There is a classic dénouement in film where the hero of the piece is faced with a choice. The bad guy has been beaten and is at the mercy of the hero who must then decide; should they kill them or show compassion despite all the terrible things the villain has done? We are as familiar with the dilemma as we are with the moral implications behind these options; should the hero end the villain’s life then he is no better than them, however if the hero tames his hatred and rises above the barbaric he is seen as the better man. To put it simply, the good do not put to the sword a beaten enemy no matter what they have done. To do so is to vindicate killing as an appropriate way of dealing with our problems which is exactly what the bad guys do.
On question time last night Priti Patel called for the death penalty to be reintroduced into the British justice system, she claimed this would ‘act as a deterrent’ for violent crime. I have blogged in the past about how the evidence that the death penalty as a deterrent for violent crime is thin and as the audience applauded the medieval it occurred to me that it doesn’t matter either way. It doesn’t matter if the death penalty is a deterrent for violent crime because murdering people to prevent murder is a price too high to pay.
This isn’t a issue of self defence, the culprit has been caught and subdued. No matter how you dress it, slaughtering someone in cold blood is barbaric. The actions of that individual are irrelevant. If you kill someone because of the crimes they have committed then you are committing a crime yourself. If someone cannot live peacefully in society then by all means take away their freedom but no society has the right to take a person’s life. Revenge, hate and murder are not notions that I associate with a civilised society, and I am proud to live in a country that has put this embarrassing form of justice behind us. No matter how bad the criminals get we must not fall to their level; the great and the good lead by example. Perhaps Priti Patel needs to spend some more time with fiction and less time lusting for blood.
