobiography of Albert Pierrepoint, Britain's last hangman.

[Amadeus]

 

 

I'm perfectly comfortable with the state exacting a "revenge killing" on someone who raped and murdered an 11 month old child. Sorry you don't agree, but I don't think sitting them down on pink beanbags and trying to get in touch with their feelings to understand them is really fair and just.

 

And in those countries that don't have the death penalty this kind of stuff still goes on so I dont think talking to them is really deterring them either. So if we can agree that there's nothing that can be done to deter this type of person, then I don't really have an issue with them being murdered by the state, ideally in a long, drawn out and horrific way.

 

 

Let them rot alive in a neon lit concrete hell, where all they can do is stare at the walls for year after year after year. It’s like being buried alive. Nobody knows what happens after we die.

 

 

How utterly naiive if you think that's what happens, or what could happen.

The majority of posters in this thread would be up in arms.

 

You're saying being locked up in your cell in a violent prison environment for 23 hours a day, with one hour exercise in a metal cage or concrete courtyard is a holiday camp? Do enlighten us, seeing as you seem to be a specialist.

[Donald Trumps]

Time we hanged a politician pour encourager les autres

[ballaughbiker]

I am generally against the death penalty for similar reasons to Amadeus but it's clear that if a jurisdiction chooses to have this sanction, it must be done as humanely as possible. There is no place for even thinking that it should be as horrible as the death for which the perpetrator was being punished.

 

This one went wrong because it is said they couldn't find/keep a good enough vein to get the drugs in. It should have stopped at that point just in the same way as an anaesthetist wouldn't wheel you through to theatre if they had come up against the same problem. There is also the issue that the best induction agent isn't freely available so they are dicking around with less effective alternatives. However this medical aspect is a completely separate issue to capital punishment generally.

[spook]

There was a time when the death penalty was mandated for a number of offences, some secular, some spiritual, but those times have past in civilised society. There is very little to be found in American society that could be considered civilised.

 

For an act of inhumanity such as murder, terrorism, crimes against children then a full life term incarceration in my opinion is appropriate. Legitimised killing of a perpetrator is not. Quite apart from causing the perpetrator time to reflect on the horror of their actions it also gives them the opportunity to repent and find salvation, a thing that should be withheld from on one.

[ballaughbiker]

What does find salvation mean?

[Lonan3]

 

It's a taco

[Barrie Stevens]

Well to reiterate...Judicial Execution not Capital Punishment was the issue bringing about the end of the Death Penalty in both the UK and very recently, the Isle of Man...All in accordance with modern thinking and the European Convention on Human rights.

 

Technically you were not executed because you were Guilty neither released an innocent if the verdict was Not Guilty. It was not about what actually happened in real time...It was how the Judge and Jury felt after two ego-centric Barristers had exercised their skills in courtroom drama.

 

The perfect example is that of Craig and Bentley. Craig had the gun, fired it and killed a policeman. His accomplice, the half-wit Derek Bentley, bit slow, learning difficulties, was actually in police custody at the time.

 

He did not fire a gun. He did not kill the policeman. However, the judicial process called for his Judicial Execution because the pantomime that is the court room established that he must be killed simply because he was old enough to hang whereas Craig was not a candidate for execution being I think sixteen or so.

 

Yes, there was the law then that I think brought in the issue of "joint venture" or some such and so you could be hanged even if you did not physically murder someone. That has now gone...But it does illustrate the total artificiality and contrived situation whereby the law under its own rules once enforced Judicial Execution which was then made manifest by way of a process of Capital Punishment.

 

Yes, there was the alleged cry by Bentley "Let him have it Chris!" Did he mean shoot the officer or surrender the gun? The artificial pantomime of the court room decided that he meant "Open fire".. No one knew the truth. Some may have believed it, Others could have made it up. The legal system decided that it was a call to shoot. No one really can say for certain.

 

The tide turned when the due process of law brought about a Judicial Execution in doubtful circumstances.

 

We are where we are and the longer Judicial Execution is in abeyance the harder it will be to bring it back.

[Barrie Stevens]

I suggest that in accordance with modern thinking the only fair outcome of Craig and Bentley at least in modern eyes would have been to find Craig guilty but sentenced to life being too young to hang ...which I suppose happened although he has long since been released...and his accomplice Derek Bentley who killed no one at all likewise made to serve a long prison term. In other words natural justice should have been that no one was to hang...