Posts Tagged ‘death penalty’

Life and Death Row is a BBC documentary series looking at young people on Death Row. Unsurprisingly, it paints quite a gloomy picture. A man with a history of depression insists on having the death penalty. A another man is executed for beating eight members of his family to death: how is that possible without any of them fighting back or escaping?

In another episode, the documentary looks at the Death Penalty Clinic, a department run by the University of Houston. Undergraduate law students come together to try and put in appeals for convicts about to be executed. It was at least heartening to see people fighting.

Details can be found on the BBC website.

Recently, I signed a petition to retain the ban on the death penalty.

Initially, I didn’t think it worth it. Why? Because Parliament would never approve the death penalty being brought back into British society, and even if they did, Europe would just override them anyway. We don’t have to worry about the death penalty coming back.

However, having initially rejected the idea out of concern it would give the debate some genuine legitimacy, I in the end decided to sign it because if enough of us do, we don’t even have to have the faux-debate. I’m proud to see more pople standing up to say of course we don’t want the death penalty back, than people signing up to say we do.

As I write this, the petition to retain the ban currently has the 5th most signatures of any petition, the most popular bring back the death penalty petition is only 8th.