The mass murderer Nidal Hasan is to be executed by firing squad on 3 December. It is likely to be a swift and certain death unlike the recent botched administration of lethal injections to Christa Pike, now discharged from hospital and returned to Death Row.
The controversy in Hasan’s case is the proposal to livestream the shooting, though President Trump is said to be having second thoughts about it.
Journalist Peter Hitchens advises us against watching, because of the (im)moral effect on spectators. He quotes Charles Dickens’ witnessing a double hanging in 1849 and the shameful behaviour of the public.
Blood lust seems to be part of the human psyche; it is the basis of much of our entertainment. How many fictional violent deaths do we see and read about? Does that increase our homicidal tendencies? Yet even in societies that did not have books movies and TV there was plenty of war and murder in real life.
One motive for the State to worry about carrying out judicial killings in public is self-preservation. The people might begin to question the State’s right to kill.
The last woman to be burned at the stake was Catherine Murphy in 1789, as France exploded in revolution a few miles away. Less than four years later the captive French King was guillotined, together with his wife. It gave rulers pause for thought.
Five decades after Murphy’s execution Parliament rejected the Chartists’ first petition for democratic representation in July 1839 and arrested local leaders of the movement in Newport. A mass uprising there three months later was put down with lethal force, resulting in scores of civilian deaths and casualties. The three ringleaders were convicted of high treason and sentenced to the prolonged and grisly penalty set for that offence. However the British Government feared a political backlash and widespread popular unrest so the penalty was soon commuted to transportation for life to Tasmania. That was the last time hanging, drawing and quartering was used as a form of capital punishment.
But now a State agenda of war, costly energy and disruptive levels of mass immigration is being imposed on a resentful populace and tensions have increased once more. What will make the Crown in Parliament listen?
"History has taught me, that RULERS are much the same in all ages & under all forms of government: they are as bad as they dare to be," said the poet Coleridge in a letter to his brother George (c. 10 March 1798).
1 comment:
I used to be in favour of the death penalty. I have changed my mind somewhat, given that a very large percentage of the people on death row have been exonerated. On a slightly related note, I went to a talk by Dr. Michael Shermer, who wrote a book elucidating the fact that the average rates of violence have been declining for decades worldwide, including both World Wars.
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