The announcement earlier this year that a 78-year-old man was to be paroled after serving 48 years of a 30-year sentence caused an outcry – most loudly and unedifyingly from the knee-jerk ridden right-wing media. As the man in question was the notorious killer of three policemen in the 1960’s, Harry Roberts, the anger expressed by the Police federation and the families of the dead officers was completely understandable, less so was the repeated suggestion that we should bring back capital punishment for “cop killers”.
Now that our government is clearly intent on carrying out extra-judicial killings in Syria and elsewhere, it’s time that the public acquainted themselves with some facts and evidence in about how the death penalty works.
To that end, watch as John Oliver explains why state-sponsored killing of prisoners has totally failed in the United States.
To watch the clip type or copy and paste the password: imincorrigible
Original video © HBO
There is little doubt that a re-introduction of the death penalty would be wrong on legal, practical and financial grounds, and in the view of this blog, it would be deeply immoral too. It’s time that the right-wing media and their lackey politicians stopped using the pain of the families of murder and abuse victims to stoke the flames of this pointless ‘debate’.
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