0:00:21 > 0:00:28Today, there are over 50 countries around the world which continue to use the death penalty.
0:00:28 > 0:00:32Individuals who break the law can face a firing squad in China...
0:00:34 > 0:00:37..lethal injection in the USA...
0:00:38 > 0:00:40..and the hangman's noose in Singapore.
0:00:46 > 0:00:50It is only a decade since capital punishment was finally removed from British law.
0:00:51 > 0:00:55For centuries, Britain carried out state executions,
0:00:55 > 0:01:01and capital punishment was defended as a deterrent against crime,
0:01:01 > 0:01:05retribution against those who broke society's rules.
0:01:07 > 0:01:09The noose would be put over their neck,
0:01:09 > 0:01:15a hood put over their heads and then the cart would drive away, leaving them to dangle
0:01:15 > 0:01:20and to gradually, slowly, after 30 minutes, to strangle to death.
0:01:22 > 0:01:26For over 200 years, a moral battle raged
0:01:26 > 0:01:30about whether the state has the right to execute.
0:01:30 > 0:01:35A powerful liberal elite emerged, determined to abolish the death penalty.
0:01:38 > 0:01:43The death penalty is inhuman and degrading when you see
0:01:43 > 0:01:46how it is carried out and the procedures that are necessary.
0:01:49 > 0:01:55But the vast majority of public opinion has continued to demand the ultimate punishment.
0:01:57 > 0:02:02There are certain sorts of murder that are so premeditated,
0:02:02 > 0:02:07so violent and so shocking,
0:02:07 > 0:02:11that in the interests of maintaining confidence in the rule of law,
0:02:11 > 0:02:15the only appropriate punishment is the death penalty.
0:02:15 > 0:02:20This debate has shaped our ideas about how a civilised society
0:02:20 > 0:02:25should punish its citizens in the 21st century.
0:02:26 > 0:02:31The word "punishment" comes from the same root as "pain".
0:02:31 > 0:02:35It is, in its essential conception, painful.
0:02:35 > 0:02:39If it is not painful, it is not punishment.
0:02:48 > 0:02:52The history of capital punishment in Britain is a long and bloody one.
0:02:52 > 0:02:58Since the Middle Ages, those condemned to death have variously faced being boiled alive,
0:02:58 > 0:03:02burnt at the stake, or hung, drawn and quartered.
0:03:04 > 0:03:10But it was in the late 18th century that the death penalty was applied most widely.
0:03:12 > 0:03:16London, 1783 - thousands crammed the streets of the capital
0:03:16 > 0:03:21to watch a public execution, carried out in the King's name.
0:03:24 > 0:03:28This is the height of the Bloody Code,
0:03:28 > 0:03:32a system of justice and punishment that listed over 200 offences
0:03:32 > 0:03:36for which a man or a woman could be sent to the gallows.
0:03:37 > 0:03:38In a society in which,
0:03:38 > 0:03:41as they would have expressed it in those days,
0:03:41 > 0:03:46they were lovers of liberty and very keen on property,
0:03:46 > 0:03:49they had to have a means of protecting
0:03:49 > 0:03:51both their liberty and property.
0:03:51 > 0:03:54So you don't want a standing police force or a standing army
0:03:54 > 0:03:59and therefore there was the very successful argument in Parliament
0:03:59 > 0:04:03that you had capital punishment for just about everything.
0:04:04 > 0:04:07Under the Bloody Code, even petty theft,
0:04:07 > 0:04:10like pick-pocketing or stealing a sheep,
0:04:10 > 0:04:13could result in the death penalty.
0:04:13 > 0:04:19And it also threatened to execute anyone who kept the company of gypsies for more than a month...
0:04:19 > 0:04:23or who blackened their face with the intention of stealing.
0:04:26 > 0:04:30Because we have lost sight of its meaning to contemporaries
0:04:30 > 0:04:33and we can reach only for one explanation -
0:04:33 > 0:04:35that those people, 200, 300 years ago,
0:04:35 > 0:04:38were barbarians, compared to us.
0:04:40 > 0:04:44But go back to the 18th century and you have very few prisons,
0:04:44 > 0:04:48very inefficient policing, but you do have the noose.
0:04:48 > 0:04:54And the noose is understood, not as a cruel device,
0:04:54 > 0:04:58but as a way of testifying to the anger of the King.
0:05:03 > 0:05:07The execution day started at Newgate Prison, just west of St Paul's
0:05:07 > 0:05:09in the centre of town
0:05:09 > 0:05:13and the procession went from the gates of Newgate
0:05:13 > 0:05:16through High Holborn, what is now modern Oxford Street,
0:05:16 > 0:05:19on to the site of Tyburn.
0:05:21 > 0:05:24From the Middle Ages, Tyburn had been the traditional site
0:05:24 > 0:05:27of the majority of public executions in Britain.
0:05:30 > 0:05:35The condemned would probably try and wear their best clothes,
0:05:35 > 0:05:37some would put up a big brave show
0:05:37 > 0:05:40and they would be taken along this route,
0:05:40 > 0:05:43where people would either stand on the street,
0:05:43 > 0:05:46or the better off would actually hire out rooms
0:05:46 > 0:05:48on either side of the streets.
0:05:51 > 0:05:57With no police force or prison system, capital punishment served as a deterrent against crime.
0:05:59 > 0:06:03It was therefore important that everyone in society should attend,
0:06:03 > 0:06:06to witness justice being carried out.
0:06:08 > 0:06:13There was one occasion where a schoolteacher was reprimanded by the moral authorities,
0:06:13 > 0:06:18probably by the local newspapers, because he decided to take his children on a picnic
0:06:18 > 0:06:19so they wouldn't see the execution.
0:06:19 > 0:06:22This was considered a very bad thing to do.
0:06:24 > 0:06:32The trouble was, learning a moral lesson from the death of somebody else was what the moralists wanted.
0:06:32 > 0:06:36It wasn't often what they got, because people would frequently
0:06:36 > 0:06:39go along there in more of a party atmosphere.
0:06:42 > 0:06:48The execution day had its own ritual, involving the participation of the crowd itself,
0:06:48 > 0:06:51which appeared to revel in a macabre party atmosphere.
0:06:54 > 0:06:58But some historians have interpreted this scene very differently.
0:07:00 > 0:07:03It misses the silence that descends
0:07:03 > 0:07:06when the executioner comes onto the platform.
0:07:08 > 0:07:11When top hats came into fashion,
0:07:11 > 0:07:14it misses the point of the big cry, "Hats off!"
0:07:16 > 0:07:20It misses the kinds of communication that were possible
0:07:20 > 0:07:26between members of the crowd and the felons about to die.
0:07:28 > 0:07:33The jokes, the teasings, the cries from the crowd, "Hello, Curly!
0:07:33 > 0:07:36"Keep up your spirits!"
0:07:36 > 0:07:42Of course, the poor sod was actually shitting and pissing himself in sheer bloody terror.
0:07:47 > 0:07:54Capital punishment as a deterrent was believed to work due to the painful nature of the executions.
0:07:54 > 0:07:58Hangings often ended in a slow strangulation.
0:07:58 > 0:08:03If they were lucky, their friends would pull on their legs to help end their misery.
0:08:06 > 0:08:10This is the origin of the phrase "pulling your leg".
0:08:13 > 0:08:17The watching crowd knew that a person's social class
0:08:17 > 0:08:20would have determined whether they were executed.
0:08:22 > 0:08:27One of the great defences of the death penalty was the idea that somehow, every aristocrat,
0:08:27 > 0:08:31every member of the gentry was subject to the same laws.
0:08:31 > 0:08:34In fact it's not true. It's self evidently not true.
0:08:34 > 0:08:3999.9% of everybody who was executed by the state
0:08:39 > 0:08:44was dirt poor and from the lowest class of Britain.
0:08:44 > 0:08:48The vanishingly small number of aristocrats and members of the gentry
0:08:48 > 0:08:51who ended their lives in execution,
0:08:51 > 0:08:54did so by dint of being psychopaths and lunatics.
0:08:58 > 0:09:03The accused faced trial by a jury drawn from the local community,
0:09:03 > 0:09:06many of whom were sympathetic to the defendant's case.
0:09:08 > 0:09:13Frequently, these juries sought to commute the punishment to avoid the death penalty.
0:09:15 > 0:09:21Many juries, for example, refused to value property at their full value,
0:09:21 > 0:09:26precisely in order to prevent a capital charge being applied in that particular case.
0:09:26 > 0:09:30Juries also, regularly, um...
0:09:30 > 0:09:34regularly pleaded for mercy, even after they'd found somebody guilty
0:09:34 > 0:09:39and seen them sentenced to be hanged.
0:09:39 > 0:09:46Between 1770 and 1830, over 35,000 people were sentenced to death,
0:09:46 > 0:09:50but only one in ten were actually executed.
0:09:54 > 0:09:59But the elite in society were indifferent to any notions of unequal justice.
0:10:00 > 0:10:03They believed capital punishment worked as a deterrent.
0:10:05 > 0:10:11And even enlightened thinkers of the time, such as the churchman and philosopher, William Paley,
0:10:11 > 0:10:15were able to justify this, even if innocent people were executed.
0:10:16 > 0:10:19When he was told that many people were hanged
0:10:19 > 0:10:24who didn't deserve it or who might even be innocent,
0:10:24 > 0:10:28"Oh!" he said, in a very fine language, of course,
0:10:28 > 0:10:34"So what? These people may be deemed to have hanged for England!"
0:10:34 > 0:10:39In other words, their deaths were part of the price we had to pay
0:10:39 > 0:10:45for social order and deference to the established hierarchy.
0:10:47 > 0:10:53This view was supported by the work of German philosopher Immanuel Kant,
0:10:53 > 0:10:56who argued that even in a civilised society,
0:10:56 > 0:11:00the state had the right to punish the individual.
0:11:01 > 0:11:04For Kant, the only purely evil thing is an evil will,
0:11:04 > 0:11:08so you measure the seriousness of the crime
0:11:08 > 0:11:10by the attitude of the criminal.
0:11:10 > 0:11:14For Kant, the death penalty was a moral imperative.
0:11:14 > 0:11:18It was a duty, but it was to be done without any emotion.
0:11:18 > 0:11:20We did it as a matter of duty.
0:11:22 > 0:11:25And, in fact, we celebrate human dignity by executing them,
0:11:25 > 0:11:28by saying, "You are a responsible agent.
0:11:28 > 0:11:32"You chose to do what you did, and you deserve to die for it.
0:11:32 > 0:11:37"We will not look at you as a means to deter others from committing crimes."
0:11:38 > 0:11:43He firmly believed that you never use a person as a means to your ends.
0:11:43 > 0:11:46Human beings are ends in themselves.
0:11:50 > 0:11:54Kant's ideas continued to influence the debate about punishment
0:11:54 > 0:11:57into the 19th century and a new Victorian era.
0:12:01 > 0:12:08But by the 1830s, the election of the Whigs into government brought a new reforming agenda.
0:12:12 > 0:12:16The Reform Act famously gives the vote to the middle classes,
0:12:16 > 0:12:21but also a lot of the statutes on the Bloody Code are repealed,
0:12:21 > 0:12:27so that by the end of the 1830s, you can hang really only for murder.
0:12:30 > 0:12:34Despite this new age of reform, the Victorians were still committed
0:12:34 > 0:12:37to retaining the death penalty for those convicted of murder.
0:12:40 > 0:12:46But for other, lesser crimes, they wanted a more proportional punishment that fitted the crime,
0:12:46 > 0:12:51so a sheep stealer would no longer be treated the same as a murderer.
0:12:52 > 0:12:57Punishment ought to be not only proportional,
0:12:57 > 0:13:01but by being proportional to the offence, rational.
0:13:01 > 0:13:07Measurement, proportionality is one big idea that begins to unseat
0:13:07 > 0:13:11the old system that had, of course, gone back for centuries.
0:13:13 > 0:13:19Dismantling the Bloody Code had an immediate effect on the Victorian justice system.
0:13:19 > 0:13:25Now, juries were more likely to convict in the knowledge that the death penalty no longer applied.
0:13:27 > 0:13:32They eliminated capital punishment from rape in 1842
0:13:32 > 0:13:37and what happened afterwards is that the conviction rate went straight through the roof.
0:13:37 > 0:13:42It went from a modern equivalent of 5% convictions,
0:13:42 > 0:13:45to between 13% and 18% conviction rate,
0:13:45 > 0:13:50simply because they changed the nature of the punishment associated with that particular crime.
0:13:53 > 0:13:58But as conviction rates soared, so too did the Victorians' fear of crime.
0:13:58 > 0:14:03This fear came from the presence of a new mass urban population,
0:14:03 > 0:14:06which, during the Industrial Revolution,
0:14:06 > 0:14:09had migrated to Britain's cities in their thousands.
0:14:09 > 0:14:14As you start to have very large numbers of very poor people,
0:14:14 > 0:14:16crowded into districts together,
0:14:16 > 0:14:20society's becoming much more concerned about criminality,
0:14:20 > 0:14:23about the possibility of a criminal underclass,
0:14:23 > 0:14:28about the consequences of having so many poor people congregated in very small areas.
0:14:28 > 0:14:31One of the other things happening in the early 19th century is
0:14:31 > 0:14:34for the first time the government is collecting figures
0:14:34 > 0:14:36as to how many people are brought before the courts,
0:14:36 > 0:14:38and again, the figures always seem to go up
0:14:38 > 0:14:41and of course, we know now the population is rising anyway.
0:14:41 > 0:14:46The figures are going up so this helps to contribute to this fear of crime
0:14:46 > 0:14:49which is really starting to emerge in the early 19th century.
0:14:49 > 0:14:54In 1862, there is a moral panic about mugging
0:14:54 > 0:14:59that is precipitated in the newspapers by one solitary event,
0:14:59 > 0:15:05when an MP called Pilkington was mugged by a garrotter.
0:15:09 > 0:15:14With conviction rates rising, but fewer crimes subject to the death penalty,
0:15:14 > 0:15:18the Victorians searched for new ideas about punishment.
0:15:19 > 0:15:25Up until now, local jails had just held prisoners before they were punished.
0:15:26 > 0:15:31But into the 1840s, as part of a wider expansion of the state
0:15:31 > 0:15:35and the ending of transportation as a sentencing option,
0:15:35 > 0:15:39the Victorians began to build large prisons across Britain
0:15:39 > 0:15:43as places of both punishment and reform.
0:15:44 > 0:15:47A new idea of prison, where you have the ordered prisons,
0:15:47 > 0:15:51with the sexes separated, different kinds of criminals classified,
0:15:51 > 0:15:55being made to perform useful work as part of their punishment,
0:15:55 > 0:16:00all in a specially designed building, set apart from the rest of the community.
0:16:03 > 0:16:07But those convicted of murder still faced a public execution...
0:16:09 > 0:16:14..which, by the mid Victorian era, was coming under attack from an educated elite.
0:16:16 > 0:16:19You got prominent publicists as well,
0:16:19 > 0:16:23Dickens and Thackeray being probably being the most prominent,
0:16:23 > 0:16:27who both attended public executions and both wrote about them.
0:16:27 > 0:16:31Both of them were appalled by the behaviour of the people.
0:16:31 > 0:16:34"It was so loathsome, pitiful and vile a sight,
0:16:34 > 0:16:38"I did not see one token, in all the immense crowd,
0:16:38 > 0:16:40"at the windows, in the streets,
0:16:40 > 0:16:42"on the housetops, anywhere,
0:16:42 > 0:16:47"of any one emotion suitable to the occasion.
0:16:47 > 0:16:51"No sorrow, no terror, no abhorrence, no seriousness -
0:16:51 > 0:16:57"nothing but ribaldry, debauchery, levity, drunkenness and flaunting vice."
0:16:57 > 0:17:03The public execution is almost a way of saying aggression and violence is acceptable and tolerable
0:17:03 > 0:17:07and is promoted by the state and this is the very last thing the Victorians want.
0:17:07 > 0:17:09They've got a kind of civilising idea.
0:17:11 > 0:17:14It was this disgust at the scene of a public execution
0:17:14 > 0:17:19that led to the first real movement to abolish the death penalty.
0:17:21 > 0:17:26By the 1840s, there's a really very serious movement
0:17:26 > 0:17:30for total abolition of capital punishment in England
0:17:30 > 0:17:33that pulls in people like Thackeray.
0:17:34 > 0:17:40The argument being that we have other ways of controlling order,
0:17:40 > 0:17:47so that we do not need to resort to the sledgehammer control delivered by the noose.
0:17:47 > 0:17:51But the vast majority of the population were convinced
0:17:51 > 0:17:54that the death penalty should be retained,
0:17:54 > 0:17:58and this view was openly supported by the Church of England.
0:18:00 > 0:18:07Now capital punishment is a peculiar punishment, because it was justified specifically on biblical terms.
0:18:07 > 0:18:10All the arguments were to do with the Bible.
0:18:10 > 0:18:13After all, fines, or community service,
0:18:13 > 0:18:16or even being put in the stocks don't actually appear in the Bible.
0:18:18 > 0:18:23They have killed the image of God, another human being,
0:18:23 > 0:18:26and so they will be killed themselves
0:18:26 > 0:18:30and that was accepted by practically everyone.
0:18:32 > 0:18:36Convinced that the death penalty was sanctioned by God,
0:18:36 > 0:18:42the Victorians turned to the newly built prisons to solve the debate over public executions.
0:18:44 > 0:18:47It was one of the suggestions of Bishop Wilberforce
0:18:47 > 0:18:50that we've got these wonderful prisons,
0:18:50 > 0:18:54why don't we put capital punishment into a prison?
0:18:57 > 0:19:03In 1868, the last public execution was carried out on British soil.
0:19:03 > 0:19:06Michael Barrett, an Irish Republican,
0:19:06 > 0:19:09was hanged outside Newgate Prison
0:19:09 > 0:19:13while the crowds sang a popular music hall tune, Champagne Charlie.
0:19:19 > 0:19:21By moving the gallows into the prison,
0:19:21 > 0:19:27the authorities also wanted to introduce a more official and systematic way of killing
0:19:27 > 0:19:31which would be carried out by professional hangmen.
0:19:34 > 0:19:37But you had the rise of regular hangmen,
0:19:37 > 0:19:39one of the things they could do -
0:19:39 > 0:19:42and this was developed in a very systematic way -
0:19:42 > 0:19:47was they could take the weights and measurements of the person they were going to kill.
0:19:47 > 0:19:51They would view them in a prison cell through a loophole
0:19:51 > 0:19:57so they could gauge, this person's stocky, this person's thin, this person's 5 foot 3 or whatever.
0:19:58 > 0:20:02There were scales and measurements by which you could then judge
0:20:02 > 0:20:06how much rope you would use and the quality of the rope.
0:20:06 > 0:20:10That would ensure that you neither made it too long,
0:20:10 > 0:20:13in which case you might decapitate the person,
0:20:13 > 0:20:17or too short, in which case you might strangle the person.
0:20:17 > 0:20:21Just the right length should lead to instantaneous death.
0:20:28 > 0:20:33Hangmen were now expected to carry out their duties in an orderly and responsible fashion.
0:20:35 > 0:20:38One of the concerns that the Home Office had
0:20:38 > 0:20:43was the amount of drinking that the executioners used to engage in
0:20:43 > 0:20:47and so that was restricted.
0:20:47 > 0:20:52From then on, they had to spend the night in the prison before the hanging
0:20:52 > 0:20:56and they were only allowed a quarter of a pint of spirits
0:20:56 > 0:21:00and a couple of pints of ale the night before.
0:21:00 > 0:21:03So it was all much more dignified.
0:21:05 > 0:21:09This move towards a dignified system of capital punishment
0:21:09 > 0:21:14silenced those voices who had called for the abolition of the public execution.
0:21:19 > 0:21:25And once it is proposed to hide the executions in the prison,
0:21:25 > 0:21:29the argument is won for sustaining capital punishment
0:21:29 > 0:21:33all the way through to the '60s. So it is a key moment.
0:21:35 > 0:21:41Had there not been a solution to the problem of the crowd found in the hiding of executions,
0:21:41 > 0:21:44the whole thing might have collapsed much earlier than it did.
0:21:53 > 0:21:58The Victorian era saw a major shift in how a modern civilised society
0:21:58 > 0:22:01maintains order and administers punishment.
0:22:03 > 0:22:07The great transformation of punishment in the modern era
0:22:07 > 0:22:12moved its locus from the body to the personality.
0:22:12 > 0:22:19That is, originally punishment was the infliction of pain and suffering on the body,
0:22:19 > 0:22:21and then the Enlightenment came along
0:22:21 > 0:22:27and the Enlightenment embraced the idea of human beings as rational.
0:22:27 > 0:22:30And instead of inflicting pain and suffering on the body,
0:22:30 > 0:22:35we took the great good not to be so much life, as liberty,
0:22:35 > 0:22:39so that we now correlate the heinousness of the crime
0:22:39 > 0:22:42with a degree of loss of liberty
0:22:42 > 0:22:46and instead of inflicting pain and suffering directly on the body,
0:22:46 > 0:22:49what we do is deprive people of rights.
0:22:58 > 0:23:04For the next 60 years, it appeared that those who supported capital punishment had won the debate.
0:23:05 > 0:23:10# Hangman, hangman Hold it a little while
0:23:10 > 0:23:14# I think I seen my friends coming
0:23:14 > 0:23:17# Riding many a mile... #
0:23:17 > 0:23:20Into the first half of the 20th century,
0:23:20 > 0:23:24executions continued inside the walls of Britain's prisons,
0:23:24 > 0:23:26without any significant opposition.
0:23:26 > 0:23:29# What did you bring me my dear friends
0:23:29 > 0:23:31# To keep me from the gallows pole? #
0:23:33 > 0:23:37While public opinion remained solidly in favour,
0:23:37 > 0:23:42only a handful of eccentrics, like the heiress Violet Van Der Elst,
0:23:42 > 0:23:44campaigned against the death penalty.
0:23:44 > 0:23:48Well, Mrs Van Der Elst was one of those curious figures
0:23:48 > 0:23:52in capital punishment, because she was a classic eccentric Englishwoman.
0:23:52 > 0:23:56She inherited a lot of money and she decided
0:23:56 > 0:23:59not to take up the cause of cats and dogs,
0:23:59 > 0:24:03but to take up the cause of capital punishment.
0:24:03 > 0:24:10And because of her money and her sense of stage management,
0:24:10 > 0:24:14she could ensure big displays wherever she went.
0:24:14 > 0:24:18So, for instance, when executions were taking place in prisons,
0:24:18 > 0:24:21she would drive up to the prison in a Rolls-Royce.
0:24:21 > 0:24:24So she was much more difficult for the authorities to handle,
0:24:24 > 0:24:27because you couldn't just sort of knock her out of the way -
0:24:27 > 0:24:30A) she was a woman, B) she's rich
0:24:30 > 0:24:32C) she's sort of rich and well connected
0:24:32 > 0:24:34and she's in a Rolls-Royce!
0:24:36 > 0:24:43In some ways, of course, she was a person that proponents of capital punishment could point to and say,
0:24:43 > 0:24:47"Well, it's lunatics who are really concerned about this sort of thing."
0:24:51 > 0:24:57Kept from view by the authorities, capital punishment was now largely beneath the public's radar.
0:24:57 > 0:25:02But this would change in the aftermath of the Second World War.
0:25:03 > 0:25:08By executing Nazi war criminals, Britain and its wartime allies
0:25:08 > 0:25:11were exacting a visual show of justice.
0:25:18 > 0:25:22Over 200 of these executions were carried out by a British hangman,
0:25:22 > 0:25:25Albert Pierrepoint,
0:25:25 > 0:25:29whose deployment to Germany propelled him into the spotlight.
0:25:29 > 0:25:31Of course, in the early part of the 20th century,
0:25:31 > 0:25:35the hangman, the executioner, had been an obscure figure.
0:25:35 > 0:25:38He was an agent of the state. His identity was covered up.
0:25:38 > 0:25:41What made Albert Pierrepoint a celebrity
0:25:41 > 0:25:43was not executing people in the 1930s,
0:25:43 > 0:25:46it's when he goes off to Nuremburg at the end of the Second World War
0:25:46 > 0:25:49and he executes all these Nazi war criminals.
0:25:49 > 0:25:52And the press sort of dig and find out his identity
0:25:52 > 0:25:55and he becomes a celebrity, because he's, oddly,
0:25:55 > 0:25:58a kind of patriotic icon, one of our boys,
0:25:58 > 0:26:03who's had the last word in the war by stringing up all these awful Nazis.
0:26:03 > 0:26:04That's the way it's presented.
0:26:04 > 0:26:10And Pierrepoint then becomes the first and only modern executioner celebrity.
0:26:11 > 0:26:18Pierrepoint became a familiar face to British audiences through numerous television interviews.
0:26:19 > 0:26:22You always get a new rope and an old rope.
0:26:22 > 0:26:24Well, we always choose the old rope if we can,
0:26:24 > 0:26:29because a new rope, it seems to lash back. You see what I mean?
0:26:29 > 0:26:31The springing of it, you see?
0:26:31 > 0:26:33If you get an old one that's been used before -
0:26:33 > 0:26:35you've got to examine it well before you use it -
0:26:35 > 0:26:40and you leave it with a sandbag on that, the same weight, hanging overnight,
0:26:40 > 0:26:44you see? It's all prepared for morning then.
0:26:46 > 0:26:50There's a kind of macabre fascination to him, and the reason you have that
0:26:50 > 0:26:53is I think because the concept of executing people
0:26:53 > 0:26:56has become so detached from people's ordinary lives.
0:26:56 > 0:26:59In a very ordered, settled, consensual society,
0:26:59 > 0:27:02to be the person who actually carries out the sentence
0:27:02 > 0:27:09has this kind of weird exoticism to it and I think that's why he became such a public name.
0:27:09 > 0:27:11Did it matter how you attached the rope?
0:27:11 > 0:27:14Oh, yes, there's a certain way in doing it...
0:27:14 > 0:27:18to be instantaneous, yes, very definitely.
0:27:18 > 0:27:24It has on the rope, at the end of a rope, a brass...
0:27:24 > 0:27:28brass ring, like, and the rope goes through that, you see,
0:27:28 > 0:27:30and you put that under the left jaw,
0:27:30 > 0:27:34so when he falls and stops dead, it finishes under the chin...
0:27:34 > 0:27:39should finish under the chin as he throws his head back, and breaks the spinal cord.
0:27:48 > 0:27:53The British public may have supported the Nuremburg executions,
0:27:53 > 0:27:59but by the 1950s, there was increasing disquiet at the continued use of the death penalty.
0:28:00 > 0:28:07In 1953, this unease was evident in the case of Derek Bentley.
0:28:11 > 0:28:14Bentley, along with his accomplice, Christopher Craig,
0:28:14 > 0:28:17were stealing from a warehouse
0:28:17 > 0:28:19when they were confronted by the police.
0:28:19 > 0:28:22Craig fled, but Bentley was arrested
0:28:22 > 0:28:26and was alleged to have shouted, "Let him have it!"
0:28:26 > 0:28:30moments before Craig shot dead PC Sidney Miles.
0:28:30 > 0:28:34As Craig was only 16, Bentley would hang for the murder.
0:28:37 > 0:28:38It also transpired
0:28:38 > 0:28:44that Derek Bentley had a mental age of something like 11,
0:28:44 > 0:28:48that he came from a rather disturbed background.
0:28:48 > 0:28:52These facts were withheld from the jury at the trial.
0:28:52 > 0:28:58He had certainly not been the leader in this enterprise
0:28:58 > 0:29:02of breaking into this warehouse.
0:29:02 > 0:29:05He'd been easily captured by the police
0:29:05 > 0:29:09and the police simply said that he had shouted out to Craig
0:29:09 > 0:29:13as he came up onto the roof, "Let him have it!"
0:29:13 > 0:29:15That was much disputed.
0:29:16 > 0:29:21The case rested on the prosecution's assumption that "Let him have it!"
0:29:21 > 0:29:25was an encouragement to shoot the policeman, not to hand the gun over.
0:29:26 > 0:29:30But many of the public disagreed with this interpretation.
0:29:32 > 0:29:35And there was even doubt that he had said this at all.
0:29:38 > 0:29:41I think everybody thought that he would be reprieved,
0:29:41 > 0:29:45and when he wasn't reprieved, there was a great deal of public concern,
0:29:45 > 0:29:49both in the press, but also by people going along to the prison in the morning
0:29:49 > 0:29:52and creating a large demonstration.
0:29:54 > 0:29:59The apparent injustice led to some public sympathy for Bentley
0:29:59 > 0:30:04and to a questioning of the state's right to execute a mandatory death sentence...
0:30:05 > 0:30:08..on a vulnerable individual.
0:30:11 > 0:30:13I think what that demonstrated
0:30:13 > 0:30:20was that, to have a system in which the death penalty was mandatory for murder
0:30:20 > 0:30:26and in which everything, every way of trying to classify murders
0:30:26 > 0:30:29as those that were death worthy or not death worthy
0:30:29 > 0:30:33came down to a political decision of the Secretary of State.
0:30:33 > 0:30:39That particular Secretary of State decided that he would not act in favour of Derek Bentley,
0:30:39 > 0:30:42so there seemed to be a gross unfairness in the case.
0:30:44 > 0:30:49Bentley's case caught the public's attention through its coverage in the press.
0:30:51 > 0:30:53Through the 1950s, capital punishment
0:30:53 > 0:30:57began to be openly debated on the pages of the nation's newspapers.
0:30:59 > 0:31:03Britain had one of the highest rates of newspaper readership in the world
0:31:03 > 0:31:07and there's enormous competition between The People,
0:31:07 > 0:31:11The News of the World, The Mirror, The Mail, The Express and so on,
0:31:11 > 0:31:15and they used those classic kind of Victorian staples
0:31:15 > 0:31:19of sex and sensation and murder and whatnot, to sell copies.
0:31:22 > 0:31:27In 1955, the press seized on the story of Ruth Ellis,
0:31:27 > 0:31:32a young woman sentenced to hang for the murder of her lover.
0:31:35 > 0:31:39We have to say there's an element of interest in the fact that it was
0:31:39 > 0:31:44an attractive woman, that it was a crime of passion, so called.
0:31:44 > 0:31:47She wasn't necessarily a sympathetic person,
0:31:47 > 0:31:53in those times when promiscuity was decried even more than today.
0:31:53 > 0:31:56She'd had a couple of lovers, she had two children.
0:31:56 > 0:32:01There was quite a bit of concern that she just didn't shoot him once, but several times.
0:32:06 > 0:32:09But there was a degree of public empathy for Ruth Ellis.
0:32:09 > 0:32:14Like the Bentley case two years earlier, people questioned whether
0:32:14 > 0:32:19this "crime of passion" should carry a mandatory death sentence.
0:32:23 > 0:32:28The idea that a distraught woman acting in a passionate moment
0:32:28 > 0:32:33would go to the gallows, I think, caught the public imagination
0:32:33 > 0:32:39and made people question whether that was the right thing to be doing to a young woman.
0:32:41 > 0:32:45BELL TOLLS
0:32:46 > 0:32:52That raised the further question, if it was not right to do it to young women,
0:32:52 > 0:32:54was it right to do it to young men?
0:32:54 > 0:32:59And so I think the debate, if you look at the papers,
0:32:59 > 0:33:03I think she is... and the way her case was treated,
0:33:03 > 0:33:08was the catalyst for what would later become a campaign.
0:33:09 > 0:33:12Both Bentley and Ellis were hanged
0:33:12 > 0:33:15by Britain's chief executioner, Albert Pierrepoint.
0:33:17 > 0:33:22Such was the controversial nature of the Ellis and Bentley cases,
0:33:22 > 0:33:27that in 1957, the Conservative Government passed the Homicide Act
0:33:27 > 0:33:29which introduced the new defences
0:33:29 > 0:33:34of provocation and diminished responsibility for murder.
0:33:36 > 0:33:39So they brought in that some murders would be
0:33:39 > 0:33:43capital murders - what the Americans call first-degree murders,
0:33:43 > 0:33:46capital murders, and other murders -
0:33:46 > 0:33:51the pub fight, the domestic dispute, or whatever, would not be.
0:33:53 > 0:33:57This law resulted in fewer executions,
0:33:57 > 0:34:01with only five or six people a year being sent to the gallows.
0:34:02 > 0:34:05But the Homicide Act caused confusion.
0:34:07 > 0:34:10- NEWSREEL:- 'We don't know why some are hanged and some reprieved.
0:34:10 > 0:34:13'One Sunday newspaper posed this question and gave these examples.
0:34:13 > 0:34:19'Francis Forsyth, 18, murdered Alan Gee as he was walking home.
0:34:19 > 0:34:22'He robbed him and kicked him unconscious with his pointed shoes.
0:34:22 > 0:34:23'Forsyth was executed.
0:34:23 > 0:34:28'But David Deduchar, 21, did much the same thing.
0:34:28 > 0:34:30'He battered an old man to death and stole his wallet.
0:34:30 > 0:34:33'Deduchar was reprieved.'
0:34:34 > 0:34:38Those sort of anomalies convinced quite a lot of people,
0:34:38 > 0:34:40including members of the judiciary,
0:34:40 > 0:34:46which was the other change that really took place in the '50s and early '60s,
0:34:46 > 0:34:53you actually got members of the judiciary thinking that this just wasn't going to work any more.
0:34:58 > 0:35:03The debate over capital punishment peaked in December 1964,
0:35:03 > 0:35:08when a Labour MP, Sidney Silverman, submitted a Private Member's Bill to Parliament.
0:35:10 > 0:35:16Silverman's bill proposed an experiment - the suspension of all executions for five years.
0:35:16 > 0:35:22On 21st December 1964, as Parliament debated this bill,
0:35:22 > 0:35:25the BBC screened a live debate
0:35:25 > 0:35:30between proponents of capital punishment and abolitionists.
0:35:31 > 0:35:36In two-and-a-half hours from now, we shall know whether or not
0:35:36 > 0:35:39hanging for murder is likely to be abolished in Great Britain.
0:35:39 > 0:35:44At this moment, the House of Commons is locked in debate on capital punishment.
0:35:44 > 0:35:46There will be a free vote at 11 o'clock.
0:35:46 > 0:35:51But I believe this particular penalty for particular people,
0:35:51 > 0:35:56namely professional criminals, is the one real deterrent.
0:35:56 > 0:35:59That argument about deterrence is the standard argument
0:35:59 > 0:36:02that has been put for 150 years in respect of every form
0:36:02 > 0:36:05of capital punishment and has always been proved wrong.
0:36:05 > 0:36:07Astonishing, that Henry Rook should bring testimony today
0:36:07 > 0:36:09to say that he's now convinced
0:36:09 > 0:36:14that that particular argument cannot be borne out...
0:36:14 > 0:36:21Later that evening, Sidney Silverman's bill was passed by 200 votes to 98.
0:36:23 > 0:36:25But it didn't reflect public opinion on the issue.
0:36:27 > 0:36:31Despite much sympathy for cases like Bentley and Ellis,
0:36:31 > 0:36:34there was still widespread support for capital punishment.
0:36:36 > 0:36:38In polls in the 1960s, people said
0:36:38 > 0:36:41the one thing about the whole of the 1960s that they disliked most
0:36:41 > 0:36:43was the abolition of the death penalty.
0:36:43 > 0:36:48So what you have effectively is an elite driven,
0:36:48 > 0:36:53kind of liberal establishment project to reform the death penalty.
0:36:53 > 0:36:58That comes from education and from a different moral outlook and whatnot,
0:36:58 > 0:37:02but it also rests on something that we simply don't have today,
0:37:02 > 0:37:07which is a sense that the people in Parliament know better. They know best!
0:37:07 > 0:37:11And they are not dependant on the kind of popular will, if you like,
0:37:11 > 0:37:14on popular opinion for their mandate.
0:37:14 > 0:37:19So, in a funny way, the abolition of the death penalty would be impossible in today's Parliament.
0:37:19 > 0:37:22It was something only possible in the '50s and '60s,
0:37:22 > 0:37:26because they didn't have that kind of populist, political culture that we have today.
0:37:29 > 0:37:32Despite Parliament's ruling, the debate over capital punishment
0:37:32 > 0:37:35continued to rage throughout the 1960s.
0:37:38 > 0:37:42And they were expecting that if you could abolish it at Parliament,
0:37:42 > 0:37:45that you could also bring it back through Parliament.
0:37:45 > 0:37:50So naturally enough, any high-profile case,
0:37:50 > 0:37:56especially one which might, as it were, lead to at least bringing it back partially,
0:37:56 > 0:38:01say for the murder of policemen, or for a particularly violent set of murders.
0:38:01 > 0:38:06These were leapt on by newspapers in order to try and reverse the decision.
0:38:08 > 0:38:13In October 1965, less than a year after abolition,
0:38:13 > 0:38:20the resolve of Parliament would be tested by one of the most notorious murder cases of the 20th century.
0:38:22 > 0:38:26We think of the mid '60s as this great utopian, happy-go-lucky,
0:38:26 > 0:38:30kind of orgiastic age where everyone is having a great time.
0:38:30 > 0:38:35In fact, the mid '60s was a much more anxious, darker time than we remember.
0:38:36 > 0:38:40In what would become known as the Moors Murders,
0:38:40 > 0:38:43Ian Brady and Myra Hindley kidnapped,
0:38:43 > 0:38:46tortured and killed five children,
0:38:46 > 0:38:49burying them in shallow graves on Saddleworth Moor.
0:38:50 > 0:38:53- REPORTER:- On these bleak and desolate moorlands,
0:38:53 > 0:38:571,600ft up in the Pennines, senior police officers believe
0:38:57 > 0:39:01they'll find two more bodies, possibly a third.
0:39:03 > 0:39:07It's impossible to overstate how shocking those crimes were,
0:39:07 > 0:39:09particularly when the tapes were played in court,
0:39:09 > 0:39:11then reported in the newspapers.
0:39:12 > 0:39:15At their trial, there was public outrage
0:39:15 > 0:39:17when a tape recording was played to the court
0:39:17 > 0:39:22of Brady and Hindley torturing 10-year-old Leslie Ann Downey.
0:39:25 > 0:39:29And that means that within a year of the suspension of the death penalty,
0:39:29 > 0:39:32you have newspaper columnists and particularly people in the pub,
0:39:32 > 0:39:35people on the street corners, or whatnot,
0:39:35 > 0:39:39calling for the death penalty to be brought back, because if there are kind of two people
0:39:39 > 0:39:44who to people in he 1960s seem ideal candidates for the hangman's noose,
0:39:44 > 0:39:46it's Brady and Hindley.
0:39:48 > 0:39:54The overwhelming majority wanted to see Brady and Hindley hang for their crimes.
0:39:58 > 0:40:01But public pressure could not convince the government.
0:40:01 > 0:40:06Brady and Hindley were both sentenced to life imprisonment.
0:40:09 > 0:40:11A life sentence for murder was now mandatory,
0:40:11 > 0:40:16following the suspension of the death penalty in 1965.
0:40:18 > 0:40:20The mandatory life sentence was brought in
0:40:20 > 0:40:24as a condition of abolishing the death penalty.
0:40:24 > 0:40:28Those who opposed abolition were told by those who advocated it
0:40:28 > 0:40:30and who in the end prevailed
0:40:30 > 0:40:34that they would always be safeguarded, because there would be this mandatory life sentence.
0:40:36 > 0:40:39The mandatory life sentence was aimed at extending
0:40:39 > 0:40:43the amount of time a convicted murderer could be in prison for.
0:40:45 > 0:40:50In the days of capital punishment, those reprieved -
0:40:50 > 0:40:55and that was the majority of murderers who were reprieved -
0:40:55 > 0:41:00served sentences considerably lower than they would serve today,
0:41:00 > 0:41:04despite the media thinking we are soft on crime.
0:41:04 > 0:41:09Craig, who couldn't be sentenced to the hangman because of his age,
0:41:09 > 0:41:13when Bentley was executed, served 11 or 12 years
0:41:13 > 0:41:17for the shooting of a police officer.
0:41:17 > 0:41:22Now, even as a 16-year-old, he would probably serve a minimum of 25.
0:41:22 > 0:41:24So the sentence doubled!
0:41:26 > 0:41:29In fact, under today's tariff system,
0:41:29 > 0:41:34some prisoners serving life sentences are eligible for early parole.
0:41:34 > 0:41:37But this raises its own moral questions about
0:41:37 > 0:41:41how the state punishes individuals, like Harry Roberts,
0:41:41 > 0:41:44who's been locked up for 44 years,
0:41:44 > 0:41:49convicted after the murder of three policemen in 1966.
0:41:49 > 0:41:54I think it's extremely cruel to lock someone up forever, but in a slightly different way
0:41:54 > 0:41:59from executing them, because it's the gift that keeps on giving, if you see what I mean.
0:41:59 > 0:42:02You're in prison maybe for 40 or 50 years.
0:42:02 > 0:42:06Harry Roberts, the man who murdered three policemen in Shepherd's Bush,
0:42:06 > 0:42:08is still in jail after 44 years.
0:42:08 > 0:42:13I happen to believe he should still be there, because he committed three very, very nasty gratuitous murders.
0:42:13 > 0:42:18And if you let someone like Harry Roberts out - and there's been talk about doing so -
0:42:18 > 0:42:21you are effectively saying to others who might want to kill the police,
0:42:21 > 0:42:25"He was away for 44 years, but in the end it's forgive and forget."
0:42:27 > 0:42:32Wouldn't it be the mark of a more humane society to execute him?
0:42:33 > 0:42:38And if that means dealing, through the state,
0:42:38 > 0:42:43in a final way with someone who has committed the most grave crime,
0:42:43 > 0:42:46then I don't see that that's a problem.
0:42:46 > 0:42:50Well, I counter that by simply pointing out
0:42:50 > 0:42:54that as a matter of logic, it's much worse for an individual
0:42:54 > 0:43:00to spend the rest of their life in prison than to be executed immediately.
0:43:00 > 0:43:05I don't take the view that there is, somewhere down there, a hell
0:43:05 > 0:43:08that all bad people are going to be tortured by,
0:43:08 > 0:43:12I think, you know, if they are turned off, that's an end on it.
0:43:12 > 0:43:19And why give them the benefit of being turned off like that,
0:43:19 > 0:43:25when they could be made...punished for the rest of their lives?
0:43:25 > 0:43:28I think it's a far worse punishment, life imprisonment,
0:43:28 > 0:43:31because they suffer. They suffer!
0:43:34 > 0:43:37In 1969, Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour
0:43:37 > 0:43:41of permanently abolishing the death penalty for murder.
0:43:43 > 0:43:49Two years later, capital punishment was also removed for arson in a Royal Naval dockyard.
0:43:52 > 0:43:56Now hanging only remained for treason and piracy.
0:44:02 > 0:44:07Britain's new position was soon followed by other western countries, like France and Spain,
0:44:07 > 0:44:12which, through the 1970s, would also stop using the death penalty.
0:44:16 > 0:44:21Even the USA, which hadn't executed anyone since 1967,
0:44:21 > 0:44:24suspended capital punishment in 1972.
0:44:26 > 0:44:32In America, the instrument for the temporary abolition of the death penalty was not Congress,
0:44:32 > 0:44:37it was the Supreme Court - the one part of the government of America
0:44:37 > 0:44:40which is not susceptible to re-election.
0:44:40 > 0:44:44It was that body that actually declared
0:44:44 > 0:44:48that at least the process of executions in America was unconstitutional.
0:44:51 > 0:44:56The Supreme Court's decision infuriated the majority of Americans.
0:44:57 > 0:45:01Private papers of the Chief Justice who was in the dissent
0:45:01 > 0:45:04indicate he thought that was the end of the death penalty in America
0:45:04 > 0:45:08as did most abolitionists who thought they'd won their permanent victory.
0:45:08 > 0:45:10They couldn't have been more wrong.
0:45:10 > 0:45:14And the states immediately, responding to overwhelmingly public support for the death penalty,
0:45:14 > 0:45:20and outrage at the United States Supreme Court decision, re-enacted death penalty statutes.
0:45:23 > 0:45:28In 1976, the Supreme Court was forced to review its decision
0:45:28 > 0:45:31in response to widespread public pressure.
0:45:31 > 0:45:35Less than two years ago, death cells in prisons throughout America
0:45:35 > 0:45:39were emptied when the Supreme Court ruled against capital punishment.
0:45:39 > 0:45:42The Court decided it was unconstitutional,
0:45:42 > 0:45:47because it was a cruel and unusual form of punishment, in the sense that it was so arbitrary.
0:45:47 > 0:45:53Some people would be sentenced to death and others merely to a term of imprisonment for the same offence.
0:45:53 > 0:45:56Now, the Court is having to think again, and while it's doing so,
0:45:56 > 0:45:59death rows throughout the country are filling up again.
0:46:02 > 0:46:06The Supreme Court voted to reinstate capital punishment.
0:46:08 > 0:46:16And in 1977, Gary Gilmore became the first person to be executed in the US for ten years.
0:46:17 > 0:46:22Gilmore eventually insisted that the State of Utah put him to death.
0:46:22 > 0:46:26So he was the first of many volunteers from death row,
0:46:26 > 0:46:30basically people who could save their own lives
0:46:30 > 0:46:32by continuing to appeal
0:46:32 > 0:46:38and to have their cases reviewed and have their cases delayed, he took the opposite path.
0:46:38 > 0:46:44He volunteered, the State of Utah put him to death and from that day onwards, the execution pattern began
0:46:44 > 0:46:47once again in the USA, very slowly at first.
0:46:47 > 0:46:52In 1977, there was only two, and in the 1980s, there were a handful each year,
0:46:52 > 0:46:58but by the end of the 1990s, there was almost 100 people being put to death each year.
0:47:01 > 0:47:05Gilmore was executed by a firing squad in Utah.
0:47:07 > 0:47:10Since then, other US States have chosen to use the gas chamber
0:47:10 > 0:47:14or lethal injection to carry out death sentences.
0:47:16 > 0:47:20Gilmore's execution hit the headlines in the British Press
0:47:20 > 0:47:24and inspired some British lawyers to offer to cross the Atlantic
0:47:24 > 0:47:27and help defend those facing the death penalty.
0:47:30 > 0:47:35Through the 1980s, British lawyers, like Clive Stafford Smith,
0:47:35 > 0:47:39took up cases that challenged America's right to execute.
0:47:39 > 0:47:42In a fair world, you are going to win, but the world isn't always a fair...
0:47:42 > 0:47:44'I'd become obsessed'
0:47:44 > 0:47:49with the death penalty and this was from quite a young age.
0:47:49 > 0:47:52I was very young when I was writing something about it,
0:47:52 > 0:47:56I was about 16 at school and I thought it was a history paper,
0:47:56 > 0:47:58I thought the death penalty was history.
0:47:58 > 0:48:03When I discovered that the Americans were still killing each other, I was really shocked.
0:48:03 > 0:48:08A death row inmate is scheduled to die in the gas chamber in two weeks...
0:48:08 > 0:48:15In 1987, a BBC documentary followed Clive Stafford Smith,
0:48:15 > 0:48:21who had volunteered to act as the lawyer for a man on death row in Mississippi.
0:48:21 > 0:48:2714 Days In May captured his attempts to stop Edward Earl Johnson being executed.
0:48:27 > 0:48:32The funny thing is, I think about a future.
0:48:33 > 0:48:37Now that might seem crazy - what future could I possibly have
0:48:37 > 0:48:41knowing that I might supposedly be executed in the next two weeks?
0:48:42 > 0:48:45Despite evidence suggesting Johnson was innocent,
0:48:45 > 0:48:51he was executed in a gas chamber on 20th May 1987.
0:48:51 > 0:48:54Ladies and gentlemen,
0:48:54 > 0:48:59at 12.06am, Wednesday, May 20th, Edward Earl Johnson was executed
0:48:59 > 0:49:03in the lethal gas chamber here at the Mississippi State Penitentiary
0:49:03 > 0:49:07in conformance with the sentence
0:49:07 > 0:49:10of the Circuit Court of Lee County.
0:49:10 > 0:49:17Sitting there, watching him be gassed to death in the gas chamber was just horrific.
0:49:17 > 0:49:22In a way, the fact that there were cameras there made it slightly easier,
0:49:22 > 0:49:28because you thought this was a movie or something and someone would call "Cut!" and it would all be over,
0:49:28 > 0:49:33but I think that's what Edward thought and it made it a little easier for him, perhaps.
0:49:34 > 0:49:36When the family asked me why,
0:49:36 > 0:49:43all I could say was, "It's a sick world, it's a sick world!" Thank you.
0:49:46 > 0:49:5014 Days In May was one of a number of British documentaries
0:49:50 > 0:49:54which attacked capital punishment in America.
0:49:54 > 0:49:58These films helped shape the ongoing debate in the UK.
0:50:00 > 0:50:06When you see documentaries of people on death row in America, which are fantastically common,
0:50:06 > 0:50:11you get the feeling that this is contributing to the debate here,
0:50:11 > 0:50:13reflecting liberal opinion here,
0:50:13 > 0:50:16but probably not actually reflecting
0:50:16 > 0:50:18what the majority of the population believe.
0:50:18 > 0:50:21I don't think it's changed their minds in any way.
0:50:21 > 0:50:26In many ways, as so often with these things, it's the liberal elite speaking to the liberal elite.
0:50:29 > 0:50:36While British programme makers used the American experience to highlight the flaws in capital punishment,
0:50:36 > 0:50:43in the UK itself, there was rising public demand that Britain, too, should begin executing again.
0:50:43 > 0:50:48For the first time since abolition, Britain had a Prime Minister,
0:50:48 > 0:50:52Margaret Thatcher, who supported the death penalty,
0:50:52 > 0:50:58and MPs were given a free vote on the subject throughout the 1980s.
0:50:58 > 0:50:59When I first came into Parliament,
0:50:59 > 0:51:02there was still, certainly in the public domain,
0:51:02 > 0:51:05quite an active debate going on about the death penalty,
0:51:05 > 0:51:08because it was the height of the IRA outrages.
0:51:08 > 0:51:13Innocent people were dying in random terror acts and people were saying,
0:51:13 > 0:51:18"Even if you don't bring it back for anything else, at least bring it back for terrorism."
0:51:18 > 0:51:23So there was still quite a lively debate about whether it should be brought back.
0:51:26 > 0:51:30When there was a free vote on the death penalty, I always voted for restoration,
0:51:30 > 0:51:33because I do believe there's a very strong moral case
0:51:33 > 0:51:36for saying that such a deterrent should be available.
0:51:36 > 0:51:42This government will never surrender to the IRA. Never!
0:51:42 > 0:51:45Really all of that was really smashed
0:51:45 > 0:51:48at the end of the '80s and '90s
0:51:48 > 0:51:53when, of course, the government had to confront the fact
0:51:53 > 0:51:56that in the cases of the Irish terrorists,
0:51:56 > 0:52:00particularly the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four,
0:52:00 > 0:52:07that all of these people had been exonerated on the basis that they had not had a fair trial
0:52:07 > 0:52:13and that...the evidence was not sufficient to convict.
0:52:15 > 0:52:20In 1991, the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four were declared innocent
0:52:20 > 0:52:24and released after spending almost two decades in prison.
0:52:24 > 0:52:29I've been in prison 15 years for something I didn't do,
0:52:29 > 0:52:32for something I didn't know anything about.
0:52:34 > 0:52:36Had Britain retained the death penalty then,
0:52:36 > 0:52:40they would have almost certainly faced execution.
0:52:40 > 0:52:47Whether it's Guildford Four, Birmingham Six, Judith Ward, Tottenham Three and so on,
0:52:47 > 0:52:49in many of these cases,
0:52:49 > 0:52:53what transpired was that...
0:52:53 > 0:52:57there was a...a flawed system.
0:52:57 > 0:53:02Now, you can't have a final verdict, like an execution,
0:53:02 > 0:53:08where you haven't got an infallible system, which means that
0:53:08 > 0:53:14there's a serious risk you are going to, as it were, kill innocent people.
0:53:17 > 0:53:20It was cases of miscarriages of justice like these
0:53:20 > 0:53:25that persuaded many in government that Britain could never reinstate capital punishment.
0:53:28 > 0:53:34In 1994, the last free vote took place in Parliament on reintroducing the death penalty.
0:53:34 > 0:53:38It was heavily defeated, with Home Secretary Michael Howard
0:53:38 > 0:53:42now voting in favour of retaining abolition.
0:53:45 > 0:53:48For a long time, I supported capital punishment,
0:53:48 > 0:53:51because I thought it was a deterrent,
0:53:51 > 0:53:56and actually I still think it is a deterrent,
0:53:56 > 0:54:01but I changed my mind, because of the risk of a mistake.
0:54:02 > 0:54:07It was the cases of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four
0:54:07 > 0:54:10that changed my mind on that.
0:54:10 > 0:54:15I accepted that you could never completely eliminate the risk of mistake
0:54:15 > 0:54:21and since then, I've become adverse as well to the whole idea
0:54:21 > 0:54:24of the state deliberately taking someone's life.
0:54:28 > 0:54:33But it wasn't until 1998, when the Labour government passed the Crime and Disorder Act,
0:54:33 > 0:54:37that the death penalty was completely removed from British Law.
0:54:38 > 0:54:43Up until then, executions could still be carried out for treason and piracy.
0:54:45 > 0:54:52Later that year, the Court of Appeal quashed the 1953 conviction of Derek Bentley
0:54:52 > 0:54:54and he was posthumously pardoned.
0:54:56 > 0:55:01By 2010, 139 countries had abolished the death penalty.
0:55:09 > 0:55:14We are seeing a greater polarisation in the world.
0:55:14 > 0:55:21We are seeing a wide gap between the mental make-up
0:55:21 > 0:55:27of those people in the countries that oppose the death penalty
0:55:27 > 0:55:34and the people in the countries that see no problem with it.
0:55:35 > 0:55:41Surprisingly, the country that has the highest cases of capital punishment per capita is Singapore.
0:55:42 > 0:55:48But it is believed the country that executes the most people per year is China.
0:55:50 > 0:55:53The trouble with China is that it's still a state secret
0:55:53 > 0:55:58and the party will not reveal the number of people sentenced to death and executed. So we have no idea,
0:55:58 > 0:56:01really, how many people are put to death there.
0:56:01 > 0:56:07But at the UN Human Rights Council, at the end of 2007,
0:56:07 > 0:56:13the Chinese delegate made a statement
0:56:13 > 0:56:18that China was reducing its use of the death penalty
0:56:18 > 0:56:24and was setting plans to do so, with the ultimate aim of abolishing it.
0:56:24 > 0:56:30Now, this is a statement really from the state, the state authority, that abolition is a goal.
0:56:31 > 0:56:36We haven't heard that from the United States, I'm sorry to say, from a State Department.
0:56:39 > 0:56:44But even in America today, the use of capital punishment is a lot less widespread.
0:56:44 > 0:56:47It's also true that, amongst the 35 states that have the death penalty,
0:56:47 > 0:56:49about a third never use it,
0:56:49 > 0:56:53another third impose death sentences but rarely carry them out,
0:56:53 > 0:56:55and the death sentences that are carried out
0:56:55 > 0:56:59are typically in one region of the nation, that is to say the South.
0:56:59 > 0:57:05These days, more than half of the death sentences that are executed occur in Texas.
0:57:05 > 0:57:09So, is America a death-penalty nation? Well, in parts.
0:57:11 > 0:57:18In 2010, those American states which continue to use the death penalty have been challenged over whether
0:57:18 > 0:57:23executing an individual in a painful manner infringes their human rights.
0:57:26 > 0:57:30This debate could see the end of the death penalty in America.
0:57:30 > 0:57:35But its supporters have gone back to 18th-century ideas of punishment
0:57:35 > 0:57:37to defend the right to execute.
0:57:38 > 0:57:43To say that it has to be painless is to lose sight of what it is,
0:57:43 > 0:57:45which is punishment.
0:57:45 > 0:57:49In its etymology, in its very meaning,
0:57:49 > 0:57:54the word "punishment" comes from the same root as "pain".
0:57:54 > 0:57:59It is, in its essential conception, painful.
0:57:59 > 0:58:03If it is not painful, it is not punishment.
0:58:03 > 0:58:08When killers intentionally, or with depraved indifference,
0:58:08 > 0:58:13inflict intense pain and suffering on their victims,
0:58:13 > 0:58:17in my view, they should die a quick but painful death.
0:58:17 > 0:58:20Not torture, not drawn out,
0:58:20 > 0:58:22but quick and painful.
0:58:24 > 0:58:28The debate about capital punishment has raged for over 200 years.
0:58:31 > 0:58:35Both sides believe they are in the right.
0:58:35 > 0:58:39And if the history of capital punishment has taught us one thing...
0:58:41 > 0:58:46..it's that both sides will continue to fight their corner, passionately.
0:58:57 > 0:59:01To challenge your views and learn more about the justice system,
0:59:01 > 0:59:07go to bbc.co.uk/justice and follow the links to the Open University.