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It was the no overall majority in Parliament that I meant. I recall some years ago a large number of Tory MPs that waited to see which way Maggie Thatcher voted on the death penalty before casting their own vote. At that moment in time Parliament's decision on the death penalty depended on which way Maggie voted. It's frightening that we could have gone back to capital punishment and that decision rested on only one person.

There is an interesting distinction between death sentences and executions.

For many years in both the US and in Carribean countries, and no doubt elsewhere, people were sentenced to death but against the background of a system where in practice it was either never or very rarely implemented. The result was a large number of people held on death row more or less indefinitely. The PC put the lid on this a few years ago here, and the US restarted executions in many - though not all - states.

On the general question, criminal justice must be about a claim to the moral high ground by society, and I do not believe that it can be right to take a life. In addition, there are real numbers of cases of mistaken convictions. There will be s small number of ones where we can be 'really' sure, but in practice many more are convicted than I think would justify such a conclusion.

There is also the inbuilt twist in the figures. Restore the death penalty and juries suddenly get much more cautious about convicting a defendant, and lo and behold, the number of murder convictions descends as a result. The death penalty is justified!

I whole heartedly agree. The deliberateness and coldness of keeping someone locked away until a day on which there life will be terminated is, I find, quite nauseating.

My other argument is that as long as people get some sort of (unpleasant) emotional relief from the execution of wrong-doers there will be less incentive to discover and act on the underlying causes of the crime.