Eight Questions About The Death Penalty That Britain Doesn't Have The Stomach To Answer

Another gruesome screw-up in an execution chamber in Oklahoma: a man waits forty minutes to die and another prisoner, due for execution on the same day, wins two more weeks of agony while officials decides how they'll kill him. Meanwhile, an Egyptian court hands down mass death sentences. The death penalty is barbaric and immoral and degrades us all while it still exists - in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia - and in the United States. But, despite the knee-jerk bleating from some in the media and legislature, it will never return in Britain. We don't have the stomach for it.

1. Who will do it?

A court-appointed executioner? Ordinary citizens pressing buttons at home? I'll suggest that executioners are drawn by lottery from the list of people who supported the new law. It surely can't be OK to vote for the death penalty and expect someone else to despatch the condemned, can it? If there's a chance that you'll have to squeeze the syringe, will you still vote for it?

2. How will we do it?

A lethal injection? Electrocution? Hanging? None has a great track record. None is humane. How will we decide? It'll take a decade. High-tech solutions will be proposed (shot into the vacuum of space? Instantaneous robotic dismemberment? Nanoexecutioners?). The debate will rage. It'll be chaos and, as soon as the first horrendous screw-up happens, it'll all start again.

3. Will we do it in public?

And who will observe? I'll argue that judicial killings should be streamed online from multiple angles (in 3D) and that a panel of ordinary citizens – selected by the jury service process – should be obliged to observe from close quarters.

4. Will a doctor be present?

Someone will need to ensure good practice and certify death. Does the Hippocratic oath permit that? Will the BMA? And if they don't, will rogue doctors show up to do the honours or will we have to create a new class of state-appointed 'execution doctors'?

5. What will we do with the body?

Will we consign the dead to a secure prison graveyard or permit shrines to arise in public cemeteries? How about mandatory cremation and scattering? Will we forbid elaborate funerals and celebrations of the lives of the wicked deceased?

6. What will we do the first time an innocent person is executed?

Will the new law have provision for automatic compensation for families? Will executions cease while standards of evidence are examined and investigations reviewed? Could the death penalty actually survive a mistake? Or would we be back at square one?

7. What about death row?

Will there be a single, national facility (designed by a rockstar architect, perhaps, with an atrium) where the condemned work through their decades of appeals? Or will each prison keep a mini-death row of its own? Will the inhabitants be allowed access to the media, web sites, Twitter accounts? Will there be a reality TV show?

8. Will civil servants and prison officers be forced to enact the law?

What will happen to wardens who object to killing inmates? Will clerks and drafters who refuse to work on the legislation be disciplined or sacked? Will private contractors be brought in to finish the job? Will Atos or Serco have to set up new Executions divisions?

A longer post (and some more questions) on my blog. Amnesty's death penalty page. Picture by upturnedface.