I feel quite strongly about this for obvious reasons and I invite you to read the following and then make a decision.
An execution is not simply death. It is just as different from the privation of life as a concentration camp is from prison. It adds to death a rule, a public premeditation known to the future victim, an organization which is itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death. Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life."
Albert Camus---"Reflections on the Guillotine, Resistance, Rebellion & Death" (1956).
Plea Against the Death Penalty
Look, examine, reflect. You hold capital punishment up as an example. Why? Because of what it teaches. And just what is it that you wish to teach by means of this example? That thou shalt not kill. And how do you teach that "thou shalt not kill"? By killing.
I have examined the death penalty under each of its 2 aspects: as a direct action, and as an indirect one. What does it come down to? Nothing but something horrible and useless, nothing but a way of shedding blood that is called a crime when an individual commits it, but is (sadly) called "justice" when society brings it about. Make no mistake, you lawmakers and judges, in the eyes of God as in those of conscience, what is a crime when individuals do it is no less an offense when society commits the deed.
Victor Hugo, Speech at the Constituent Assembly, September 15, 1848
Ask (if you could) Timothy Evans or James Hanratty, but there is somedoubt about James Hanratty or think about Derek Bentley. The case of Ruth Ellis, the last female hanged in the UK is another with the last Law Lord admitting that had her case been today she would probably have gotten no more than a 6 month sentence, the only reason she was not reprieved was because a passer by was shot in the hand.
I add finally that in my opinion the answer to your question in my opinion is a resounding NO.
Like it says above, is it any less murder when the State does the deed compared to when a criminal does it.
Prehaps the person who killed my husband should be considered a murderer and he should be hanged as well. I think NOT.
All my opinion.
Read here for more news on the Death Penalty today....
http://people.smu.edu/rhalperi/Never ever bring it back, it is only REVENGE as said by the late Albert Pierrepoint, even though it was a little late for him to say that after carrying out over 600 executions.
Diane
