Capital Punishment

Following the conviction of Levi Bellfield for the murder of Milly Dowler, his previous convictions for the murder of two other women, and his suspected involvement in the gang-rape of teenage schoolgirls, there has, in the national press, been an altogether understandable revulsion at his actions and a call for such monsters to suffer judicial execution.

Leaving aside that the return of capital punishment is a non-starter, prohibited as it is by the Human Rights Act, and the fact that we no longer have any working gallows, or anyone trained in their use, I am reminded of the words of our most famous executioner, Albert Pierrepoint who, in his 1974 autobiography, Executioner: Pierrepoint, wrote:

“I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people...The trouble with the death penalty has always been that nobody wanted it for everybody, but everybody differed about who should get off”.

The problem with execution within a civilised society is that emotions become confused with justice.

It would seem that a significant, or at least a vocal, proportion of the population wanted Myra Hindley executed for her part in the 1960’s Moors Murders yet when Ruth Ellis was sentenced to death in 1955 a petition, signed by 50,000 people, was sent to the Home Office asking for clemency and the execution was roundly condemned both in the press and by the great and the good.

Yet Ruth Ellis committed a cold-blooded murder in broad daylight in a London street when she took a .38 calibre Smith & Wesson revolver from her handbag and shot dead David Blakely, shooting him four times while he lay on the ground.
At her trial at the Old Bailey she said in the witness box: “It's obvious when I shot him I intended to kill him”.

For all her obvious guilt, her execution led directly to the abolition of capital punishment in the United Kingdom in 1965, just a year before Myra Hindley stood trial.

So why did one woman receive such support, and the other such condemnation?

Why should there be such a call for one to hang and the other to be reprieved?

To re-quote Pierrepoint: “nobody wanted it (the death penalty) for everybody, but everybody differed about who should get off” which will always be the case, and pandering to the press’s version of public opinion is no way to ensure that justice is done.