I bet Lee Rigby's killers would have been shaking in their boots at the prospect of being executed. They sure put a lot of effort in trying to hide after they killed him.

For me, the main part of the prison sentence is the opportunity to reflect on the reason why one has been locked up which could lead to rehabilitation.

Anyone else you think your tax contribution is keeping alive unnecessarily?

There are probably some terminally ill people in hospitals....

There'll be mentally ill people – particularly those in prison because there's nowhere else to keep them safe.

Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

£40k a year so someone can sit in a cell all day and 'reflect'. Truly money well spent.

So just kill them. In fact kill all criminals. Why have prisons anyway?

A bit like your education.

A bit like all the junk food you eat.

I don't. But such a random comment helps illustrate my point.

You show no sign of having much in the way of an intellect.

You're all gut over brains, combined with an arrogant belief that you don't need to ever actually think about what you say or find reasons for it, be they philosophical, ethical or anything that might go beyond the occasional soundbite.

As this thread illustrates perfectly: you do not possess the skills to think about the issue in anything beyond a knee-jerk manner.

You're a perfect example of the outcomes of a dumbed-down public discourse.

Either that or you are simply trolling.

Where is your £40k from?

How do you put a value on someone's life? What would the equation be?

I think you missed part of my post, I'll assume it wasn't deliberate because the question was too taxing for you.

Simple explanation...

Radical religious follower needs to become a dead martyr in order to gain maximum publicity and his forty virgins...



Shoot him in the legs instead then put him in jail until he dies a natural death.

It'll probably ruin his life.

Yet again you show yourself as completely incapable of engaging in any kind of disucssion with sonmeone who may not share the same opinion as you.

Yet again you simply resort to cheap jibes about others education and label anyone who doesn't agree with you a troll.

Yet again you let yourself down.

Your contributions to this thread are simplistic in the extreme. Perhaps you'd care to show how wrong I am in my assessment of your intellectual abilities by responding to subsequent questions and offering something by way of a philosophical/ethical comment.

In the absence of any such contributions, you play the victim card, accusing me of saying that I call anyone I don't agree with a troll. That is errant nonsense for which you have not a shred of evidence, because none exists. It is the sort of the knee-jerk, gut response I mentioned.

Well done for illustrating it again.

Pot/kettle

I am, in a way, fascinated by the Christie murders at Rillington Place. Tim Evans moved into that flat and due to his lack of intelligence and social skills ended up on the end of a rope because the British judicial system at that time strung up convicted murderes as soon as they can. Put me off the death penalty straight away. At the same time I don't know whats worse, being executed within three weeks or spending a good 10-15 years on death row. AFAIK most condemed prisoners in the States are looking for there sentance to reduced to a life sentance but the Rillington Place murders just go to show that miscarriages of jusice do happen and it really can be too late before they are found out.

Wasn't the only time that they quickly hung a mentally challenged individual either - see the Derek Bentley case.

DNA evidence would not have helped one jot in either of those cases.

[urlhttp://www.lyricsfreak.com/e/elvis+costello/let+him+dangle_20047481.html[/url

The state shouldn't overtly kill it's citizens, even the blokes who killed Lee Rigby or the loon who murdered the two cops in Manchester, however, I wouldn't want a public inquiry if the animal who murdered April Jones fell down a lot of concrete steps.

BBC I-player is your friend for anybody who missed this on Monday night.
Powerful stuff.

[urlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/life-and-death-row-review-compelling-case-for-bbc3-to-stay-on-tv-9198065.html[/url

I think that this is a really crucial point.

Because you'd still have to rely on complete honestly in the system simply to ensure that any DNA evidence was correct. And we have enough evidence that the police cannot always be relied on to be completely impartial and honest to know that this could not be guaranteed to be the case – let alone other elements of the judicial system.



One of things I rather liked (if you can call it that) about that case was that they wanted to die – they wanted 'martyrdom'. They didn't get what they wanted. Instead, they arguably got the system working at its most transparent and best, which in its own way was a victory for the culture that they would almost certainly want to change.

On a slightly different note, I suspect that most people would baulk at the idea, for instance, of stoning someone to death, whatever their crime. Yet there is something so utterly perverse, then, in people spending time to work out what becomes a morally acceptable way to carry out an execution in a western society.

But if you remove the semantics of the method of execution, what philosophical difference is there between a non-Islamic state that executes prisoners (for whatever crime) and an Islamic one (Saudi Arabia, for instance) that executes people on the basis of its ideas of religious laws?

In the Derek Bentley case DNA would be irrelevant because the murder was witnessed by police officers who had Bentley already in their custody - its an interesting argument that you can then go on to murder someone when you are already under arrest even before you bring his mental age into it.

The death sentence really was used as retribution back then and had nothing to do with deterrent at all - nor would it be if it were ever to be re-introduced.

Totally agree.

Quote ="BrisbaneRhino"Yet another death row inmate has been freed after "new" evidence was turned up showing he was innocent (of murder at least) all along. Yet again, we see similar causes for the original verdict - shoddy defence work and quite likely a degree of racial bias in the prosecution and jury. The shoddy defence and simple unwillingness of police and prosectors to change their views once they have decided someone is guilty are depressingly familiar in these stories. edition.cnn.com/2014/03/11/us/lo ... ?hpt=hp_t4 Regardless of views on the rights and wrongs of the death penalty being applied to those everybody "knows" to be guilty/evil, surely these blatant miscarriages of justice highlight why the death penalty simply shouldn't be used. There's an article linked to the above report where a death penalty advocate argues for the firing squad instead of lethal injection, and argues this is a fit punishment for the worst of the worst. Completely missing the point that in some cases the "worst of the worst" are in fact completely innocent.'" Worst case I've ever seen was roy michael roberts. Guy was wrongly convicted of armed robbery. Served out his sentence, weeks before he was due for release there was prison riot and officer was stabbed and killed. Roberts was then wrongfully convicted of this and sentenced to death! Exceuted march 10 1999 by lethal injection.

Quote ="BrisbaneRhino"Yet another death row inmate has been freed after "new" evidence was turned up showing he was innocent (of murder at least) all along. Yet again, we see similar causes for the original verdict - shoddy defence work and quite likely a degree of racial bias in the prosecution and jury. The shoddy defence and simple unwillingness of police and prosectors to change their views once they have decided someone is guilty are depressingly familiar in these stories. edition.cnn.com/2014/03/11/us/lo ... ?hpt=hp_t4 Regardless of views on the rights and wrongs of the death penalty being applied to those everybody "knows" to be guilty/evil, surely these blatant miscarriages of justice highlight why the death penalty simply shouldn't be used. There's an article linked to the above report where a death penalty advocate argues for the firing squad instead of lethal injection, and argues this is a fit punishment for the worst of the worst. Completely missing the point that in some cases the "worst of the worst" are in fact completely innocent.'" Worst case I've ever seen was roy michael roberts. Guy was wrongly convicted of armed robbery. Served out his sentence, weeks before he was due for release there was prison riot and officer was stabbed and killed. Roberts was then wrongfully convicted of this and sentenced to death! Exceuted march 10 1999 by lethal injection.

F*cking A.

Didn't the Lee Rigby killers run at armed police officers in the hope that they would be shot and killed, it's hardly a punishment if it's something they actively aimed for.

Personally I've always felt like the prisoners who would be eligible(for want of a better word) for execution should be thrown in a bare cell, mattress and a toilet for 23 hours a day, only given water to drink and the cheapest food that meets the minimum nutritional standard.

A true punishment and if there was a miscarriage of justice at least they're alive.