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If you want the death penalty, accept the consequences

I gather there may be a debate in parliament on the restoration of the death penalty.

That's fine, but those demanding the restoration should consider the logical consequences.

In the event that someone is put to death but is subsequently found to be innocent, they will have been murdered. This is likely to happen - it certainly happened on a regular basis before the abolition.

When such a murder ensues, those responsible MUST, I believe, themselves be tried for murder and executed. It's only fair. It's not just the person who pulls the trigger who is sentenced. I would suggest that those responsible, who should then be executed, are:
  • The executioner
  • The prison governor
  • The Home Secretary (who could issue a pardon)
  • All MPs who voted for the restoration of the death penalty
  • All citizens who signed a petition requiring the restoration of the death penalty
So it's fine. Demand the restoration of the death penalty - but only if you are prepared to live (and die) with the consequences. Anything else would be poor justice indeed.
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Comments

  1. pjt5 August 2011 at 10:50

    Weird. If someone is wrongfully imprisoned, do you require that the judge and jailkeepers are afterwards imprisoned in retaliation?

    I really think the death sentence should be carried out by locking the sentenced in a jail for the rest of his/her life, instead of a lethal injectino or whatever. But where I live, what I see now is that killers are released in a few years, and when they kill again, they are treated as "first-timers" even if their conditional jail sentence is still in effect. That just doesn't make sense.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brian Clegg5 August 2011 at 15:13

    I think the key point is that wrongful imprisonment is reversable. But, yes, there are circumstances where people have been wrongfully imprisoned because of police/judiciary doing their job wrong - and under such circumstances they should be charged with wrongful arrest/imprisonment.

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