The death penalty

[PvtPyle]

A father has been convicted of murdering his baby daughter who died when her spine was "snapped in two".

James Howson, 25, of Nelson Road, in Edlington, Doncaster, held 16-month-old Amy over his knee and broke her back in two, Leeds Crown Court heard.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7682771.stm

A former outdoor activities instructor convicted of sexually abusing children at youth camps has been jailed for 12 years at the High Court in Edinburgh.

Colin Macdonald, 61, from Wakefield, West Yorkshire, was found guilty in August of 10 charges of abusing children from the deaf community.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7681773.stm

Someone needs to explain to me in small words that my Neanderthal intellect can compute what purpose it serves to keep these two individuals alive and breathing. Is society's moral superiority, and our overly emotive refusal to accept "state sponsored murder", honestly worth the thought of the taxpayer actually keeping these two fed, clothed, sheltered and cared for medically and psychologically in prison for the next umpteen years?

Edit: I should add that this is hardly a debate that has not gone round in circles 1000s of times before, and the first reposte will be "it costs more to kill someone than to keep them alive", to which I would respond that in a guess such as the first, where there is NO doubt in the court's mind, then there should simply be no appeal process. Bullets are cheap, and highly effective. Court cases are expensive, and rarely effective at all. If he was unable to prove diminished responsibility during sentencing, then he should face the chair, injection or a firing squad.

[PvtPyle]

Food for thought:

I listened with some interest to the Lord Chancellor earlier. It appeared that he and my colleagues on the Front Bench accept the importance of prison and the need to ensure that people spend longer in prison than is currently the case. The same cannot be said for the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, however, who trotted out all the usual arguments put forward by the anti-prison lobby for allowing offenders to run amok on the streets.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the costs involved. If I cannot say anything else in my allotted time today, I want to get this across: prison is actually very cheap indeed. He mentioned a figure of about £36,000 per annum for keeping someone in prison. The Government say that it is about £32,000 a year. In actual fact, we are not talking about category A prisoners here. Everyone—even the Liberal Democrats—accepts that category A prisoners need to be in prison, and they are the most expensive to house. What we are talking about is category B, C and D prisoners, and the actual cost of keeping them in prison is well under £30,000 a year; indeed, I believe it is about £25,000. From that gross figure to the taxpayer, however, one has to remember that three quarters of people entering a prison estate are on various forms of benefits when they do so. In order to get the true net cost to the taxpayer, we have to deduct from that £25,000 the money that they would have been receiving on benefit outside prison. That brings the net cost to the taxpayer to well under £20,000 a year.

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:GWFe_ePxPckJ:www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/cm070724/debtext/70724-0013.htm+price+of+keeping+someone+in+prison&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

[PvtPyle]

... And some more candidates for real justice, and not a 9 month layover period learning to weave baskets and wash bed linen.

A couple have been jailed for nine years for abusing a 17-month-old boy who was sliced with a knife and burned with cigarettes.

Sumairia Parveen abused stepson Tahla Ikram before his death in September 2006, Southwark Crown Court heard.

Parveen, 24, and the child's father Abid Ikram, 31, from west London, were convicted of causing or allowing the child's death at an earlier hearing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6983491.stm

[AboveTheSalt]

Bullets are cheap, and highly effective. Court cases are expensive, and rarely effective at all.Somehow I don't think that you really mean that we should simply use a bullet on "suspects" in order to save the cost of a court trial ...
... or perhaps you do?

[Justsomebloke]

Derek Bentley




close thread/

[Matblack]

Hmmmm, its a tough call

In the UK the jury is asked to convict on a basis of 'beyond reasonable doubt', for me personally this would not be enough to go ahead with the death penalty, 'beyond reasonable doubt doesn't mean 100% they did it, it means that the acuseds guilt is pretty damn certain, as far as I am concerned that is not enough. Of course there is one way to be sure and that is if the supect openly admmits guilt but this is usually rewarded with a more lenient sentence, there isn't really a more lenient version of death :/

So if you want it then the only way I as a citizen would be willing to accept it is if you change the fundamentals of the legal system to include a jury decision of '100% no doubt about it guilty as hell' which would substantially upset the legal system as anyone who has been convicted 'beyond reasonable doubt' would be wanting a retrial because there aren't deregations of guilty one either is or is not guilty and so the argument goes around in circles. One thing is for certain, people have been sentenced to death had the sentence carried out and then been found to be innocent. The way this is reduced in the US is to hold people on deathrow for 10s of years before they carry out the sentence. Because of their sentence deathrow prisioners are very expensive to house because quite frankly many of them are happy to kill and mame guards and fellow inmate, lets face it what have they got to lose. Deathrow cases attract numerous retrial some at the highest courts of appeal which are very very expensive to conviene and attract huge ammounts of media attention and make anti-heroes of some of the most evil members of society this in turn leads to huge protests from anti death sentence protesters and pro death sentence protesters which have to be policed.

In my eyes its not worth the hassle, just let them rot in jail, if there is a mistake then let them out and compensate them, at the end of the day its a lot cheaper not to kill than it is to do so and if you cock it up you don't have to go cap in hand and say sorry we killed Billy we thought he was a bad lad.

By all mean bring back hard labour and greul and change prisons from holiday camps in to hell holes but don't argue that the death penelty is a cheap solution because it isn't.

MB

[iCraig]

For me it boils down to whether or not I trust the state with the ability to execute people. I simply don't. Some cases might be clear cut, the correct man is brought to "justice" but what if there are cock ups? We mess up sending innocent people to prison, why couldn't we mess up sending an innocent man to death? As much as sending an innocent man to prison is harsh, the sentence could always be overturned, or basically I'm saying, at least he has a good chance of coming out again. With death you can't. Oh, we had the wrong man all along, oops.

I seriously don't trust the system enough for that, and cost would be an obvious factor in then improving the reliability and accuracy of the system.

[PvtPyle]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7688929.stm

A father who murdered his baby daughter by snapping her spine will spend at least 22 years in prison.

James Howson, 25, was given a life sentence at Leeds Crown Court for the murder of 16-month-old Amy at their home in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.

The judge also detailed other occasions in the weeks leading up to the murder in December last year when Howson "cruelly and deliberately assaulted Amy", leaving her with multiple fractures to her arms and legs.

The court heard how Howson had a troubled history and had been violent towards women when he was young, yet he had no previous convictions.

So, clear proof of previous crimes that went unpunished, then finishes the job by breaking a child's spine in two. Absolutely no question whatsoever of his guilt. Thank goodness it will cost over half a million pounds to keep him locked up though.

:ROLLEYES:

[Matblack]

Thank goodness it will cost over half a million pounds to keep him locked up though.

:ROLLEYES:

I would be more expensive to kill him if it were to be done in such a way as to be conducive with the English court system,, thats not to say that given the option and with adequate proof I wouldn't be willing to blugeon the bastard to death myself but it would be more expensive. If your going to argue this I don't think it can be done on grounds of the cost to the public.

MB

[semi-pro waster]

Edit: I should add that this is hardly a debate that has not gone round in circles 1000s of times before, and the first reposte will be "it costs more to kill someone than to keep them alive", to which I would respond that in a guess such as the first, where there is NO doubt in the court's mind, then there should simply be no appeal process. Bullets are cheap, and highly effective. Court cases are expensive, and rarely effective at all. If he was unable to prove diminished responsibility during sentencing, then he should face the chair, injection or a firing squad.

What do you mean that court cases are rarely effective? I don't know of a better way of determining guilt than by presenting people to a jury of their peers or a suitably qualified judge.

The execution itself doesn't need to be particularly expensive, as you say bullets are cheap but why bother with bullets? A hammer or an an axe costs nothing beyond the initial outlay and occasional sharpening/replacement - it's almost infinitely reusable too. The problem isn't with the cost of execution so much as it is with the supporting framework and frankly I don't give a damn for any legal system that doesn't include a suitable appeals process, nor a suitable judicial system to begin with. America is frequently brought up when the cost issue is mentioned and then people bring up China as an example of how it can be effected more cheaply - well, yes, but China has almost no relevance because America has the legal system that more closely resembles ours (it should do given it stems largely from ours) and if we were to reintroduce the death penalty we would almost certainly implement it along the American lines rather than any other.

I might as well nail my colours to the mast so to speak, I don't agree with the death penalty at all, even if you can conclusively prove guilt 100% I still don't think that anyone (or a collective) has the right to end the life of another human. It strikes me as a failure of society, we've all failed when someone is killed by another person and the state doing it is no better except that we personally aren't doing the killing - an abdication of responsibility if you will.

Having a death for a death appeals to the primal sense of vengeance but is that what the law should be about? Interestingly I once heard that quite a few lawyers who privately would support the death penalty will not publicly campaign for it because they fear (read as know) that it would lead to more guilty people walking free, being the person or people who decide that someone is guilty and knowing that they will face certain death if you've got it wrong is quite conducive to creating reasonable doubt.

[AboveTheSalt]

Adrian Waterman QC, defending, told the court that when Howson was expelled from school a teacher noted in a report: "This boy will commit a murder before too long. I've never seen a such a disturbed young man." (Link (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/oct/25/james-howson-life-sentence))I'm not quite sure what the teacher could have done to prevent this tragedy, but the observation was remarkably prescient and very disturbing.

[Von Smallhausen]

Derek Bentley




close thread/


A very good example. His mate who pulled the trigger was not hanged for the murder of Pc Sidney Miles ironically enough.