Is capital punishment wrong?

INTRODUCTION On 13th July 1955, a fine summer’s morning, Ruth Ellis, a 28 year old nightclub manageress convicted of murdering her lover, David Blakely, sat in the condemned cell at Holloway Prison with a priest and her guards as the clock approached nine o’clock. She was given a large tot of brandy to calm her nerves. Thirty seconds before the appointed hour, the state hangman, Albert Pierrepoint entered with his assistant, Royston Rickard, asked Ellis to stand and bound her hands behind her back with a leather strap. At the far end of the room, a wardrobe was wheeled away to reveal a ... more

In the Yemen, a baron country riddled with Islamic extremist and bandits, there was a rash of kidnappings in the nineties, including foreign tourists, usually in the more tribal regions. The problem peaked in 1997 with over 1400 of these incidents, averaging 35 foreign nationals a year. The most infamous incident saw a tour bus of 14 Europeans taken by hardcore Al-Quieda types, brutal and determined to capture the Infidel. If the ransom wasn't paid they were sometimes killed. With what little foreign tourism the country had left by then something had to be done. The Yemeni government reacted ... more

Is capital punishment wrong? At this stage of our evolution: YES. Because at this stage of our evolution, as a species and as a society, we still make mistakes. Not the innocent mistakes of a witness under stress mis-remembering what (s)he saw on a dark night, but the systemic mistakes that result in a police force so focussed on targets and league tables and funding that they need a conviction more than they need the right conviction; systemic mistakes that enable the CPS to take over a private prosecution and then drop the case. However we might feel about “English Justice”, we ... more

Imagine a man whose hair is shaved off. He is being strapped to a chair with belts that cross his chest, groin, legs and arms. A metal skullcap-shaped electrode is attached to the scalp. Then imagine a man pulling a handle. Suddenly the prisoner's eyeballs begin to pop out and rest on his cheeks. He defecates, urinates, vomits blood and drools. As 2000 volts surge through him, his body turns bright red. His flesh swells, his skin stretches so much that it looks as if it will snap. Then imagine steam or smoke rising from his body, the smell of burning flesh, like bacon on a frying pan… Then ... more

This opinion wasn’t intended to be about capital punishment. That just turned out to be the way the words led me as I responded to a prompt from Janet McKitterick: “The rhyme ‘Oranges and Lemons’ has a reference to the bells of Old Bailey - well, the Old Bailey is a road - it doesn't have bells! The prison didn't have a bell - except for a hand held execution bell, so what did the rhyme refer to? It's actually the church called St Sepulchre-without-Newgate.” (jmckitterick in her op about The Old Bailey) " ‘Oranges and Lemons said the bells of St Sepulchre ... more