My response to ‘We must not let Ian Brady starve himself: his life is not ours to take’

I read with interest in The Telegraph.co.uk in an article on Thursday 5 July 2012: ‘We must not let Ian Brady starve himself: his life is not ours to take’ by Cristina Odone and I would like to comment on many points I disagree with her.

If Ian Brady were in America, he'd have been dead years ago. He and his partner in crime, Myra Hindley, would have been strapped to the electric chair soon after they were tried and found guilty of torturing, abusing and killing the children they'd abducted. Death Row is choc-a-bloc with psychopaths like the Moors murderers, and American justice deals with them in a straightforward, Old Testament way: an eye for an eye, a life for a life.

Response: If the both of them were executed long ago, we can put the whole matter behind instead of having awarding them an advantage of life over death on their victims. American justice does not only follow the OT but also the New Testament, there are several verses in the bible that permits capital punishment.

Ours is an infinitely more complex, and more humane, justice system. It is based on the possibility of redemption, not just retribution. It supports a view of life as God-given, not man-made.

Response: A more humane justice system? Ever since the death penalty was abolished in the 1960s, the homicide rates have more than doubled. It is based on the possibility of redemption, not just retribution? As a former opponent of the death penalty, I now support the death penalty because I empathized and sympathize with the grieving victims’ families and I also want to protect my country like the armed forces (Hear what Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, SirJames Fitzjames Stephen, Alex Kozinski and Chalerm Ubumrung have to say). It is not about revenge but justice. It supports a view of life as God-given, not man-made, Please see the response to Werner Herzog. 

 

But it does mean that Brady is still around, to haunt and taunt the survivors from his psychiatric prison cell in Ashworth, Liverpool. Now he wants to starve himself to death. We must not let him.  To do so would mean, in effect, embracing capital punishment. It would set off a chain reaction of legal cases that would allow for assisted suicide (not only for prisoners but for others), and ultimately restore the death penalty in this country.

Response: The most conclusive evidence that criminals fear the death penalty more than life without parole is provided by convicted capital murderers and their attorneys. 99.9% of all convicted capital murderers and their attorneys argue for life, not death, in the punishment phase of their trial. When the death penalty becomes real, murderers fear it the most.

I suspect that one of the reason why Ian Brady is behaving like that is that he just wants attention from the media, he has not even show any remorse for his crimes at all. Winnie, the mother of Keith Bennett once said, “Monsters like Brady and now this sick Steve Wright creature do not deserve life, or our pity. We should stop thinking about what’s best for people who murder our women and children. They’ll never change however long they are caged.”

 

I knew Frank Longford, the great penal reformer, and am proud to be part of the Longford Trust that campaigns in his memory for redemptive as well as retributive justice. Despite my fondness for him, I can't say that I ever bought his passionate defense of Myra Hindley as repented sinner (a defense that earned him the ire of millions and the mockery of the media).  But I know that I'd rather be Loony Longford than an American barbarian.

Response: You should show compassion on those children and their grieving families that the moors murderers did to them. American barbarian? No way, the real barbarians are the European Court of Human Rights who are the friends of criminals. Just take a look at what they did to Jamie Bulger and at the same time look at the justice system in Dubai.