Capital punishment does not stop murder

JUDGE Richard Johnston’s recent suggestion that the death penalty deters violent crime is wrong.

The most recent comprehensive survey of all research on the relationship between the death penalty and homicide rates, conducted for the UN in 1988 and updated in 2002, concluded that capital punishment does not deter murder any more than life imprisonment.

As Dr Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia University pointed out in 2006: “There is no reliable, scientifically sound evidence that (shows that executions) can exert a deterrent effect.”

In Canada the homicide rate is more than one-third lower than it was prior to the death penalty being abolished.

Restoring the death penalty in Ireland, as well as buying our ticket out of the EU where abandoning it is a requirement for membership, is also going against the trend globally.

At the end of last year, 138 countries around the world had abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. Only five countries, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the US carry out 93% of all executions worldwide.

Two US states, New Jersey and New Mexico, have recently abolished the death penalty and America’s execution rate has hit its lowest point in decades.

New Mexico’s governor Bill Richardson – who previously supported the death penalty – said that “the potential for ... execution of an innocent person stands as anathema to our very sensibilities as human beings”.

People are scared of violent crime. But I do not believe using a discredited form of punishment that is being abandoned across the world and leads inevitably to the deaths of innocent people will help anyone sleep easier at night.

The Irish people, who voted overwhelmingly in 2001 to remove all reference to the death penalty from the constitution, seem to agree.

Colm O’Gorman

Executive Director

Amnesty International Ireland

Ballast House

18-21 Westmoreland Street

Dublin 2