Rethinking the Death Penalty !

Australia and New Zealand are both countries that have abolished the death penalty.  In the distant past it was the automatic penalty for most murder convictions and the main case for abolition was the chance that an innocent person might be executed and a later discovery of new evidence prove that innocence.  There was also the notion that the worst of the worst was probably not beyond rehabilitation.

This week a crime in Christchurch, New Zealand will have many people pondering the twisted mind of the perpetrators.  In a coordinated attack on two mosques that involved automatic weapons the people gathered for Friday prayers were sprayed with bullets.  Forty-nine died where they stood and at least another twenty suffered gunshot wounds.  This attack was deliberately planned and carried out to achieve the maximum casualties.

The reason for the attack was made most clear and a camera attached to an assault rifle fed live footage to the vast Internet audience.  This was the work of a white supremacy group with a hatred of immigrants generally, but an intense rejection of all who practice the Muslim religion.  One of the killers was Australian born and four have been arrested by the New Zealand police.

The news of this massacre will be celebrated by far right groups in other parts of the world and the publicity may spark repetition.  The perpetrators may have allowed themselves to be captured to enable their ideology to be spread at their trials.  It is their aim to draw others into their type of thinking and when incarcerated it is certain that they will try and convert other gullible people.

The penalty available to the judge that tries them will be limited.  He may deliver a life term with the notation " never to be released ", but surely there are some crimes where justice can not be served other than the taking of the perpetrators life.  In every country there is a hard core of convicted criminals locked away in a maximum security prison that costs the state an incredible amount of money and who pose a threat to the officers tasked with guarding them and to the public at large.

One of the men who killed Anita Cobby recently died in prison and in Hobart Martin Bryant - who carried out the Port Arthur massacre - is slowly rotting away in Risdon jail.  Perhaps it is an act of cruelty to let these creatures exist  at public expense.  Once they face the death penalty they are quickly forgotten, and their ability to convert others is revoked.

Obviously, the taking of a human life would not be ordered except in exceptional circumstances, but there are some crimes which exceed the bounds of human tolerance.  Mass murder of people committing the only crime of following their chosen religion falls into that category.  Justice is not served unless the penalty fits the crime.