It's not a case of faith in the legal system but more a devils advocacy where capital punishment would need to come with some very heavy caveats and conclusive evidence.
The standard for indictable offences is already beyond all reasonable doubt judged by a Jury of peers . You cannot get much more conclusive than this , whilst also creating a system which will actually convict some people .
Without going off topic too much. I was watching some news this afternoon regarding sexual offenses and errors in evidence gathering with some rather shocking statistics. A lack of evidence does not mean that the crime was not committed.
Indeed a lack of evidence does not mean that someone did not actually do the crime , but its a generally accepted principle of criminal justice that in order to prosecute someone and for them to be found guilty there has to be some evidence .
IF and only IF capital punishment was brought back I would want so much evidence and due process and an absolute certainty. I don't follow the American judicial system. Is it the case of people being held on death row for such a long time because that due process needs to be carried out ? IF someone has been found guilty, given a death sentence; then why isn't it carried out swiftly ? If Timothy Evans was remanded in custody longer or served out a specified sentence before being hanged then he may not have been hanged. Christie was caught a few years later.
Firstly , the appeals process for someone sentenced to death in the USA varies between those convicted in state courts and those convicted of federal crimes .All states follow the same process and practically all states make the first stage of the appeals process which is essentially a review of the trial by the states appellate court mandatory the rest of the stages are discretionary . Homicide trials can be fairly complex , and to give proper consideration to all of the details of the trial in an appellate court does take considerable time , just as a Jury has to make a majority decision convict and pass the death penalty the bench of any appellate court has to make a majority decision which could involve some complex legal argument . The time taken to process such cases is long because the appellate court of each state will also have other cases to hear so an appeal for a capital sentence cannot be listed immediately . Lawyers for both the state and the convict will also need sufficient time to prepare for the hearing . This is multiplied by however many stages of appeal the convict engages with . Late stages of appeal are also designed to look at other factors like Jury misconduct , or any withholding of evidence by the state which would have been beneficial to the defence (it does happen) . Appellate courts need to seriously consider cases given what is at stakes and the constitutional ramifications of executing someone who is innocent .
There has also been issues in the past 5 years with both sourcing of drugs for lethal injections due to a number of suppliers simply refusing to supply states and the constitutional status of use of certain drug protocols used as part of the lethal injection . In the USA the constitution guarantees the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment and there was increasing evidence that in some cases prisoners being administered the lethal injection did obviously suffer intense pain before dying , and indeed in some cases the execution was just unsuccessful . Being unable to find drugs and people willing to administer them has caused significant delays in some states in more recent times .
This is why time spent on death row can be incredibly protracted , and indeed I think personally there is some scope for a constitutional challenge to this being cruel and unusual . The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council which is essentially made up of the judicial members of the house of lords when it still had a judicial function as the highest appeal court in England and Wales thought this to be true in 1993 when considering the case of a man who had been on death row in Jamaica for over a decade .
Personally If the death penalty was reintroduced in the UK , either as an option for judges when sentencing or as a decision to be made by a Jury I and I suspect many others would want to be excluded from Jury duty , I would personally never want to play a part in potentially ending a life of someone who turned out to be innocent even as obliquely as the involvement of a Juror is in actually ending the life . However as we have seen time and time again in the USA with cases of Jury misconduct there are some people among us who would be more than happy and sometimes their motives and prejudices are contrary to the interests of fairness .
I also support that anyone convicted of treason should be hanged.
And when was the last time someone was convicted of treason ?
Yes there may be injustices, it always was so, but the alternative is going the way of the USA and building more and more jails. Of course why a person deserves being locked up at all is another matter and we are really talking about the death penalty v lifelong incarceration so apologies for digressing.
That is not the only solution , you could of course actually make reforms in the prison system so that many more offenders are rehabilitated leaving long term stays in prisons for only the most serious offenders who are actually a danger to the public .
The death penalty in the U.K. was abolished in 1998 in order for us to sign up to the European Convention on Human Rights; subsequently updated in 2004 such that it prohibits the U.K. from reinstating it for as long as we are signatories to the ECHR. (No Brexit discussion please).
Precisely , regardless of what peoples moral or practical views are . From a strictly legal perspective to reintroduce the death penalty we would have to cease being signatories to the human rights charter we played a large part in authoring and championing . And even if we did cease being part of the ECHR we would still be breaking UN resolutions which whilst not binding would be rather embarrassing as a nation . If it was reintroduced I believe we would be the first nation in the world to do so .
