Other than on the issue of only some states imposing it*, I don't propose to have a go at the US's use of the death penalty here – as I've said before on other matters, in a sovereign state, with a democratically elected government, it's not up to us to tell somebody else how to do things in their own country. Rather, I'd prefer to say something about the principle itself.
Troy Davis was executed in Georgia last night after a 22-year gap between his alleged crime and his punishment. There has been widespread protest in and outside of the US about the certainty of his conviction, particularly since 7 of the 9 witnesses who originally testified against him have subsequently retracted their testimonies. I don't, of course, have any idea if he was guilty or not. What I do know, though, is that there was doubt. There was doubt as to his guilt, so the possibility is there that the State of Georgia has killed an innocent man. Putting aside all the moral arguments as to the principle itself for a moment, that possibility, for me, is the single strongest reason not to have execution on the statute book.
How many cases of miscarriage of justice have there been in democratic societies where the wrong person has been executed? How many more must there be before it's stopped everywhere? Look at Britain's record – Derek Bentley and Timothy Evans, among others, paid the ultimate price for crimes they didn't commit, and the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, Winston Silcott and Barry George probably would have done if we still had execution on the statute books in the UK. I could go on – it's not a short list. The risk is simply too great - if even one innocent person is executed by the State, any State, then the price paid for the punishment, deterrent, whatever you want to call it, is too high. And I am part of a significant percentage of the British public, still the majority I think, who do not want the State killing people in my name, which is basically what they'd be doing.
And that moral argument I mentioned? Taken at its simplest, for me, it breaks down to this. You killed somebody. That's wrong – everybody knows that. So we're going to, er, kill you for doing so.
Where the hell is the sense in that?
*You can be executed in 35 of the US States, but not in the remainder. That I simply don't understand, because we don't have the large differences in county administration and legislature that the American states do, so the British mind can't quite get the idea. Particularly baffling for me, for example, is that in 2004, in New York, a section of the state's death penalty law was declared unconstitutional. New York subsequently abolished the death penalty in 2007. I recognise that each state's laws are different so what may be deemed unconstitutional in New York may not even be part of the law elsewhere, but this is a very clear example of the differences I'm talking about that to a British mind are extremely difficult to understand.
I agree, it doesn't make sense. I realise that the definition of punishment is "the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offence", but there isn't really a point if not to let someone learn from their mistake. The only reason for either permanent lock up or death would be if there was no way the person could learn (like serial killers).
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