1 Timothy Evans – Executed on 9/3/1950 for killing his daughter at 10 Rillington Place. His neighbour John Reginald Halliday Christie was executed on 15/7/1953 for the crime after being found to be a serial killer. The fact that Christie was a special constable meant that no one believed that he could be a murderer whilst Evans was an illiterate welsh miner of poor health.
2 Colin Campbell Ross - An Australian executed in 24/4/1922 for the rape and murder of a child despite their being evidence that he was not guilty. He was posthumously pardoned in 2008.
3 Walter Rowland – Executed on 27/2/194. Even though he had an alibi from multiple police officers he had been released from prison after escaping the death sentence for killing his daughter which meant the jury thought he had form and convicted him. David Ware confessed to the crime but was not believed but went on to murder a woman in 1951.
4 George Kelly – Executed on 28/3/1950 but had his conviction quashed in June 2003.
5 Derek Bentley – Famous for his “Let him have it” quote was executed on 28/1/1953. His accomplice was a minor so was given a 10 year jail term. The phrase is ambiguous and heavily biased towards a police officer who had just had a colleague murdered by Christopher Craig. Pardoned in 1998.
6 Mahmood Hussein Mattan - Executed on 3/9/1952 in Cardiff for the murder of Lily Volpert. The Court of Appeal quashed his conviction after hearing of evidence that another Somali seaman had committed the crime.
7 Edith Thompson - Executed on 9/1/1923. She had been having an affair with Frederick Bywaters who had actually committed the crime. Due to this connection she was guilty by common purpose.
8 Edward Devlin and Alfred Burns – Executed on 25/4/1952 when the evidence was circumstantial at best. They didn’t help themselves with confusing alibis and their criminal past. Questions still remain about their guilt or lack of.
9 William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw) - Executed on 3/1/1946 for treason even though he was an American citizen. His Britishness extended to holding a fraudulently obtained fake passport. Because of this he was held to have owed allegiance to the British sovereign. It shows how far the State will go to get it’s way.
10 – 138 being the number of Americans exonerated whilst on death row or after execution.
The picture is of Saint Nicholas of Myra as he seizes the executioner’s sword in order to save at the last moment three wrongly condemned prisoners (oil painting by Ilya Repin, 1888, State Russian Museum).
I'm a oldish lad who is sad that so much of life is making him mad.
{ 64 comments }
One reason for:
1. Milly Dowler – a child murdered by a psychopathic serial killer who is currently trying to decide what to have for breakfast on us having spent a pleasant evening reminiscing about the havoc he has wrought.
I’d rather have a hundred serial killers locked up in prison for full and proper life (not 15 years in prison and then on license for the rest of their lives) than have an innocent person executed by the state. Locked up for life means that they don’t get out and harm anyone else. Same result as execution but without the problems of getting it wrong.
Yes they have breakfast and lunch and dinner on us taxpayers, but the food gets bit pretty boring and repetitive after the first 10 years. Canteen food for life? No chance to have their favourite food, no chance to have a McDonald, no chance to have slap up pub grub, no chance to have treats.
Speaking after his conviction, Milly’s mother Sally said: ”The length the system goes to to protect his human rights seems so unfair compared to what we as a family have had to endure.”
Everyone has the right to life. All other rights are not real rights, they are entitlements and benefits of living in a free society. A prisoner loses their entitlement to free movement when convicted.
The length the system went to was to ensure that he had a fair trail, not a lynch mob.
Part of the problem is that the Dowler family had to endure their grief in public in the media spotlight. Their grief and sudden loss is pretty much the same as that suffered by other families who lose children to drunk drivers, but made worse by the media pressure. Such drunk drivers are still killers and murderers.
“SadButMadLad August 3, 2011 at 10:08
I’d rather have a hundred serial killers locked up…………..”
But you couldn’t have your wish, if the serial killer had a penchant for murdering SadButMadLads.
A risk I would take. Even though the media makes it out like there is a killer on every street corner, the actual chance of getting killed by a serial killer is lower than winning the lottery. Though knowing my luck I would win the lottery AND get killed by a serial killer.
Interesting list, number 7 is a particularly sad story.
Really well put together…
Add Stefan Kiszko to that list and the Guildford Four as well – had they been put to death then corrupt policing and shady deals by inept lawyers would never have come to light.
The film about Kiszko – a Life for a Life, is a good synopsis of his truly horrific story…
Quite right to bring the Stefan Kiszko case up. Can any seriously imagine that the police are not capable of making the suspect fit the crime?
I don’t think you can cite the Guildford Four, because there’s no way of knowing if they would have been convicted had the death penalty still been in place.
If a conviction is found to be unsafe a prisoner can be released, if he’s been hanged it’s too late. The last Government’s longest debate was over fox-hunting, not whether to go to war, so the State thinks fox lives are worth more time pondering over (and more valuable) than those of Homo sapiens. Is the State a suitable organisation to be trusted with people’s lives?
Absolutely the point. The state doesn’t seem to be able to get anything right. They shouldn’t have the power of life and death.
(Even if they could get it right I still wouldn’t support it)
On the whole – except in particularly heinous cases where the evidence is 100% compelling – I have turned against the death penalty.
However, life imprisonment should mean just that – not 14yrs. The case of Tracie Andrews springs to mind – how on earth she can be released so early AND after pleading not guilty and implicating someone else in the trial, is beyond me.
Those who PG get ‘time off for plea’, should it not be the other way round upon conviction after a trial (at the tax-payer’s expense)?
BTW
Hands up who doesn’t think Anders Behring Breivik should be executed.
Spiral Architect – if you allow one then you potentially allow them all. ABB would appear to be guilty of a most heinous crime but if you allow the death penalty for him then you can be 100% sure that subsequently someone innocent will be executed
He should die in jail though – despite the cost
I stated that for me personally, for the death penalty to be applied the crime should be heinous and the evidence 100% compelling.
Breivik’s actions satisfy both I’d say – mass, cold-blooded murder and caught red-handed with the gun in his hand as he surrendered, with his ‘manifesto’ self-published.
Moreover, by definition, no innocent person could be executed if the evidence was 100% compelling.
OK, so someone with total and utter proof of guilt of a heinous crime should be executed. How heinous does it have to be? Kill 90, 60, 20, 10 people? Is it repeated torture of the victim before their death? How long does the torture have to carry on for to be a heinous crime? The definition of heinous doesn’t help. A progressive lefty might think that removing benefit entitlements from a single mother as a heinous crime.
So how about if we use the number of people who think the crime to be heinous as a gauge? Isn’t that basically trial by media which leads to lynch mobs? Just because lots of people believe something doesn’t necessarily make it right.
This is the problem with the call for the death penalty for child and cop killers. When does a child stop being a child? When is a policeman not a policeman, when he’s off duty? What about PCSOs? What about other people in the services who put their lives 2nd like firemen and medics. If you include police then why not include the PM or the Queen?
With the call for the death penalty by Guido Fawkes et al as is, serial killers will not get executed. So the life of 1 child is more precious than the death of a dozen 21yr olds then? They claim that the death penalty will be just for these “hard” cases, but the state always does creeping functionality. It only needs one more hard case and they will clamour for a new group to be included. Then another, then another. It’s the same tactic as the prohibitionists, ban smoking in public places, then enclosed places, then cars, then private homes. Bit by creeping bit you suddenly find that you can’t smoke anywhere. The same intent behind the famous, “First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing, then they came for the gypsies, …..” quote. It’s basically a method to get the foot in the door and then slowly and almost imperceptibly open the door till it’s hanging off its hinges.
All the 100% evidence means is that the right person is locked up for life.
SBML you are spot on – allow one you allow them all. Once you get over the initial hurdle of allowing the state to execute someone the creeping expansion beyond the “occasional hard case” is easy. Before we know it they’ll bring back hanging for smoking in a public place
A fabulous analysis of Statist mission creep – might stick that on our front page…
Balance the few wrongly convicted and executed people vs. those let out after serving their sentences, only to kill again.
Actually locking someone up for their entire life (40 or 50 years?) could be judged to be more cruel than executing them. And expensive.
If we all stopped pretending to be so civilised (& to have so many “rights”), it would be easier to see the pros & cons of capital punishment.
Willing to argue about whether death is better than the torture of life imprisonment with no chance of release and how that might affect the mental well being of the prisoner.
But it still comes down to the fact that if there was a death penalty how do you guarantee that the state will never ever murder an innocent person?
If we can’t trust the state to keep our personal details private and we can’t trust our politicians to make good laws and we can’t trust our police to not be corrupt (cf. Sunderland) then can we really trust the state to kill on our behalf? In the whole chain of events leading up to an execution there is always a human involved and humans are not infallible.
The state murders many innocents anyway, e.g., the NHS with their policy of deliberately starving/dehydrating frail elderly people to death. Then there’s the Met Office, with such (deliberately?) erroneous predictions that many 100s died unprepared during the last two very cold winters.
I’m just saying there is a balance to make – not an easy one – between the choices of “least harm” & patting ourselves on the back about how civilised we are.
Well as you say frail elderly people, probably straw people though.
“It shows how far the State will go to get it’s way.”
To get IT IS way? Really?
Is that the only mistake you found? Couldn’t you find any more?
I think most people are against CP these days – I was previously in favour, but life has turned me into a cynic, the police don’t always get the right guy.
However, ironically DNA evidence has not just made it easier to disprove cases, it also makes it far easier to square them away without doubt.
Anyway, what about the other CP………’corporal punishment’, now there’s a debate waiting to be set off.
When it comes to cost, I think the US has showed that with all the appeals and dragging it out, it’s more expensive to execute someone (or at least the lawyers get lots more money) than it is to provide them with a small cell with full board and lodgings for life.
From the point of view of punishment for the crime, having to reflect on what you did for thirty or more years may be a better punishment than not having to endure same due to being executed, and at least it means mistakes can be repaired to some degree if they later come to light.
Of course, you then get the argument that as well as punishment there is rehabilitation, and to some extent as the US has found, if an inmate knows he’s never going to be released then his incentive to cooperate with his jailers is much reduced, which in turn makes their job much harder and more dangerous.
One would also have to consider how many juries would convict, knowing that their verdict might result in a death sentence. Some would be gung-ho and go for it, others might not want that on their conscience and so fail to provide the correct verdict, letting a criminal get away with a lighter sentence.
It’s very easy to be altruistic if you are not connected to the victim. I’m pretty sure that 99% of people who are related to the victim would willingly, pull the lever,flick the switch or release the gas.
And would they be willing to be put in jail for life if they pulled the switch on the wrong person? In fact there would be 100% proof that they killed.
Ask the parents of Ian Huntley’s victims, or Milly Dowler’s for that matter.
Would you advocate that a dog that savaged a child to death, should be housed in a kennel until it dies naturally, rather than be summarily destroyed?
There is a slight difference between a human and a dog. It’s called intelligence. We know what we are doing, dog follow instinct. Putting a dog in kennel as punishment doesn’t mean a thing to a dog as it has no concept of right of wrong, nor will it understand that being in a kennel is because it bit someone.
In fact I don’t understand why a dog (or other animal) should be put down just because it bit a human. It’s only doing what’s natural or what it has been mis-trained to do.
Careful there, you’ll have plenty of dog owners telling you that many dogs are very intelligent and in fact do know the difference between right and wrong.
My first instinctive view is yes to capital punishment.
I would also like to think that past miscarriages of justice were due to more primitive scientific investigation and less rigourous procedures.
I have two difficulties though, the first being which cases would attract this penalty? Most murderers aren’t the tabloid hyped torturers or mindless thugs.
The second is who would carry out the sentencing and the execution. What would you think of a member of your family doing that?
So on balance, I’ll say no to capital punishment. We need to work harder at the alternatives and the fairer treatment of victims’ families. That’s the civilised route, not extermination.
“It’s very easy to be altruistic”.
No, it isn’t. It’s not easy to defend the “right to life” of any killer, particularly the high profile nasty ones. It brings no satisfaction, no reward, and it angers those people, (many of whom we respect), who don’t understand why we make that stance.
And yet, a captive convicted criminal will never be put to death in my name.
I accept that those opposed to Capital Punishment appear to be in the minority, according to polls. But if the executioner was selected at random from those who voted for CP, it would change the balance.
You cannot, in my opinion, be in favour if you’re not theoretically willing to do the deed personally. I appreciate that many people say they are willing, and that some of those really mean it. And some of those would not back out if it actually came to it. But your majority is not what it seems.
Just my view. I hold it strongly.
And if it were your child that was the victim, what then?
The perp would be advised to move to the moon or appear in a live re-make of “Law abiding citizen”
If my child were a victim of murder, I might well change my opinion. You will respect my honesty for admitting that?
However, justice should not be influenced by those seeking vengeance. My opinion is such circumstances would not be reliable. Anyway, there are not enough people in that situation to affect the balance.
I disagree, the right of revenge is Homeric in its notion and application, and I regard it as both legitimate an just. Too often people dismiss it by knee-jerk, without really thinking it through.
One hundred and twenty reasons why you are wrong
Ten people all tragically killed by the state in pre-DNA and uber-foresnic times.
Compared to the 120 murdered by released criminals in just two years, and 22 atteoted murders, 103 rapes, 682 serious or violent offences.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/3285740/Criminals-on-probation-committed-120-murders-in-two-years.html
As I mentioned previously I would much prefer 100 criminals to go free than have 1 innocent killed by the state.
Of those 120 released criminals how many would have been executed so that they didn’t murder when they were released? What you are calling for is for criminals who are a danger to society to be locked up for longer so that they don’t get released and kill innocents. This is a case for more consistent sentencing than for the reinstatement of the death penalty.
“120 murdered by released criminals”
But how many murdered by released murderers? Or are you advocating the death penalty for everyone on probation for anything?
Good point. How many of the released criminals were petty criminals with minor offences who went further downhill because of their experience in prison. I suspect a lot. In fact the article says so “The Ministry of Justice insisted that the vast majority of offenders on probation had originally committed only minor offences, giving no clue that they would later commit serious crimes when on probation.”
Fatuous comment.
No
It is absolutely right to have the debate – it is the sort of issue which Parliament should be compelled to review periodically, say every ten years.
However, the selectivity of child and cop-killers diminishes the argument – any deliberate homicide should be treated like any other, regardless of the nature of the victim.
The debate will be lost, not because most people oppose CP in principle, but simply because most people no longer have any faith whatsoever in the policing and justice system to deliver a correct verdict.
We have rcently seen much of the Met Police top brass depart, mostly just in time to avoid disciplinary charges, the two top officers of Cleveland have been arrested today and the Chief Constable of North Yorkshire clings on to his job by his grubby fingernails despite an abysmal disciplinary hearing outcome. With that record at the very top, what confidence can anyone have that such a bunch of corrupt incompetents would get murder cases correctly solved 100% of the time ? I can’t.
That said, the Guido Fawkes debate may then stimulate a proper review of sentencing – if this review were then to deliver a ‘life means life’ status for the most offensive murders, then the public will would likely be satisified. In those circumstances, it could then become feasible to offer each found-guilty murderer the alternative option of painless execution – some may accept that.
“It is absolutely right to have the debate – it is the sort of issue which Parliament should be compelled to review periodically, say every ten years.”
The House of Commons held a debate every parliament until 1997 to restore the Death Penalty for murder. Every time it was rejected. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_Kingdom#Murder
We cannot extend a power to the State which we do not possess ourselves.
The Death Penalty is killing in cold blood.
“We cannot extend a power to the State which we do not possess ourselves.”
Indubitably so, sir. I only wish the state was aware of this.
We DO possess this power ourselves, we are simply subject to sanction if we use it whereas the state decries it, yet in fact throws it around willy-nilly be it innocent unfortunates under our bombs or young men (and even worse women) sent to die hellish deaths in pointless adventures.
I’ve always thought that this was a good case for hypothecation of taxation. If the government can introduce a box about organ donation on licence renewals, they could surely introduce a simple tick-box on the tax form, asking tax-payers whether they are willing to pay for the incarceration costs of convicted murderers. That way, those people who think they should be executed do not have to pay for them (and neither do victims’ families). If convicted murderers were reduced to living on gruel, then those willing to do so could be asked to increase their tax contribution.
I’m not willing to pay for the incarceration of people convicted for possession of drugs. Will they be killed under your scheme, or can we just let them go?
I’d just let them go along with anyone else committing a ‘crime’ where there is no victim
I wasn’t advocating killing anyone, Zaphod. The families and friends of the convicted murderer would be more than welcome to contribute to his or her comforts in prison. But I don’t see why these should be supplied by the taxes of the families of victims. That just adds insult to injury. Maybe those in favour of capital punishment could have the equivalent amount of tax they currently have to pay towards convicted murderers’ upkeep put into a special fund for the benefit of victims? Murder Taxes A (for the prisoner) and B (for the victims’ families)?
Catherine,
“I wasn’t advocating killing anyone”
I assumed that you were in your group of, “those people who think they should be executed do not have to pay for them.”
Was I wrong?
Paying taxes for only those things you support? Now there’s an interesting idea. Good luck with the campaign.
“We cannot extend a power to the State which we do not possess ourselves.”
Really? Have you got that in writing, because I’ve seen my servants, in the form of Constables, wandering about with sub-machine guns. Yet they tell me I can’t have a lock on my pen-knife to protect my fingers from accidental closure.
No to the death penalty; the State’s killed enough people already without an official executioner.
Richard,
The state has not extended a power to itself, it has curtailed it for us. Quite different!
Oh, and by “power”. I mean in terms of lawful act, not brute power.
‘Allo ‘Allo, Grammar Nazi!
““It shows how far the State will go to get it’s way.”
To get IT IS way? Really?”
No, not really, because the grammar’s fine. “It” is the State, and it will go far to get the way which belongs to it. In other words, it’s way.
“Its” is the possessive form of “it”. “It’s” is the contraction of “it is”.
It’s not generally realised that “its” is the only possessive that doesn’t actually get an apostrophe.
People who know this are often considered tedious.
Well, you’re right and I was wrong. It’s its. Apologies to the Grammar Nazi.
SBML
A comment on Facebook here:
http://www.facebook.com/mattwardman/posts/10150302439671096.
“Robert Leach Numbers 5 and 9 are factually wrong. As for the other eight, if you decide that reversibility must be a factor in punishment, you are supporting verdicts of “probably guilty”.
Could you answer?
5 can never be factually wrong. It’s a matter of interpretation of what Bentley’s phrase that he *allegedly* used meant. In any case everyone says that Bentley did not use a gun, and he was already under arrest when he was supposed to have said the phrase.
William Joyce WAS guilty, but not being a British citizen/subject he shouldn’t have been executed. The prosecution emphasised the holding of a fake and illegal passport to mean that he had allegiance to the crown and therefore could be executed which was accepted by the court.
As for reversibility, well yes someone found innocent can later be found guilty when new evidence comes to light.