Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
12 January 2012
Is Capital Punishment
Coming Back to Canada?
With Canada's Conservative government playing
the tough-
of capital punishment is beginning to stir debate
In an interview with the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge (January 19, 2011) Prime Minister Stephen Harper said: “I personally think there are times where capital punishment is appropriate.” He added that he has no plans to reintroduce it.
Sister Helen Prejean is not convinced. She is a Roman Catholic nun from Louisiana who has become famous for her opposition to capital punishment, first through her book Dead Man Walking (Vintage, 1994) and now for her public appearances.
In late November 2010, Sister Prejean was in Toronto where she told Globe and Mail
reporter Adrian Morrow that she feared a Conservative Party majority government would
bring back the death penalty: “If they gain in ascendancy in the next five to 10
years, you’d have a party in power that would put back the death penalty in a heartbeat.”
Public Opinion Divided
on Capital Punishment
According to an Ekos Poll in March 2010 Canadians are about evenly split on the issue of whether or not to revive the death penalty.
The poll found that 46 percent were opposed to bringing back capital punishment while 40 percent thought such a move to be a good idea. These results are little changed from June 2000 when there was an almost even split in the middle 43 to 44 percent range.
Reporting on the poll CBC News said “Those who support the reintroduction of capital punishment tend to be Conservative supporters (53 percent), residents of Alberta (48 percent), men (43 percent), seniors (45 percent), high school grads (48 percent), and college grads (46 percent).
However, Angus Reid Public Opinion (January 25, 2010) finds “Most people in the United States, Britain, and Canada support relying on the death penalty for homicide convictions, according to a poll by Angus Reid Public Opinion. 84 percent of respondents in the U.S., 67 percent in Britain, and 62 percent in Canada share this view.”
Death Penalty Abolished in Canada in 1976
Amnesty International says “There were 710 executions in Canada between 1867 and 1962. The last execution was carried out on December 11, 1962 when two men were hanged in Toronto. When one of the two, Arthur Lucas, was told he and Ronald Turpin were likely to be the last in Canada to face capital punishment, Lucas said “Some consolation,” and added he would just as soon someone else had already had the distinction.
After those two executions, death sentences were automatically reduced to life imprisonment until July 1976 when a free vote in the House of Commons abolished the death penalty.
For mutiny and treason within Canada armed forces capital punishment technically remained on the books until December 1998.
World Coalition against the Death Penalty
French activists protest capital punishment
Supporters Argue the
Death Penalty Prevents further Murders
Those who favour bringing back the death penalty say it will ensure that those convicted of the worst murders will never repeat their crimes.
Their support for execution often springs from the most horrible examples of the
lowest form of human behaviour. One such is the murder of eight-
A Facebook page dedicated to the little girl sums up the anguish felt by those caught up in such heinous crimes: “This is a group created to let our Canadian Government know that we will no longer tolerate child killers in Canada! Bring back the death penalty…Monsters who prey on our children will no longer find sanctuary in our jails and they will NOT be accepted back into our society.”
But, if execution existed for child killers then Guy Paul Morin, William Mullins-
Execution as a Deterrent
Both sides of the execution debate can quote studies that say the death penalty either does or does not deter murder. The fact is all the studies are inconclusive.
Ernest van den Haag is a Professor of Jurisprudence at Fordham University who has studied the question of deterrence closely. He is quoted in a Michigan State University and Death Penalty Information Center paper as saying “capital punishment is likely to deter more than other punishments because people fear death more than anything else. They fear most death deliberately inflicted by law and scheduled by the courts. Whatever people fear most is likely to deter most.”
Another expert on the subject is Albert Pierrepoint, Britain’s most prolific hangman. In his 1974 autobiography Executioner: Pierrepoint wrote about the more than 400 people that he put to death and said that the prospect of being executed “did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.”
Debate Hinges on Deterrence Argument
There is a further argument in favour of capital punishment and that is retribution and the religious value of an eye for an eye. Opponents of the death penalty say it’s the mark of a mature society that it can suppress its emotional impulse to seek revenge for a gruesome crime and deliver a more measured response.
But, the capital punishment debate revolves less around the retribution/revenge argument than around deterrence. With a lack of firm evidence to support either side rational judgement tends to give way to emotion, a shaky foundation for so fundamental an issue as life and death.
Image credit
Kevin Kemmerer
Sources
“Death Penalty not on Agenda: PM.” CBC News, January 19, 2011.
“Activist Nun Fears Death Penalty Could Return to Canada,” Adrian Morrow, Globe and Mail, November 28, 2010.
“Canadians Split on Pot, Death Penalty: Poll.” CBC News, March 18, 2010.
© Canada and the World, January 2012
All rights reserved
“A motion to reintroduce capital punishment was debated in the House of Commons in
1987. On June 30, the motion was soundly defeated on a free vote (148-
Murder rate in Canada in 1976 the year capital punishment was abolished: 2.8 per 100,000
Murder rate in Canada in 1998:
1.9 per 100,000
Murder rate in Canada in 2009:
1.9 per 100,000
Murder rate in the United States 2009, the only Western democracy that still retains the death penalty:
4.3 per 100,000
“The percentage of people in favour of the death penalty [in Japan] has reached a record high, with 85.6 % of survey respondents saying capital punishment is ‘unavoidable,’ according to a government poll... “