Capital Punishment.

[Theland]

If a referendum was held on whether or not to reintroduce the death penalty, how would you vote?
What moral basis would dictate your choice?

[nailit]

Spath, I don't think community service will EVER be handed out to someone who has killed two people...
And its not such an isolated incident. I knew several lifers inside and they all had a 'back story'.

[Bigbad]

As I said before nailit, each case on it’s own merits, and maybe that was the mitigation that woofgang was talking about.
He may have wiped some scum off the face of the earth, and I can see where he was coming from, but if we exacted our own personal form of vengeance on people who have wronged us, then we would be living in a perpetual state of anarchy.

[nailit]

Bigbad and Spath.
When I knew this con, it was in HMP Liverpool (Walton). At the time he was awaiting a transfer to high security psychiatric hospital Ashworth (where Ian Brady was).
However it begs the question (if we reinstated capital punishment) just who do you execute? Where do you draw the parameters?

[anthro-nerd]

I'd vote yes....

BUT I'd also only be voting yes if we could 100% know that the person killed someone... unfortunately it isn't always that simple. Were they 'legally sane'? Are they taking the blame for someone else?

On that basis I'd have to say no.

[Bigbad]

I don’t know the answer to that nailit.
Maybe you would have to prove that the person was fully aware of what they were doing, but although forensics have come a long way, psychiatry is still basically an opinion, so we’re back to square 1.

The OP was If A Referendum………. and if that were to happen now, I honestly don’t know how (or if) I would vote, I just think that citing old miscarriages of justice such as Timothy Evans doesn’t work any more, because we didn’t have the science or technology back then.

I’ve always had a fascination for the Carl Bridgewater case, and if we’d have had the death penalty in 1979 when they were convicted, the 3 (still living) men wouldn’t have walked free 18 years later, but with todays forensics, would they have been convicted in the first place?

[Bathsheba]

No.
Timothy Evans
Stefan Kiszko

Baths
x x

[gollob]

Although Timothy Evans did not kill his wife and baby as John Christie did He nevertheless pleaded guilty .So what do you do then as he said it.
To all the people who replied no to capital punishment would they say that Christie should not have hung. For goodness sake the bodies were everywhere like in the garden ,under the floorboards and in the walls . Do you honestly think people like that should not be taken out .If you say no there must be something a matter with you

[Bathsheba]

gollob there's nothing "a matter"with me.

[nailit]

//If you say no there must be something a matter with you//
So if someone disagrees with gollob then there is something 'wrong' with them?
That is the height of arrogance.

[woofgang]

nailit...its playing chess with a pigeon :)

[nailit]

seems like that at times woofgang ;-)

[hereIam]

I would vote YES, especially for child killers !!

[hereIam]

Was Stefan Kiszko hung ??

[nailit]

//Was Stefan Kiszko hung//
No, but he would have been another innocent person to have lost his life to the hang 'em high brigade if we still executed people.

[hereIam]

But he wasn't wasn't !

[hereIam]

Didn't mean to put 'wasn't' twice.

[nailit]

Of course he wasn't, that's because we don't execute people, durr!
Like woofgang said, playing chess with a pigeon.