Monday, December 14, 2009

Guardian: Bring Back The Death Penalty

Okay they don't exactly say that, but Alexander Chancellor writes about the relative treatment of murderers in the USA and Italy (referring to the recent conviction of Amanda Knox for the killing of Meredith Kercher):
The good news is that disillusion with all these methods, and growing evidence of their unjust application, continues to weaken America's faith in capital punishment and could lead one day to its abolition. In the meantime, if convicted of murder, justly or not, I would much rather be in Perugia than the US.
So the deterrent effect of the death penalty is established then.

[via Ambush Predator]

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Of course, the effect of capital punishment legislation merely encourages murderers to vote with their feet and go to murder-havens overseas.
How the US has survived for so long with this murderer-drain is beyond me...

Matthew said...

I think 'Guardian columnist' would be more accurate. But not that accurate, surely he's already been convicted, so by then the deterrent has already failed?

Ross said...

Yeah but he's speculating in advance about what he would do if he had already been convicted.

banned said...

Nicely spotted