Martin Shipton
I wondered how long it would take for Reform UK to moot the reintroduction of capital punishment.
It’s what I would expect from a populist, far-right party for whom the exploitation of unthinking, knee-jerk instincts is infinitely more important than evidence-based policymaking.
So I wasn’t blown away when Reform MS Cristiana Emsley posted on X the Sun headline “Man tried to rape homeless woman as she lay dying in street” with the accompanying comment: “What kind of barbarian tries to rape a dying woman? Utter depravity. It’s time for a sober national debate on the death penalty.”
Clicking on the link, I read the Sun story: “A man allegedly attempted to rape a woman as she lay dying in a city centre.
“Hassan Shah was caught on CCTV entering the victim’s tent last year, a court has heard.
“Shah, 26, did not speak to the woman as he pulled down her clothing inside the tent in Bradford, the jury heard.
“It is unknown if the homeless victim was already dead during the attempted rape on November 8 of last year, cops said.
“After playing CCTV footage of the attack at Bradford Crown Court, the prosecutor, Mr Wright, told the jury: ‘During the entire incident you will see that (the victim) does not move. The reason that she did not move is that she was either dying or in fact dead at the time. I should make it clear at the outset that (she) died for reasons unconnected to Mr Shah.’
“It is understood the victim passed away after a combination of synthetic cannabis and alcohol.
“A judge had ruled that Shah had a low IQ and a learning disability that left him ‘unfit to plead’. He therefore was not present at court for the hearing.
“The jury came to a unanimous decision that Shah ‘did the acts’ in respect of allegations of attempted rape and attempted assault by penetration.
“Because of the man’s disability, he is not able to serve a prison sentence, and so instead may face a hospital order, supervision order or discharge.
“The case has been adjourned until December for reports to be prepared.”
It’s a horrible story, and it seems that Ms Emsley is driven to contemplate restoring capital punishment on the back of it.
In my view, the implications are as disturbing as the original crime. The victim died for reasons unconnected to the perpetrator, and the perpetrator himself was considered unfit to plead because of his mental incapacity. Yet, in a throwaway social media post aimed at securing dog-whistle support for her party, Ms Emsley opens up the prospect of reintroducing state-endorsed execution for people who are mentally deficient and haven’t even committed murder.
I have both emotive and rational objections to capital punishment. From a young age, I have had a great interest in miscarriage of justice cases and found it upsetting to read about people who had been executed for crimes they had not committed.
Later, I got to know Michael O’Brien, one of the Cardiff Newsagent 3, who spent 11 years in prison for the murder of Phillip Saunders before being exonerated and having his conviction quashed. I interviewed him at his home in Ely, Cardiff, on the day he was released from prison.
Over the years since, I have discussed with him many times the fact that, but for brave MPs like the largely forgotten Sidney Silverman, the UK would still have capital punishment and he would have been executed. Maybe my adolescent reading of Kafka, which influenced me greatly, helped me gain a particular empathy for miscarriage of justice victims.
Appalling rituals
But I’ve also found that the mechanics of execution have led me to a place where I don’t want to be. I don’t want to have sympathy for callous, psychopathic murderers, but the appalling rituals that have grown up in the United States in particular around state killing have taken me in that direction.
Years ago, when some states still used the electric chair, I was appalled when, to counter anti-capital-punishment protests outside a prison where an execution was due to take place, those in favour chanted through a loudspeaker: “Let the motherfucker fry!” They were, needless to say, evangelical Christians – or at least that’s what they called themselves.
Recent developments show that there has been no improvement. The botched attempt to execute Christa Pike in Tennessee was nauseating, and I was shocked by the matter-of-fact way it was reported. Trump’s decision that the firing-squad execution of the army medic who killed 13 troops at a military base should be live-streamed may have been withdrawn, but the fact that it could be seriously proposed is an indication of how low the US has sunk under its deranged president.
What is the point of capital punishment anyway? For some, including those who shouted “Let the motherfucker fry”, it’s a matter of pure Old Testament-style vengeance. An eye for an eye – a life for a life. Perhaps Ms Emsley inclines to that view, even though Romania, the country from which she migrated, first abolished it for peacetime murders in 1864.
Vengence
Vengeance, however, is no basis for evidence-based legislation, as Ms Emsley should know, having recently been elected chair of the Senedd’s Legislation Committee.
In addition to my moral opposition to judicial state execution, the incidence of wrongful convictions should surely be justification enough to rule out capital punishment.
But there is a further objection which is very much grounded in evidence: the fact that capital punishment doesn’t work as a deterrent.
Amnesty International has produced a myth-busting document that distils the evidence against the notion that execution acts as a deterrent to murder.
It states: “Evidence from around the world has shown that the death penalty has no unique deterrent effect on crime. Many people have argued that abolishing the death penalty leads to higher crime rates, but studies in the USA and Canada, for instance, do not back this up. In 2004 in the USA, the average murder rate for states that used the death penalty was 5.71 per 100,000 of the population as against 4.02 per 100,000 in states that did not use it.
“In 2003 in Canada, 27 years after the country abolished the death penalty, the murder rate had fallen by 44% since 1975, when capital punishment was still enforced. Far from making society safer, the death penalty has been shown to have a brutalising effect on society. State sanctioned killing only serves to endorse the use of force and to continue the cycle of violence.”
Spur of the moment
Responding to the argument that individuals are less likely to commit violent crimes, including murder, if they know they will face punishment by execution, Amnesty states: “This argument supposes that criminals study and anticipate the consequences of getting caught, and decide that a long term of imprisonment is acceptable, whereas execution is not. Many crimes are committed on the spur of the moment, leaving little opportunity for potential punishments to influence whether the crime is committed in the first place as criminals do not believe they will be caught and held to account.
“The death penalty may even cause further violence. Execution is the ultimate sanction a state can inflict upon a person. Once criminals have knowingly committed a capital offence, they no longer have any interest in lessening their potential punishment by not committing further murders or other offences. For example, if armed robbery carries the death penalty, the robber loses nothing by committing murders while attempting to flee.”
Opposition to the death penalty is not “woolly liberalism”, as far-right groups suggest. It is founded on principles of justice that should be inherent in any fair society.
The far right, who derive inspiration from the Nazis, have no regard for civilised norms. Some have called for the execution of politicians they regard as traitors for helping create a multiracial society. Any attempt to reintroduce capital punishment must be bitterly resisted.
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