Death penalty

Of all the issues I feel impassioned about, perhaps the top of the list is the death penalty, to the point that I actively attempt to avoid products from death penalty countries and have turned down speaking engagements in Singapore and Malaysia. My opposition to the death penalty is in part an instinctive abhorrence of cold-bloodedly ending somebody's life at a particular time. It is also based on the following arguments:

• Mistakes cannot be fixed, and no matter how perfect the system there is always a doubt; ‘reasonable’ or not.
• It is an inhumanly cruel act. And not just the act but also the years of mental torture. I cannot imagine anything as terrifying as watching the clock tick down towards your execution. I’m against torture, and that is torture!
• The appeal processes involved, with any even approximately safe system, delay closure for families/friends of victims (it's not uncommon for execution to be carried out 10+ years after sentence). By contrast families/friends can move on with their lives as soon as murderers are sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.
• Taking away a person's entire existence for a wrong action is massively disproportionate. Nor is it reasonable to match the penalty to the result of the criminal act, after all, we don’t do that with drink drivers, or other offenders who cause death by carelessness or negligence.
• A multitude of properly-conducted studies have proved it is no more of a deterrent than long prison sentences. Many people find this hard to believe because they themselves find the death penalty far more frightening than a life sentence in prison. But the real question is this...
  Are there potential criminals who would be deterred by the death penalty who are not deterred by long prison sentences.
  Reputable statistical studies say ‘no’.
• Quite apart from the lack of statistical support for the deterrence factor, I am philosophically opposed to this as a justification for the death penalty. Implicit in the deterrence argument is the idea that it is reasonable to give a criminal a greater penalty than he would otherwise deserve in order to achieve a social objective. This idea is based on the profoundly unethical position that the end justifies the means. “We will murder, torture, dehumanize, whatever it takes to defeat the forces of darkness. Thank God, we’re not like them.”
• Debate over potential death sentences and potential executions can inflame, stress and traumatise whole communities, and I can't see how an angry community can possibly be a safer community. I was in Washington at the time of the sniper trials and the level of rage in the community was scary, and in my view very much due to death penalty deliberations. I remember thinking that I’d rather not share a pub or a road with people this angry.
• Keeping murderers alive sends an important message to the community about the value you place on human lives. And that does make the community safer.How can I tell my kids that murder is the unthinkable when the State does it to people they judge to be ‘bad’.
• The stress and trauma for the people involved in the sentencing and carrying out of executions is an unreasonable and unhealthy burden for them to carry.
• The existence of the death penalty tends to distort the justice process. People are less likely to plead guilty and jurors less likely to convict.