Post by politician2 on Aug 19, 2023 18:54:06 GMT
One thing we haven't debated on TalkPunk for some time is the death penalty.
This is a complex argument, with three rather than two possible positions – I take the second and I know that Lord E takes the third:
1) Execution is the correct penalty for murder, and the occasional hanging of innocent people is acceptable collateral damage to keep down the murder rate.
2) Execution is the correct penalty for murder in theory, but should not be reimplemented in practice until the authorities are capable of avoiding miscarriages of justice with a 100% success rate.
3) Execution is nothing more than state-sponsored murder, and should not be applied even to serial killers or the most sadistic torture-murderers.
Where does everybody else stand?
This post was stimulated by the recent conviction of baby-killing nurse Lucy Letby, which has sparked a huge amount of media comment. This case strikes me as a strong argument for the death penalty: I think most people (unless they have a very strong ideological position against executions) would agree that a nurse who cold-bloodedly kills helpless babies should dangle at the end of a noose. However, it's also a strong argument against it, as Letby was convicted entirely on circumstantial evidence (she was the only nurse on duty every time one of the babies died and had an unnerving knack of predicting when a seemingly healthy infant was about to relapse) and without a clear motive. The papers are speculating that she was a grandiloquent psychopath who enjoyed playing God with other people's lives or suffered from Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy, but there is no evidence to support either of these conclusions. Instead the scrawled notes found in her bedroom portray her as a very unhappy and insecure young woman and are strangely ambiguous: "I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough" could be either an admission of murder or the anguished outburst of a nurse blaming herself for failing to save a patient. On balance of probability, I'm pretty sure she's guilty (she would have to be, to quote a Judge's notorious utterance from another high-profile murder trial, a "victim of outrageous circumstance" to be innocent) and I think I'm persuaded beyond reasonable doubt that she did it, but perhaps not with quite the certainty I'd require to put a noose around her neck and operate a lever. In any case, I suspect the problem will be self-solving and she will hang herself within a few years of receiving a full-life term.
This is a complex argument, with three rather than two possible positions – I take the second and I know that Lord E takes the third:
1) Execution is the correct penalty for murder, and the occasional hanging of innocent people is acceptable collateral damage to keep down the murder rate.
2) Execution is the correct penalty for murder in theory, but should not be reimplemented in practice until the authorities are capable of avoiding miscarriages of justice with a 100% success rate.
3) Execution is nothing more than state-sponsored murder, and should not be applied even to serial killers or the most sadistic torture-murderers.
Where does everybody else stand?
This post was stimulated by the recent conviction of baby-killing nurse Lucy Letby, which has sparked a huge amount of media comment. This case strikes me as a strong argument for the death penalty: I think most people (unless they have a very strong ideological position against executions) would agree that a nurse who cold-bloodedly kills helpless babies should dangle at the end of a noose. However, it's also a strong argument against it, as Letby was convicted entirely on circumstantial evidence (she was the only nurse on duty every time one of the babies died and had an unnerving knack of predicting when a seemingly healthy infant was about to relapse) and without a clear motive. The papers are speculating that she was a grandiloquent psychopath who enjoyed playing God with other people's lives or suffered from Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy, but there is no evidence to support either of these conclusions. Instead the scrawled notes found in her bedroom portray her as a very unhappy and insecure young woman and are strangely ambiguous: "I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough" could be either an admission of murder or the anguished outburst of a nurse blaming herself for failing to save a patient. On balance of probability, I'm pretty sure she's guilty (she would have to be, to quote a Judge's notorious utterance from another high-profile murder trial, a "victim of outrageous circumstance" to be innocent) and I think I'm persuaded beyond reasonable doubt that she did it, but perhaps not with quite the certainty I'd require to put a noose around her neck and operate a lever. In any case, I suspect the problem will be self-solving and she will hang herself within a few years of receiving a full-life term.
