As is the case with many libertarians, I am opposed to the death penalty not on the grounds the state is wrong to kill people, it does that all the time on an almost casual basis via more indirect means, but rather that as a falliblist I am all too aware that miscarriages of justice occur with frightening regularity and you cannot ‘undo’ an execution. However I have no objective moral problem with the idea of a murderer paying with his life per se, just a problem entrusting that decision to a fallible judiciary.
In the USA, convicted murderer Tracy Housel has been on death row for 16 years for the 1985 rape and murder of 46-year-old Jeanne Drew. Because he is a British passport holder, the usual parade of people from the UK have been petitioning to commute his sentence to one of life imprisonment. Even our blessed leader Tony Blair has written to the US authorities on behalf of this man. Vera Baird, the Labour MP for Redcar is in the USA and has said that “at a time when British troops are working along side American troops in Afghanistan, some special consideration is called for”.
And so given my libertarian opposition to the death penalty, presumably I agree, right?
Wrong. In this case, the murderer Tracy Housel admits he raped and strangled his victim. There is absolutely no grounds for reasonable doubt here and so I say let him get exactly what he deserves. What is more, the conflation of value by the Member of Parliament for Redcar of British soldiers putting their lives on the line alongside their US comrades in the fight against terrorism, and a self confessed British rapist-murderer in the US is nothing less that a disgusting insult to British soldiers everywhere. To hear the two mentioned in the same sentence is an absolute disgrace of the sort I have come to expect from moral relativists like Vera Baird.
