Swinging England, or, Capital punishment means never having to say you’re sorry.

Every now and then, there’s talk in Parliament about reintroducing capital punishment for murder, and it’s debated and eventually voted on. Every time, I hold my breath. So far, the vote’s gone the right way – so far. But will there come a time when the vote will go (as far as I’m concerned) the wrong way?

I am deeply against capital punishment, for practical, judicial and moral reasons.

In the first place, capital punishment simply doesn’t work as a deterrent. The sting-’em-up brigade say that the risk of being executed will stop people committing crimes. This theory is proved, of course, in the USA, which is world-famous for its low crime rate.

Most murders are committed in the heat of the moment; an argument turns into a row, which turns into a fight, somebody loses control and picks up the nearest thing to hand and hits someone else with it.

I’m not condoning or defending the practice, but knowing what the law is doesn’t stop people losing their tempers and using whatever comes to hand on the object of their anger. Professional killers know their jobs well enough that they don’t often get caught; it’s the poor sod who snapped under provocation who gets the long drop.

Okay, they say, then let’s just bring back capital punishment for certain crimes – say, for killing police officers in the execution of their duty. In my opinion, that would actually increase the number of police killed in the line of duty.

Let’s take a hypothetical example: an armed gang rob a bank, but the police arrive before they can escape. In the confusion, a police officer is shot, and dies later in hospital.

Now, the man who fired that shot knows that, if he’s caught, he’s going to die. So he’ll take every possible opportunity to avoid being caught. If that means that he shoots his way out, and kills another dozen coppers in the process, what’s he got to lose? He can only die once, and his life is already forfeit.

It may sound obvious, but it’s always very dangerous to put people in a position in which they feel that they have nothing to lose.

When your back’s to the wall, when you’ve got nowhere left to turn, then you might as well blow the whole world to bits. Why not? What have you got to lose? People must always be left a ‘bridge of jewels’, a grain of hope that the situation could get worse if they don’t stop now.

As I understand it (and I’m sure that someone will correct me if I’m wrong) the penalty for kidnapping in the USA is the same as for murder: judicial execution.

This is not the way forward! If a kidnapper knows that he’ll die if caught, he’s got nothing to lose and everything to gain by getting rid of possibly the only person who can identify him.

If the penalty for kidnapping were less than the penalty for murder, a few more kidnap victims might survive the ordeal: kidnappers would still have something to lose by murdering their victims.


In the second place, there is no guarantee that a miscarriage of justice will not occur.

The risk of simple human error is too great to decide whether a person should live or die. Even when nobody’s deliberately lying, even when all the witnesses are testifying in good faith, honest mistakes can happen. And it’s a bit difficult to apologise to a dead man after you’ve hanged him.

There should be no capital punishment where there is even the possibility of human error – and that possibility will never be erased as long as people remain people.

A few years ago, a retired high court judge was interviewed; he said that the Birmingham Six (convicted of bombing a pub in Birmingham and therefore imprisoned for many years) would have been long forgotten if they had been hanged.

Now, when those six people were given a new, fair trial, they were found to be innocent. The judge knew that. But he still thought they should have been hanged, so that the whole affair would be over and done with.

Obviously, hanging innocent people causes much less paperwork than retrials. Of course, it would have been even more cost-effective to have had an honest trial in the first place.


In the third place, I’m a coward.

I could never cold-bloodedly press the button or pull the lever that sent someone else to their death.

And if I haven't the moral courage to do it myself, I have absolutely no right to demand that someone else do it for me.

I’ve never done jury service, but if I were called, and if the accused faced a death sentence if found guilty, I’d never vote ‘aye’, no matter what they were accused of doing. Does killing a murderer bring their victim back to life? And there’s an old saying about “Judge not, that ye be not judged”.

For people to demand executions, yet to look down on the executioner, is the height (or depth) of hypocrisy as well as cowardice.

The hangman, after all, is only doing what society told him to do. Every person who votes in favour of capital punishment is equally as guilty of the death of another human being as the man who actually pulls the switch.


What should be done is this: hold a referendum on the subject of capital punishment.

But tell people that everyone who votes for it will have their names put on a list – and, if ever an execution needs to be carried out, one of those names will be selected at random to actually carry out the sentence.

People are fine at voting for other people to do society’s dirty work – let’s see how many would vote if they knew that they themselves might have to get their hands dirty!

And as for those who still voted in favour (there’ll always be some people who’d agree to kill another human being in cold blood – hell, there’d be some who’d pay to do it!), note their names, too, and watch them. Very carefully.

I don’t know what the answer is. I just think that, in claiming ‘a life for a life’, people are looking at the wrong section of the Bible.



28th December 2000