The death chamber of the lethal injection facility at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, California. Photo: Press Association/Eric Risberg. All rights reserved.
Thank God, I’ve never had a child murdered. I hope I never do, and I hope that nobody else ever does. But tragically this is an occasional feature of our world, and of the people I’ve met who have lost children, the overwhelming sense I get is that it never leaves them. They learn to ‘live around it’, but they never ‘get over it’. And nothing, short of the impossible ask of bringing the child back, can ever fix it.
Which is just one of the reasons why the call by UKIP leader Paul Nuttall for the death penalty for child killers is wrong. Execution doesn’t take away the pain and it doesn’t provide closure. Speak to families of murder victims in the USA and, while different families want different things, one consistent thing is that the wrongs are not righted by killing a killer, even if justice is said to be done. For families who hoped it would be the end of their ordeal, the aftermath of execution can be bitter new stage of grief.
