IN understandable anguish, the father of two recently murdered children is crying out for the Death Penalty to be reintroduced. The subject of so much debate in my lifetime - and we surely understand why, it seems to  resurrect more so with the taking of children's lives - which is an abomination, yet  - and I may be wrong here -  seems to be happening more often. There has been a surge of on line support to the father's appeal, as often happens  and then all the usual counter arguments are also swiftly raised..... one comment I read has asked if in fact it would make a difference? And that is an interesting question.... would it?

Psychopaths will carry out their killings regardless of the death penalty. It was approaching its end in the UK at the time of the Moors Murders, but was still in force when they were committed, and had no deterrent effect on the perpetrators.

Should society exact revenge for these type of crimes, that is another question.

A complex issue - deterrent versus revenge. Personally I'm against the judicial death penalty. Indeed I find it remarkable that 'big, bad' Russia has had a moratorium on the death penalty (i.e. no executions) for nearly a quarter of a century now whereas it continues in several U.S. states.

In the 8th century, after having conquered Saxony, the Frankish king Charlemagne introduced the Lex Saxonum as a penal code to pacify and Christianise the pagan Saxons. His Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae in 785 basically demanded the death penalty for all crimes against Christianity. For example, cremating a body (in the pagan custom) instead of burying it (in the Christian manner) was punishable by death. Similarly ‘scorning a baptism’ was also punishable by death and so on. A few years later, Charlemagne and his sons Pepin and Louis were being tutored by Ealhwine of York. He counselled that "Faith is a free act of the will, not a forced act. We must appeal to the conscience, not compel it by violence. You can force people to be baptised, but you cannot force them to believe." This resulted in Charlemagne issuing a reform of the code in 797 which saw the Capitulare Saxonicum abolish the death penalty for those offences.

Spin forward over 1000 years to 1832 when Charles James Napier, the governor of Sindh, was facing protests from some locals because the practice of suttee (whereby a Hindu widow would be immolated upon her husband’s funeral pyre) was to be outlawed by the British. In response Napier issued the following proclamation:

‘Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs!’

This had the effect of pretty much ending the practice in the province. And here’s the thing – one of the offences in the Capitulary for Saxony which Charlemagne had deemed worthy of the death penalty all those centuries earlier was ‘sacrificing an innocent woman to demons by burning her at the stake’.

In New Zealand we have just had a case of a mother murdering her three children - a seemingly loving family just a week in NZ from South Africa. It's an absolute mystery why she did it, but there is never any calls in NZ/Aotearoa for a reintroduction of the death sentence, even from the most right-wing people (though to be fair I never actually listen to any of the channels that feature strong right-wing opinions). 
It has never as far as I know had a deterrent effect on the number of murders committed, even if you omit war-time killings. There are some very sad stories of people being killed for cowardice even as recently as WWII. Or do I mean WWI?

This is a chart of the homicide rate, that is homicides per million of population (England and Wales) from 1946 to 2003 (House of Commons Briefing Note SN/SG/3805 which was issued on 9th November 2005 on the 40th anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty for murder in the UK). Offences are shown according to the year in which the police initially recorded the offence as homicide: this is not necessarily the year in which the incident took place nor the year in which any court decision was made.



The graph clearly shows that there has been an increase in the murder rate since the abolition of capital punishment. In 1965, the year of the abolition of the death penalty for homicide, the murder rate was approximately 6.8 per million population, by 2001/02 this figure had more than doubled to 16.6 per million. However I'm not convinced this demonstrates the effectiveness (or otherwise) of the death penalty as a deterrent.

The high numbers in 2000 to 2003 are distorted by the cases of Dr Harold Shipman who was convicted in January 2000 of murdering 15 of his patients while he was a general practitioner in Greater Manchester. An independent public enquiry produced its first report in July 2002, in which it identified a further 172 victims and these extra homicides were then recorded in the 2002/03 homicide figures although all the actual murders had been committed in the 1980s and 90s. Shipman was, thankfully, a rare occurrence but it is also worth noting that he may not have been found out at all in earlier decades as all the victims were elderly and the causes of death in all cases had been originally recorded as illness or old age.

As in earlier decades, random murders are still rare in the UK and as in the cases mentioned by Priscilla in the OP and that by Caro,  the murderer is often known to the victim, often indeed related as family, and so it is frequently something of a 'crime of passion'. Would the death penalty deter such murders? Shipman appeared completely sane and continued to work as a respected GP, but even so he, like most mass-murderers, must have some psychotic compulsion to kill, so again I wonder how much of a deterrent the death penalty would have been to them. Then increasingly of late (and more recently than to be included in the figures above) homicides are the result of terrorist attacks for ideological reasons, often involving suicide of the perpetrator. Again how much of a deterrent is the death penalty to someone that is seeking martyrdom? But as Trike and Vizzer say, it's not all about deterrent. However I'm not sure that the death penalty as revenge, pay-back, punishment-fits-the-crime etc, is very healthy, whether for the victim's friends and family or for society as a whole.

Caro  raises a furher interesting point by relating the death penalty lobby to  extreme right wingers; Hitler, Military Govts and such have a record yes - but what of the extreme left wing? China, Russia and mono-party communists regimes are as bad. In both I think it safe to say it was used as punishment and as a deterrent also. People stepping out of line knew it was possible.
I am not sure this a political party issue for anyone in most democracies...... possibly is in the USA but there the issue is bounded by State  legislation,,,, I think (I find USA law confusing in several areas.)
And there again, even if a policy moves beyond specific reasons  enough for  the penalty to be imposed then the next step  is as challenging. How it is to be done? Ruthless regimes - right or left - do not put a great deal of thought into this part, I suggest. For others that is the crunch question.

Also come across an economic argument in favour of the death penalty. Namely that it is cheaper to execute a murderer than keep them locked up for 30-40 years.

Although the time on death row can still extend to many years. According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average time spent after sentencing and awaiting execution in 1985 was 71 months, or just less than 6 years. Now it’s hovering around 190 months or about 16 years and it’s climbing. In one extreme case, Gary Alvord (a Florida man convicted of strangling three women), died after 40 years on death row - of natural causes. Over that time who ultimately paid the massive cumulative costs of the lawyers as the appeals went back and forth?

Yes, in the States the process can be dragged out for decades. 

 In contrast, for the last execution in the UK, the murder was committed in April 1964, the perpetrators  were arrested two days later, tried in June, appeal rejected in July and were hanged in August, four months from start to finish.

The clamed "deterrent effect" of the death penalty sits somewhat uneasily with data from the USA where murder rates in Death penalty states are consistently higher than in non-Death penalty states. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/murder-rates/murder-rate-of-death-penalty-states-compared-to-non-death-penalty-states

Most interesting GG. The murder rate has been falling across the States since the 1990s and is now less than half of what it was in non-death penalty states compared to 1990. Also a significant, if smaller,  reduction in death penalty States.

I was surprised to see Alaska's murder rate, given the low density of the population, would have expected it to be more in line with Wyoming or South Dakota. Also noticed New Hampshire is the only NE State with the death penalty.

Three of the death penalty states with the highest murder rates are in the Deep South, that may not be a coincidence.

I've been watching the Sopranos recently and fully expected New Jersey to have the highest murder rate !!!!