Capital Punishment – Why it is wrong and immoral

It's not up to the mere whim of one or two judges and elected officials. They are required to prescribe punishments according to a certain legal framework in order to reach a high degree of objectivity; one which is again devised by people (different people) appointed to do so by wider society. Verdicts are reached by independent juries, rather than one or two people by themselves. If someone is found to have committed a crime which society's appointed experts deem to be far more severe than to just receive 3 months of house arrest, it is then very unlikely that this is the only punishment they will end up receiving.

It gives them the authority to act on behalf of the citizens of "society as a whole".
Someone has to determine and administer punishments; I can't personally think of anyone better.

I would say that, if you steal from someone, the person you stole from is fully entitled to take back the thing that you stole. Wouldn't you?

Can you explain your argument a bit more thoroughly? What do you mean by "murder is on another level"? What exactly are these distinct "levels" you're talking about?

Your argument so far has been simply to point out the "hypocrisy" of punishing a killer by killing them. I would say that it's not hypocritical at all. The criminal killed an innocent person, while the legal system is killing a guilty person, and therein lies the difference.

Just as, if I build a prison and lock an innocent person in it, I'll probably be sent to prison myself. Is this hypocritical? Once again, no. Locking up an innocent person is different from locking up a guilty one.

You didn't answer my question. I'll rephrase it. You seem to be implying that whatever the law dishes out so-to-speak is moral. Do you believe the law is always moral? Is this because law and morality are one and the same or is this merely coincidence?

I would question this reasoning. Essentially what you are saying is that because they have 'societal approval' they have the moral authority. But anyone could do the same action. I am not convinced that the person committing the action is relevant to the morality of the action. Even if you are saying that this is determined by 'wider society' presumably they would still approve the same action.

It is hard to believe that it is less than 50 years ago that capital punishment was used widely across the UK. With the prospect of a rightwing coalition government looking more likely with the rise of UKIP in the UK. I have absolutely no doubt that the issue of the death penalty will be back on the political agenda to some extent in the next few years particularly if UKIP are to have any say in government policy. There are many reasons as to why I am fundamentally against the restoration of capital punishment in the UK. It is also important to distinguish between whether a person deserves to die for the crimes that they committed and whether that individual should receive the death penalty for what they did as they are two entirely different things.

One of the reasons on why I am against it is because miscarriages of justice have happened before and will happen again in the future. There is of course the famous case of Timothy Evans who was executed in 1950 for a crime he did not commit. Evans was convicted of murdering his daughter when in actual fact he was living in the same house as a man named John Christie. Three years after the execution of Evans, Christie was found to be a serial killer who had killed his own wife and many other women. It was concluded that Christie was in fact the murderer in the case and that an innocent man had been sent to an early grave due to the incompetence of the British state in investigating the case.

Another case where a miscarriage of justice occurred was the case of the Guildford 4. A very good film is based on this case called “In the Name of the Father” featuring Daniel Day Lewis as the late Gerry Conlon, one of the so called Guildford 4. The Guildford 4 was a case where three young Irish men and a young Irish woman were convicted of planting a bomb in a pub which killed 5 people including 4 soldiers in the British army in 1974. These people were all innocent of the crime which was committed by the provisional IRA. These people had all been tortured by the police force which was the reason why they had confessed and was the only evidence in the trial where they were convicted. These people would have most likely received the death penalty had the death penalty not been abolished in the 1960's for the crime of murder. Another case is the case of the Scotsman Kenny Richey who was released in 2009 after spending 21 years on death row in the state of Ohio in the USA. This case highlights the problem of the plea bargaining system in the USA as Richey accepted a plea bargain pleading no contest to the charge where he would be sentenced to time served just to get off death row despite the possibility that he was completely innocent of the crime. Had Richey been sentenced to life imprisonment he may have appealed and went for a full retrial rather than have accepted the plea bargain where he may have been cleared of all charges against him and won compensation.

Another reason I have for being against the restoration of capital punishment in the UK is that I believe it is utterly hypocritical for the state to put someone to death for killing someone else. I believe it goes against basic human rights (Funnily enough UKIP and the Conservative party are both in favour of scrapping the Human Rights Act) and that it would demean our society if we ever reinstated the death penalty. Even in cases where the perpetrators are monsters such as serial killers and child killers I still oppose the idea of putting these people to death. In punishing monsters I believe we must never become monsters ourselves. We need to show that it is the basic human decency which separates us from the monsters.

I can now think of another case where I think that there is another benefit of not having capital punishment. It is the case the of the infamous Moors murders where Ian Brady and Myra Hyndlay murdered 5 innocent children in the mid 1960's. The death penalty had been abolished just months before the trial while both of the killers were being held in detention. Had they been put to death in 1966 or around this time the secrets about the fate of the victims Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett would have gone with them. Pauline was found in 1987 giving her family a form of closure and whilst Keith never was, at least his mum, Winnie Johnson found out what happened to her son instead of having to live in the forlorn hope that he'd one day turn up. This is a case where it was beneficial for the family of the victims that their killer/s were alive and could give information which gave a form of closure.

Another reason I have against the death penalty is that I believe that it is a myth that the prospect of receiving a death sentence would act as a deterrent in whether someone thought of killing another person. I can't say with absolute certainty (as I have never killed anyone) but I highly doubt that the thought of the ramifications of their actions would deter someone from committing a crime. Many homicides are committed by people in the heat of the moment where they have absolutely no time to think about the possible consequences if they are caught (I am not defending these crimes but just debunking the theory that capital punishment deters people from committing criminal offences, specifically killing another person). On a personal note, I would much rather be sentenced to death than live the rest of my life in a jail cell where my basic freedoms and liberty was taken away by the state. Many people also believe that it is a waste of peoples taxes to keep people who have committed horrible crimes alive. Research, in the USA however shows that it is much more expensive to be on death row than to receive a life sentence.

Another point is that executing someone who has killed someone will not bring any of the deceased back to life. The hanging of Saddam Hussein in late 2006 did not bring any of his victims back (many of whom were slaughtered by the weapons given to him when he was the closest ally of the Western powers) and that it is also fair to say that he received a much nicer and dignified death than many of his victims. A death sentence for George W Bush and Tony Blair also would not bring any of the victims of the illegal and immoral wars in Iraq and Afghanistan back to life. I believe that these two men are evil and responsible for millions of avoidable deaths in the name of Western imperialism and deserve everything that happens to them but I don't believe any society should sanction their deaths as this would put us on the same level as these people.

Another point I have is that there is a bias in who receives the death penalty based on things such as social class, race and gender and not based solely on the crime itself. People who are from working class backgrounds are far more likely to receive a death sentence from the state than people from more privileged backgrounds. Black people in the US are also heavily discriminated against in the USA compared to people from a white ethnic background. This is because of things such as poor people not being able to afford lawyers who are as good and issues like racism. There is also the chance that a jury may also be more reluctant to convict someone where the death penalty is on the table for a possible sentence in the event that the accused is found guilty of the crime than a case where the death penalty is not on the table.

The criminal justice system should try to rehabilitate people back into society and not be based purely on punishing people for the rest of their lives which does no one any good. Many people who have committed violent and vicious acts have genuinely expressed remorse for what they did and in my opinion some of them deserve a second chance as some people do change and are rehabilitated back into society. This may be controversial but I recall back in 2010 where John Venables, one of the killers of the infant Jamie Bulger back in 1993 was arrested for an offence committed after he was released from prison as an adult with a new identity. The crime he committed has never been revealed but I remember the hysteria among much of the public that these two boys (both 11 years old at the time) who were responsible in the Bulger tragedy should have received the death penalty. We all heard in the mass media about Venables who had allegedly committed an offence (which could have been something as trivial as a non payment of a fine or smoking marijuana) but we heard nothing about the fact that the other perpetrator in the Bulger case, Robert Thomson had not and has still not been in trouble as far as I am aware since his release back in 2001.

In conclusion it is my opinion that there is justice and there is vengeance. I believe that capital punishment certainly comes under the latter category. It is not worth risking the possibility of putting someone to death who may have been completely innocent of the crime and I believe that it would act as a slippery slope where the establishment had more opportunity to frame people who they seen as obstacles to the system to get them out of the way. I believe that the abolition of the death penalty in the UK was one of the best decisions a society could make and I hope that we never ever live in a society that uses such a primitive form of justice which in the end does no one any good.

I would not say that the law is necessarily always "moral". I'm saying that I believe the legal system has the rightful authority to administer punishments, despite not always getting the decisions "right" in my opinion.

Anyone could do the same action in theory, but if everyone were given the right to administer punishments, it's unlikely that they would always be in line with society's legal framework.

In theory I could prescribe the correct drugs for someone's illnesses too, but society has not conferred any medical qualification upon me, so I still have no right to attempt this. It's safer to prohibit people from attempting to do certain things that they are not qualified for.

Then you shouldn't have supported our conduct in the Second World War, or the bombing of Serbia and invasion in Iraq if you supported that too. Because that would be hypocritical. Murder levels were far far lower when we had capital punishment, not because we want to kill people but to deter them from doing so in the first place.

Only a pacifist can say they are against the death penalty for the problem of innocent life.


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Under conditions of war, there is no reasonable way to accomplish your goals --- like stopping the Axis powers from taking over the world ---- except by killing large numbers of people. If you try to stop the Axis powers from taking over the world, many of their people will shoot at you, and will not stop shooting at you until they are dead. And the goal, in this case, is unquestionably good: if the Axis powers take over the world, then a lot of people will die or suffer horrific oppression.

Capital punishment is a completely different beast. At the point where capital punishment comes into play, the person to be executed is sitting inside a steel-barred concrete cell. However horrific we find this person's psyche, (s)he is essentially a helpless worm in the unyielding grasp of the state's fist. Now, consider what further objectives society has, and whether these objectives can be accomplished by nonlethal means. I'd claim the only unquestionably good aim here is to defend society against future violence, which can be accomplished by keeping that person in the cell forever. There's an array of other, far more questionable objectives, like vengeance or emotional satisfaction, that may require you to execute this person, but it's hardly inconsistent to believe that such objectives do not justify killing.

But forming beliefs about the world (those who aren't psychopaths or even some of them) and all the rest of us behave in such a say that matches our inner beliefs. And we form beliefs based on the world around us and society we live, and they colour our minds from moment to moment. If people are scared from going into prison because the consequence is too high a price to pay then it's likely or even evident looking back in our history that fewer people will commit murders an
there will be fewer counts violence.

The objective of the death penalty is that it's designed not to be used because it deters. The same goes for nuclear weapons. Deterrence. I would say that if executing murders results in fewer murders then I don't see that as a bad justification.


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But forming beliefs about the world (those who aren't psychopaths or even some of them) and all the rest of us behave in such a say that matches our inner beliefs. And we form beliefs based on the world around us and society we live, and they colour our minds from moment to moment. If people are scared from going into prison because the consequence is too high a price to pay then it's likely or even evident looking back in our history that fewer people will commit murders an
there will be fewer counts violence.

The objective of the death penalty is that it's designed not to be used because it deters. The same goes for nuclear weapons. Deterrence. I would say that if executing murders results in fewer murders then I don't see that as a bad justification.

This is a quote from a 2009 study into the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent.

'Our survey indicates that the vast majority of the world’s top
criminologists believe that the empirical research has revealed the
deterrence hypothesis for a myth. There isn’t a shred of evidence that
supports the New York Times’s assertion that there is “an intense new
debate about one of the central justifications for capital punishment,”
namely deterrence.85 Recent econometric studies, which posit that the death
penalty has a marginal deterrent effect beyond that of long-term
imprisonment, are so limited or flawed that they have failed to undermine
consensus.
In short, the consensus among criminologists is that the death penalty
does not add any significant deterrent effect above that of long-term
imprisonment'

The study can be found here http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/files/DeterrenceStudy2009.pdf

This is an American study. Completely irrelevant to us here. In 1945 there was 6.6 murders per million population (about 350 estimated), in 2002 it was 16.6 per million and the number stood at about 1,100. There was also a total of 2 years where the death sentence was suspended before it's abolishment in 1965, and in those two periods violence and crime increased massively. To say that the death penalty never worked (deterred) in the UK is a lie.

This is an American study. Completely irrelevant to us here. In 1945 there was 6.6 murders per million population (about 350 estimated), in 2002 it was 16.6 per million and the number stood at about 1,100. There was also a total of 2 years where the death sentence was suspended before it's abolishment in 1965, and in those two periods violence and crime increased massively. To say that the death penalty never worked (deterred) in the UK is a lie.


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Is there any sort of evidence that shows that a lack of the death sentence is the cause of the increase? Or are you just speculating wildly? Do tell me, if it isn't working as a deterrent in the US can you explain why it would work here in the UK? What exactly is the difference here that makes it so much better as a deterrent?

To say that the death penalty is strong and good deterrent here in the UK seems intellectually dishonest to me.

Do you even need to ask if there is a difference? Anyone who examines the justice systems of both countries and their history will realise that ours is a much more civilised system and it was ours to begin with.

House of Commons library is where you can find studies to support this.

Did you mean to post all that here or did you intend to save it in a folder marked 'A-Level Law Homework' and pressed the wrong button?

Yes myra hindley and ian brady should have been hung, drawn and quartered for their crimes. After being tortured to give up the burial place of their missing vicitims- there is only so much physical pain the human body can endure.
The UK should have the death penalty for the most serious crimes- eg; joining ISIS, killing children, etc.

Although, we could put this human waste to better use..........

Cancer and AIDS research is nothing without tests- animals react differently to drugs (eg; guinea pigs are allergic to penicillin) so do medical research on these MFs- put them to some use. This could also serve as a deterrent to these *******s........

The problem in the UK is that we don't have harsh enough jail sentences. Rape is about 2 years (which is basically a slap on the wrist) and murderers don't get FULL life sentences.

If we were like America and had proper life sentences (50 years! That's a life sentence) then yeah, no death penalty, but right now the system is a joke.

I think we need to really reform the prison system. No death penalty, but a stricter, harsher prison system.