I live in Britain. In Britain we have not had capital punishment for several decades. Indeed, I believe no EU member state has capital punishment. I, like this. For 2 reasons.
1) Execution, no matter how justified, is an absolutely disgusting thing for the state to have a part in. Yes, some criminals undoubtedly deserve to die, but there is no way to run a system of execution in a way which does not lower the state essentially to the level of premeditated murder.
2) If you lock someone up, and find you have made a mistake, carried out a miscarridge of justice, then you can set them free and compensate them for the mistake. If you execute them and posthumously find they are innocent, any apology you make is hollow. You have essentially had the state sactioned murder of an innocent induvidual.
Yes there are some criminals so utterly devoid of humanity that they probably do -deserve- death. But these are fairly few and far between. It is much better to not have a system for execution than it is to have a system and have that system abused or to simply have it commit injustices due to human error.
1) Execution, no matter how justified, is an absolutely disgusting thing for the state to have a part in. Yes, some criminals undoubtedly deserve to die, but there is no way to run a system of execution in a way which does not lower the state essentially to the level of premeditated murder.
2) If you lock someone up, and find you have made a mistake, carried out a miscarridge of justice, then you can set them free and compensate them for the mistake. If you execute them and posthumously find they are innocent, any apology you make is hollow. You have essentially had the state sactioned murder of an innocent induvidual.
Yes there are some criminals so utterly devoid of humanity that they probably do -deserve- death. But these are fairly few and far between. It is much better to not have a system for execution than it is to have a system and have that system abused or to simply have it commit injustices due to human error.