Capital Punishment.

[MWB]

It seems to me that the majority of people who are anti-capital punishment are liberal, do-gooders wearing rose tinted glasses.
In this I mean that if a member of their family was kidnapped, brutally raped then tortured to death, they would surely change their minds & bay for blood?

You can't tell me that anyones child who is killed in the above sort of way would forgive the perpetrator! Every parent I've talked to or listened to have said they would kill anyone who hurt a hair on their childs head.

[Gormless]

Ask Timothy Evans and Derek Bentley for their view.

[gelda]

That was before dna Gormless.

[hc4361]

Death is the easy way out for the perpetrator.
Wanting to kill somebody who hurt your family is very different from the state decreeing a person should die.

[BilluSugger]

You were saying

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/83535/Kare n-s-parents-forgive-teenage-killer-after-he-ad mits-murder

[rojash]

It seems to me that the majority of people who are pro-capital punishment are plonkers who think they could solve all the world's problems if only they could kill enough people.

[heathfield]

No matter how strong the evidence appears to be, no matter how detailed a confession, there will always remain the chance, however slight, that the accused did not commit the crime.
Turn the question around. How would you feel if a member of your family suffered overwhelming evidence pointing to them being guilty, and even though they were totally innocent, they nevertheless received the death penalty?
It's happened in the past. The courts and the lawmakers recognised this, and it's what led to their doing away with capital punishment.

[keyplus90]

If justice is served without any prejudice then capital punishment is the only way to sort the world,s problems.

Main problem is that people speak against capital punishment until a member of their own family is a victim.

[hc4361]

So there are no problems in countries where capital punishment is routinely carried out? What nonsense.

[CrazyCathy]

About a year ago some friends' son was murdered and those friends have forgiven the murderers saying that it is the christian thing to do.

So I'm not sure - you might feel like it but personally I think I'd want to torture them. God forbid that I should ever find out

[TCL-MUMPING]

How would DNA have helped in the Bentley case?

[123everton]

The whole question of capital punishment would disappear if life meant life in prison.

[TCL-MUMPING]

There was a court case a while ago and the old evidence was being re-tested for DNA and they found the DNA of one of the officials in the new court case.

[dabees]

Could you murder someone else? If you have that ability, then the position of executioner is yours.

I couldn't, that's why i'm against the death penalty. It would make me as bad as the initial criminal.

[pinktwink]

well said rojosh

I am anti capital punishment and whist some of my views are liberal some are also conservative. And no i dont have rose coloured glasses. My work takes me deep into the poverty and heartache of society and familys. At the end of the day physical punishment does not change the crime or action nor can it bring back the victims sense of safety prior to the incident. All it serves to do is reinforce the view violence is right. Try the barbarian days

[Ice.Maiden]

I think it's because the punishments are so feeble, that people'd like to see capital punishment reintroduced. If a life sentence meant just that, with no "luxuries" for the perpetrators, then I think folk'd see it as being their just desserts.

[jake-the-peg]

It works so well in America doesn't it?

[New Judge]

Firstly, although gormless has not suggested otherwise, to avoid any confusion Derek Bentley was guilty of murder. Even his family accept that he was properly convicted. Their argument was over the death sentence imposed upon him (but not his under-age accomplice Christopher Craig) and they based this argument on his allegedly low mental age.

As has been said, if �Life� sentences were just that � imprisonment for the rest of your life � then this argument may not manifest itself quite so frequently.

When the abolition of Capital Punishment was debated in the late �50s early �60s, the alternative put to the public clearly was that full life sentences would be available to the courts. The courts, in their turn, would be expected to use them routinely in the same way as the death sentence was routinely imposed. This was a clear expectation upon which MPs voted. (You don�t have to believe me � just look up the relevant Hansard publications).

Nobody needs me to tell them that this expectation was very quickly managed out of the judicial system and we have today situations where murderers are serving as little as five years of their �Life� sentence. The average served (not �recommended� by the trial judge) is, I believe, a little under nine years. Yes, they are all liable to be recalled at any time to resume their sentence should they re-offend, but very few of them are.

Penalties imposed for murder in the UK are, by and large, unduly lenient. Capital punishment cannot be re-introduced in this country even if all the electorate, MPs, Ministers and members of the House of Lords wanted it. Not unless we repeal the 1998 Human Rights Acts and withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. This is not likely to happen so the issue of the length of �Life� sentences needs to be addressed.

[MWB]

Prison costs so much. Perhaps that's why sentences are so feeble. And anyway, the life of a prisoner these days appears to be rather cushy what with TV, use of phones, free medical & dental, etc, etc, etc.
The cost to the prison could be eased if all these "luxuries" were stopped.
Oh, I don't know. it's tricky isn't it?