THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7, 1987. Capital punishment

Press, 7 January 1987, Page 24

THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7, 1987. Capital punishment

The last time a New Zealand Government paid an official to break a criminal’s neck with a rope was in 1957. The intervening 30 years have been punctuated by lively, at times sharp, debate about the possible reintroduction of capital punishment for certain crimes — or rather for more horrifying or more bizarre examples of serious crimes such as murder or rape. The debate reflects the events of the day; the more revolting or despicable a particular crime, or the more attention being paid to crime figures, the louder becomes the call for a return to hanging, or some other form of judicial execution.

The retiring Commissioner of Police, Mr Ken Thompson, will renew the debate with his observations that it might be time to consider again the reintroduction of the death penalty for some murders. Mr Thompson’s cautious contribution to the controversy could not be considered an unthinking reaction to a rise in the rate of serious violent crime; nonetheless it is not entirely divorced from the release of figures that show a record number of murders in New Zealand last year. Provisional police figures show that 65 people were killed, four more than in 1985, which was also a record. The previous worst year for murders was 1981, with 49. In New Zealand a whole generation has grown up since the death penalty was available to the courts as a punishment for murder. From 1958 to 1960, the death penalty was made inoperative by the Labour Government, which commuted all sentences to life imprisonment through exercise of the Royal prerogative. Finally, in 1961, a free vote of Parliament, in which 10 members of the National Government voted with the Opposition, removed capital punishment from the statute books except for treason. It may well be time to air the issue, again, perhaps as a logical extension to the present Inquiry into Violent Offending, under Sir Clinton Roper.

The arguments for and against are irreconcilable; prejudice and sentiment play as big a part as logic. When death was the sole penalty for wilful murder, capital punishment at least had the attraction of being straightforward: you killed, you were killed, and the account was square according to Deuteronomy. Few people seriously support the Biblical imperative of an eye for an eye any more.

Many people, when asked in the abstract, say they would like certain classes of criminal killed in their name — to rid sicoety of its cancers, or for the better protection of those, like police officers, who stand in the front line of its defence. When individual, hard cases arise, most people tend to be more forgiving.

However satisfying the superficial appeal of a punishment that seems final and absolute, the reintroduction of the death penalty would be likely to create more problems than it solved. In the United States, where hanging, shooting, electrocution, and poison are all on offer as sentences, society is not noticeably less violent as a result. Whether the prevalence of murder and violence persists there because of, or in spite

of, the final and . irrevocable punishment is a moot point; but clearly the execution of even duly convicted American murderers is far from being swift, sure, and condign. Many languish on Death Rows for years. By interminable appeals against sentence, lawyers’ ingenuity often prevails over retributive justice — exactly what a simple and final punishment is meant to avoid. Any return to capital punishment in New Zealand would surely be so hedged about with legal provisos that there would be no less scope for prolonged delay.

Parliaments generally are less bloodthirsty than the electorate, less swayed by hysteria. Nevertheless, Parliaments are influenced by the prevailing thought of the day and are obliged to reflect — if to a lesser degree, and to a slower timetable — the concerns of society. Louder and more frequent calls for reinstatement of the death penalty, therefore, will eventually find form in a measure for Parliament’s consideration. Middle ground will be hard to find. To suggest, for instance, that the death penalty is more humane than an infinite time in prison, and that the convicted murderer should have the choice between imprisonment and death, and of the method of death, invites an analogy with terminally ill patients and whether they should have the option of euthanasia.

In any debate about the death penalty, distinctions tend to be drawn between the specific categories of crime it is intended to deter. The distinctions are contrived, and do not work. No doubt the murder of police officers on duty should be discouraged — but should not also the murder of security officers, or firemen, or even school caretakers doing their rounds? Is the burglar who kills a police officer while fleeing the scene of a crime any more reprehensible than the burglar who kills the little old lady who surprised him while rifling through her pensioner flat? The murky waters get murkier with each example. It is true that the law can set down only the principles, and that the specifics are left to the courts; but, even between this killing of a police officer and that one, the circumstances can vary so widely that the courts would wish the responsibility elsewhere.

A telling argument against capital punishment is that inevitably, human frailty being what it is, mistakes will be made. There are no second guesses once the trap has opened. The logic of this cannot be denied, but the stronger argument against capital punishment is that it seldom deters, and may even provoke the offences it is meant to prevent. The elimination of witnesses, the “nothing-more-to-lose” syndrome, can be reinforced by the certainty of the death penalty; yet the rage or desperation at the root of most murders at present recorded in New Zealand is blind to all thought of consequences. The debate Mr Thompson has sparked is unlikely to be the final word on the issue; nor is it likely to produce any new or unanswerable reasons for bringing back capital punishment.