Difficult area, I've spent many an hour thinking about this over the years. I was always a staunch believer that the taking of a life by any government was wrong, no matter the crime, that removing their freedom for the rest of their lives was enough, otherwise that government and those who had voted for that punishment were debased and no better than the criminal, that it would be being done for revenge with an anonymous individual or two actually pushing the buttons to do the deed and live with those consequences. I actually believed life meant life, in my naivety.I began working in an arena where I dealt with the peripheral work of a lot of death from various means over 30 years ago. A lot of accidents, a lot of self inflicted, a lot of natural, and quite a lot of unnatural, violent and in my view, unforgiveable. The things that I have seen, the modes of death that can be inflicted upon both children and adults, has altered my perception to the core and inch by inch, with the more terrible things I have been exposed to, my belief that all humans are redeemable and have a right to continue breathing at society's cost has diminished and possibly now faded forever. Their behaviours have actually altered me, not as horrifically as the poor families touched and often ripped apart by the events that have befallen their loved ones, but I have been altered all the same. I have made a complete turn, albeit it has taken decades to do so. My conscience still tells me no, taking a life is wrong. My memories of viewing what some people can do to others, with or without remorse themselves, however, has outweighed that belief and changed it.I do not want people capable of performing some of the acts I have knowledge of sitting on the bus opposite my nieces, or bumping into my relatives at a supermarket, or following some innocent friend home from the bus stop. I don’t want them here. I think they have forfeited their chance, either because they are irredeemable or because they are not afraid of the consequences of our increasingly lenient laws, to remain in our society. We refuse to tolerate vicious, four legged animals who can cause death with no morals involved - they’re excusable to some degree in my view because they know no better - but two legged beasts do know better. Nobody in my experience is brought up from being a toddler and told it is acceptable to slaughter others, to do so is a conscious decision. So I’m with you girls, conscience wise still reluctantly, but I do feel that with the advent of DNA and less precarious convictions, we would feel safer in the knowledge that the correct person was convicted, something not perhaps so safe decades ago.
Jacqui Murray ● 3809d