The death penalty

I have long had strong views about this. At the age of seventeen, I spoke up in a debate organised by Amnesty International on the death penalty and said, to pitying looks from the organisers, "But aren't there people who deserve to die?"

Now as a lawyer, my feelings are somewhat different. Indeed, there are some who would argue that I fall into the category of human rights lawyer, even though I think that the very term is suspect: any qualified lawyer should have a working knowledge of the law arising from the European Convention on Human Rights. I suppose that if I were innocent, I might be rather grateful for the existence of human rights lawyers who are sometimes the only remaining bulwark to an over-mighty state, and glad of the reality that we abolished capital punishment in this country. Be that as it may, I once represented a client in the Privy Council who had been convicted of murder in Jamaica and sentenced to death by hanging; it was his final court of appeal. I had done none of the arguing; I was only there to hear the final decision - "We will humbly advise Her Majesty that the Petition be dismissed". I have never chosen to find out whether the deed was actually done or whether Delroy Ricketts - the case is in the Law Reports - still lives.

These, then, are my long-held musings on the death penalty. I do not claim originality. But they are the arguments I advance whenever faced with somebody who holds the contrary view.

I know of no evidence that shows the death penalty acts as a deterrent; there is, on the other hand, a risk that having the death penalty will dissuade juries from convicting in such cases; and how does one determine when it should apply? On the basis of the heinousness of the crime? So one potentially elevates some victims over others. On the basis of the clarity of the evidence? So one potentially puts to death someone who happened to shoot victims in public but does not do so to the person who tortured them and then shot them in private. The trouble is that capital punishment is not some panacea which resolves society's ills. Instead, even if one accepts that it takes away some ills - in the form of the lives of those who (let us assume for these purposes are guilty as charged - but the risk of the irreversible unappealable miscarriage of justice is yet another key argument; Derek Bentley; Timothy Evans) are executed - it creates others: it causes (I would argue) potentially huge psychological harm to those who would play their part in the trappings of judicial execution: the judges, the lawyers, the doctors, the prison guards, the executioners, the politicians (such as the MP who offered his services as executioner to the Home Secretary during the last debate on the matter in the House of Commons): to name but a few. In my view, it makes society poorer. I reckon that if I were to participate in any meaningful way in judicial executions, it would damage and diminish me. I would only want to see it returned in the case of someone dear to me who died at the hands of someone else; yes, I can imagine wanting to see that person die for what they did - and that is one of my strongest reasons for resisting the return of capital punishment.