The Death Penalty
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Transcript:
Today, there are over 50 countries around the world
which continue to use the death penalty.
Individuals who break the law can face a firing squad in China,
Lethal injection in the USA,
And a hangman's noose in Singapore.
It is only a decade since capital punishment
was finally removed from British law
For centuries, states carried out executions
and capital punishment was defended as a
deterrent against crime, retribution against those who broke
society's rules.
The news would be put over there like:
A hood put over their head, and the cart
would drive away leaving them to dangle,
and to gradually, slowly, up to thirty
minutes, to strangle to death.
For over two-Hundred years a moral battle waged
about whether the state has the right to execute.
A powerful Liberal elite emerged
determined to abolish the death penalty.
The death penalty is inhuman and degrading
when you see how it is carried out and the
procedures that are necessary.
But the vast majority of public opinion has continued to
demand the ultimate punishment.
There are certain sources of murder that are
so premeditated, so violent
and so shocking that, in the interest of maintaining
confidence in the rule of law, the only appropriate punishment
is the death penalty.
This debate has shaped our ideas about how a civilized society
should punish its citizens in the Twenty-First century.
The word "Punishment" comes from the same root as "Pain".
It is in it's essential conception, painful, if it is not painful, it is
not punishment.