The death penalty issue

‘Bring back capital punishment’, ‘bring back hanging’, ‘execute child killers and those who kill police officers’ is part of a debate that has once again resurfaced 42 years since capital punishment was abolished and 47 years since the last executions in the UK took place. The vigilante mentality is now running amok as public disquiet is whipped up by the media which tends to focus on the more horrendous offences as though they are representative of all murder offences.

Had capital punishment continued to exist, we would have seen the Birmingham 6, the Guildford 4, The Cardiff 3, the M25 3, the Cardiff Newsagent 3, Barry George, Stephen Downing, Sean Hodgson and many others having suffered that fate. But, as time passed and after many years in prison they were deemed to be innocent. Being granted a reprieve after your death is hardly justice.

The majority of people might want the restoration of capital punishment but this doesn’t mean that the majority are right. The current debate has arisen out of the Government’s new initiative and the launching of its ‘e-petition’, which promises to discuss in Parliament any petition which attracts 100,000 signatures. And the issue of capital punishment seems certain to attract enough signatures for it to debated for the first time since 1998, when capital punishment was rejected during the passage of the Human Rights Act.

It was as far back as 1938 that the issue of the abolition of capital punishment was brought before Parliament. A clause within the Criminal Justice Bill called for an experimental five-year suspension of the death penalty. When war broke out in 1939 the bill was postponed. It was revived after the war and to everyone’s surprise was adopted by a majority in the House of Commons (245 to 222) although it was later defeated in the House of Lords. It wasn’t until 1965 that the issue arose again when the House of Commons voted to suspend capital punishment for a trial period of 5 years. This was carried on a free vote of 200 in favour with 98 against with the House of Lords voting 204 for and 104 against.

Finally, on the 16th of December 1969, the House of Commons reaffirmed its decision that capital punishment for murder should be permanently abolished. On a free vote again, the House voted by 343 to 185, a majority of 158, that the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 should not expire. Thus, the death penalty for murder was formally abolished.

Following the abolition of the death penalty for murder, the House of Commons held a vote during each subsequent parliament until 1997 to restore the death penalty. This motion was always defeated. In any event, if capital punishment was restored, the UK would be excluded from the Council of Europe whose presidency we take over in October, we would also be excluded from the EU, both bodies which insist on there being no capital punishment in member states. The Lisbon Treaty also ratified by Britain bans capital punishment so it could never become law in this country again as long as we remain in the EU.

The UK would therefore be isolated and whilst many European countries are eager to join the EU we would stand alone with severe social and economic restrictions that would be catastrophic in the current economic climate. The present trend to allow the public a say in issues as controversial as capital punishment is little more than a public relations exercise in democracy with no chance of succeeding.

The offence of murder has always been a highly emotive issue for the general public and the press no less heightens and feeds into those fears, but the reality is that of the 1,485 sentenced to death in England and Wales from 1900 until the last execution in 1964 only 755 were actually executed. The remainder, effectively half of all these, were reprieved (49.2% in total). 1,340 men were to hear the dread words of the death sentence and 741 of them were subsequently hanged, equating to 55.3%. In the case of women, 145 were sentenced to death but only 14 hanged, a reprieve rate of just over 90%.

Although the death penalty was therefore passed during those years it was never a certainty to be carried out as most of the general public today would like to think when they campaign along the lines of ‘hang all murderers’, and ‘bring back hanging’. It didn’t happen then and given the dynamics of its abolition and rejection of its re-introduction by Parliament since and quite overwhelmingly, it really is part of our past as is burning witches at the stake.

Since its abolition, the length of time which a person sentenced to the mandatory life sentence serves before release on life licence has gone from an average of 11 years in 1966 to the current 15 years, with many lifers serving in excess of 20 years. And there are many who have served over that and remain in prison with no immediate prospect of release with many who will die in prison. Of the 58 lifers sentenced to a whole life tariff, 7 have died in prison and another 3 have had their whole life orders reduced on appeal.

Following abolition of the death penalty in 1969, lifer receptions, of which approximately 15% were non-murder offences, was running at between 100 and 170 a year and up until 1975 the average time served remained fairly static at 11 years. Indeed, following abolition only 10% of lifers had served over 10 years.
This was to increase during the Thatcher years when in 1979, the average time served went up to 14 years although, interestingly, in 1979 over 50% of the Criminal Law Commission proposed the ending of the mandatory life sentence. Only retaining the life sentence for the more serious of murder offences but allowing the trial judge discretion in handing down fixed sentences.

In 1989, the House of Lord’s Select Committee on Murder and Life imprisonment, chaired by Lord Nathan, voted to abolish the mandatory life sentence for murder. Lord Lane, who was then Lord Chief Justice, and a great majority of the judges also said that they were opposed to the mandatory life sentence. There followed a report of a high-powered committee set up by the Prison Reform Trust, chaired by Lord Lane in 1994 which concluded that the mandatory life sentence should be abolished. Interestingly, although none of these recommendations have been implemented, there have been no committees calling for the retention of the mandatory life sentence let alone the reintroduction of capital punishment.

The Government’s present initiative to allow the public a say in the affairs of state and the parliamentary process whilst seen by many to be well-meaning clearly has no mileage when it comes to the reintroduction of capital punishment and neither should it have. We do have a say in the parliamentary process. It’s called ‘a vote at elections’ and that is the forum in which ideas can be exchanged and accepted or rejected. Otherwise we move down the road where we give way to what is, after all, mob rule and to some extent vigilantism which is neither justice nor part of the democratic process.

Charles Hanson is a lifer formerly at HMP Blantyre House