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Death to child killers The Soham murder trial is finally over and Ian Huntley is on his well deserved way to a life behind bars. Should he somehow manage a reincarnation, he will still have a second life sentence left to serve.
What I found most interesting in the news tonight was the telephone poll taken by Channel Five. 94% of the respondents believe there should be a death penalty for those who kill children. If the murders of those two lovely young children had happened in the US, such a public opinion would not seem surprising. But for the UK? My jaw may require wiring.
Now… how many children was it Saddam murdered?
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Inquiries have been ordered,you can all sleep soundly tonight,the government is on the job.
The poll results are no suprise – the EU ban on capital punishment is not supported by the vast majority of the people.
I find this focus on victims among the public a little odd, even scary. The question is surely whether (i) the criminal deserves, or (not quite the same thing) ought in view of his crimes to receive, the penalty, and (ii) the conviction is certain enough that an irrevocable penalty may be considered.
I don’t see a moral problem with the availability of the death penalty for all sorts of crimes. (There is a practical problem: I don’t trust the state to convict the right person of the right crime.) But to base the penalty on a contingent characteristic of the victim rather than the facts of the case seems utterly mad.
Nah not mad, just instinct. The same one the politicians keep using to sell creeping nannyism.
I am somewhat puzzled why libertarians, who distrust the capacity of the State to deliver just about anything in an efficient manner, generally seem willing to entrust the State with the power to sentence people to death.
I’m against the death sentence myself but not a zealot on the subject, but I am curious as to the libertarian view on this. How can you justify the death sentence if you assume the State is blindingly incompetent?
Just a thought – all prison sentences are irrevocable in one way – if you serve a year in prison, you will never get that year back.
I’m against the death penalty imposed by the state, simply because I don’t trust them to get it right. The best (and harshest) punishment was the old one in Russia in the time of the Tsar’s – hard labour in Siberia.
“I am somewhat puzzled why libertarians, who distrust the capacity of the State to deliver just about anything in an efficient manner, generally seem willing to entrust the State with the power to sentence people to death.”
The State doesn’t sentence people to death. The jury sentences people to death by the verdict it delivers, and the jury are not the State. All the State (i.e. the elected legislature) can do is to decide through law exactly which crimes carry the death penalty. I would definitely oppose the Home Secretary making case-by-case judgements about sentencing.
Now… how many children was it Saddam murdered?
Who cares? It’s not like they were U.S. or British children…
[/snark]
If you are not an anarchist, the state, under limited circumstances, has the right to coercion. The ultimate expression of coercion is to kill you. Thus armies can kill, policemen can kill (under different rules than non-police), and, for most of history, the state executioner can kill.
There is nothing inherently more libertarian about conceding the first two and not the third. All three have their problems in application in a just way and all three should be monitored closely and should be done as little as possible while preserving a free society against barbarous assault.
It requires constant vigilance to do right and with humans making the decisions, mistakes are inevitable. The question is whether the retirement of the state executioner is sustainable or will the lack of the ultimate penalty, after a few generations, lead to ever increasing crime?
“The best (and harshest) punishment was the old one in Russia in the time of the Tsar’s – hard labour in Siberia.”
My Russian history is a little rusty, but I’m sure this practice continued for a little while after the fall of the Tsars.
“[…]policemen can kill (under different rules than non-police)[…]”
Until very recently, even in practice, the police in Britain weren’t treated differently in law. It wasn’t assumed at common law that they had any special status or immunity. The theory seems to be changing, however.
Should whether you are a criminal or not in a free society, really depend on your status as defined by the state? We are certainly moving that way. (Though I have a certain regret that there is no sign of the return of Sumptuary Laws.) That seems to me as bad as defining crime by the status of the victim.
Now… how many children was it Saddam murdered?
“One death is a tradgedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”
Uncle Joe Stalin
I’d be more inclined to oppose the Death Penalty if “Life Imprisonment” really meant that.
The constant bickering whilst a person is alive to set them free, normally on a technicality rather than a reversal of judgement, is just a tool to enable convicted murderers to escape the ultimate justice.
Instead of the Death Penalty we really do need a revision of the “double jeopardy” rules that stop convictions being overturned on mere legal technicalities.
Guy and Toryboy make the case pretty much. What about those recently overturned convictions for child killings apparently committed by the childrens’ mothers? These cases seem to have another worrying undertone – that of the burden of proof – i.e. the mother is presumed to be guilty unless she proves her innocence. This based upon the theories of a now discredited “expert” witness.
History is littered with wrongful executions. One is one too many.
This is one case where parliament consistently gets it right. No criminal justice system can guarantee 100% accuracy – therefore there has to be a get-out clause. Prison terms at least offer some possibility of reversing the decision even if it does mean some lost time.
Guy Herbert:
“Until very recently, even in practice, the police in Britain weren’t treated differently in law. It wasn’t assumed at common law that they had any special status or immunity. The theory seems to be changing, however.”
This is true at common law. However, for many decades, the police have had statutory powers or arrest (etc) which go far beyond the powers available to ordinary citizens.
“The State doesn’t sentence people to death. The jury sentences people to death by the verdict it delivers, and the jury are not the State.”
I think the jury delivers the verdict.
I think the judge delivers the sentence.
So, unless the jury is able to dictate its terms to the judge (rare) then the state is, IMHO, the killer. However it is difficult to immagine an concept being directly responsible for people’s deaths. So there is still some difficulty in this interpretation…
Now…how many children was it Tony Blair murdered?
“Now…how many children was it Tony Blair murdered?”
No doubt you mean via continuing to waste obscene amounts of resources in the state run command control model known as the NHS rather than making a real health care choices available.
Now wait one boys, thee are huge dangers in following the mob on this one, I have just predicted on my blog a call for all police records to be made available to employers, whether or not the accused has been convicted. Be careful for what you wish
There are some scary statistics coming out of Death Row cases here in the USA. Because of the appeals process and all the other crap these guys were convicted before DNA testing was cheap and plentiful. Going back over the evidence is revealing that a certain percent of them were wrongfully convisted – their DNA didn’t match the killer/rapist’s.
People who violently rape and kill should by put to death – but at this time I just don’t trust our system to find the right people with a high enough degree of accuracy to sleep well at night. I’m pro-death penalty, but not until it can be done right.
And no, I’m not sure what degree of accuracy I would require.
Someone should explain to Mr Coulam what the word murdered means.
As much as I dislike Mr Blair, I find such moral equivalence abhorrent. Whether or not you support the war you can hardly claim that Tony deliberately killed Iraqi children.
On the other hand that nice man Saddam, intended to kill every single person Man, Woman or Child that stood up to him.
If you still find difficulty in seeing the difference I suggest you leave us and play with your friends on the Democratic Underground.
On the death penalty, I find the unceremonious struggle to prevent Saddam from getting what he deserves under scores the moral bankrupcy of the anti capital punishment brigade. There are reasonable arguments against on the grounds of accuracy, but that is hardly relevant in the case of Saddam. This displays the simple fact that the antis are using this argument spuriously.
Not allowing the ultimate penalty for serious offences is another example of dereliction of duty by the state, in one of the only areas that they have a moral right to act. They know better than us, and they feel squeamish about killing people.
If I as a citizen am not allowed to take the law into my own hands, then the state must provide me with reasonable redress. If it were my loved ones murdered, then I know of only one form of reasonable redress and it isn’t a few years at her majesty’s pleasure
Jonathan L – I don’t believe for one minute that the tranzis feel squeamish about capital punishment. It is simply one more natural right that they can the electorate. A giant ratcheting of control.
Funny how, in the US, the states that have the death penalty have a far lower murder rate than the states that don’t. Also, states, like Texas, that think it absolutely normal for citizens to have guns in their homes have a mysteriously low rate of burglary. It used to be, in Texas, that you couldn’t carry a concealed weapon. In other words, if you had your gun in your car with you, it had to be on the seat next to you, I guess to serve as fair warning.
However, women wanted to carry their guns in their purses when they got out of their cars, so the legislature changed to law to allow citizens to carry concealed. (Yes, truly free and independent legislatures like that in Texas are responsive to the wishes of their electorates.) Texas and, if we are to believe Mark Steyn, and who wouldn’t, New Hampshire are now two of the safest places in the US. You’re far safer in Houston or Dallas than you are in, oh, just about anywhere in Britain.
The death penalty is the ultimate deterrant… once dead it proves almost impossible to come back and start once again where you left off. All other forms of punishment allow for the return of the wrongdoer into society at some time in the future. The death penalty says to the wrongdoer… “do this wrong and it will be the last thing you do”.
If you are not willing to spend your life trying to live “in harmony” alongside someone who is trying to destroy you and your family – then for protection you need an ultimate deterrent… you won’t necessarily have to use it… for a detterent is useful by its very existence – but if you don’t have that deterrent your life will be a filled with the thousand little deaths that your enemy inflicts on you as they go about their business of destroying you.
One main reason for “state government” is to add security and protection to the individuals in society. For any government to remove this basic protection … this deterrent of the death penalty… is a failure of the very reason and ideals for which the government exists.
Verity… ” You’re far safer in Houston or Dallas than you are in, oh, just about anywhere in Britain.”
hmm… funny then, how the murder rate in Texas looks to be about 10x that of the UK from most of the stats i’ve been able to find. Maybe your *stuff* is safer in Texas, but given a choice between losing my (much loved) stuff & losing my life, I know which I’d go for.
A_t – Don’t get tricky. Depends how the state defines murder. If you break into my house and I am standing on the other side of my door, gun in hand, and I shoot you, I won’t be charged. So householders shooting intruders may be included in your stats. Texas is a very safe state to live in.
It also has a lower crime rate in general than Britain. This is because the government doesn’t think it should remove the law from the electorate. In Texas, you are free to take the law into your own hands, because that’s safer than waiting for a patrol car and a helicopter. If you think your life’s in danger, you are absolutely free to defend yourself. You’ll have to justify it later, of course, but at least you’re alive to do so. Most of the time, you just go down to police HQ the next day and file a report. If you can prove that you felt you were in danger in your own home and the person was shot inside your home, the police don’t file charges.
Yes Verity there are loads of people shot dead by UK homeowners — about 15,000 a year I think.
Anyway are any libertarians going to answer The Last Toryboy’s question – if you think the State always gets it wrong, why do you trust them with matters of life and death?
I hear the chatter of old ladies at a picnic.
If someone murders another, he should be put to death as soon as possible. I don’t care whether it’s a child, or a pensioner. It’s murder, regardless.
In any event, in a gun-control state like Britain, adults are only marginally more capable of self-defense than are children.
Verity has made an excellent point: there is a clear difference between homicide (which would include righteous shootings and suicide as well as murder), with murder, which is the unjustifiable killing of another person.
Personally, I don’t even think killing a goblin in your home should be classified as anything other than pest control.
And as for the difference between Texas and (say) London, you’re far safer in Texas, simply because you can carry a gun to defend yourself here. The stats are irrelevant, especially as almost all murders in the U.S. are committed among members of the drug sub-sulture.
I look forward to Mathew’s elaborating on his first paragraph – is he being ironic, satirical, whimsical etc, or is he just totally off the wall?
Thank you, Kim du Toit!
You’ve ‘splained it, but I don’t know whether the lefties can ever understand it. When I lived in Texas, I felt safe. I called the cops because of a very focused peeping tom and they sent a patrol car. The second time he did it (on the same night) they sent two patrol cars. Third time, two patrol cars – officers jumping out with guns drawn – and a helicopter with an extreeeeeemely bright spotlight beamed down. And the only reason the police asked to see my gun was because they were worried I wasn’t keeping it within reach of my pillow.
In Texas, you feel safe – if only because you know you can protect yourself, but also because you know the law protects you as the defender of your (your family’s) life and doesn’t cluck around too much about someone who tried to murder you. Today’s Brits have no idea of the sense of self-confidence people have living in a state that exacts the death penalty for murder.
Kim, maybe you can explain that trials are rigorous. It’s not frontier justice. There’s 10 years of taxpayer funded appeals. But in Texas, at the end of the day, guilty of murder means removal from life.
Jonathan L,
I see that you have fallen into the common error of thinking that some importance attaches to the meaning of words. I don’t care what definition of murder you come up with, my substantive point is that Tony Blair is guilty of a monstrous crime and his ‘justification’ for it is as deceitful and feeble as Huntley’s. He should be swinging from the same gibbet as Huntley and Saddam. I am, however, not optimistic about this.
If you think I’m wrong, try and explain the relevant moral difference without recourse to pointless semanticism.
Unarmed in the UK? Heh. There is no such thing as an unarmed person in the home – just people who haven’t learned the appropriate use for the nearest object.
Outside the home, attitude is just as important. You don’t need to be armed if you don’t look like a victim.
I’ll now get back to my latest read. Goodnight.
Cydonia and Guy,
There are a number of things that forbidden to the general populace, but permitted to the state (police, prison service, customs etc.), from the trivial (like speeding) to the serious, like imprisonment. If there was a death penalty here in the UK – and I think there might still be for piracy or treason – the rights of the state v the citizen would only be an extension of the differences that are already there.
Harry Payne – Best of luck to you trying to protect yourself with the nearest object in the case of an intruder in your home. Just last week, an elderly – but clearly very fit – man who had called the police a dozen times about his home being victimised by young louts, caught one of them in his house. He remembered training he’d had in the army and not only got the lout in a necklock, but managed to hold him while he dialled the police.
When the police officer showed up, he told the elderly man to release the burglar immediately because “he looked as if he was in pain”. Result? You guessed it. The elderly man, confronted by a criminal in his own home, who detained the criminal without recourse to any weapon, is being charged with assault. [I read it in The Telegraph.]
I can’t see how the death penalty is
an automatic policy choice of any libertarian.
Surely (we) libertarians only want to have laws that focus on protecting private property and liberty rather than existing as a means for revenge via the state. If the death penalty was a proven, superior deterrent (beyond a lengthy jail term) then it would have more merit.
Verity says you are safer in Houston or Dallas than anywhere in the United Kingdom…
…except, obviously, if you happen to be JFK. Personally I feel A LOT safer in the UK than most populated places in the USA. I don’t own a gun and don’t feel the need for one to defend myself in most common circumstances.
Yes I can use a gun and to great effect. But in most cases the brain is by far the most useful weapon. Something, perhaps, Verity might dwell on before sounding off about how dangerous it is to live in the UK compared to the USA.