This month I want to look at capital punishment as it is once again in the public eye. As you know, I was a Procurator Fiscal for over twenty-six years. In that period I dealt with many hundreds, if not thousands, of accused. Of those, the vast majority were not bad people. I doubt if there would be as many as half a dozen whom I would describe as so depraved as to merit forfeiting their lives.

I have little doubt that there is a gut feeling in many, if not the majority, of people that there are some categories of offenders who simply do not deserve any sympathy and should be killed. As an individual, and not a lawyer, I have little time, and no sympathy, for those who target the vulnerable in our society. We are all sickened by attacks on children and the elderly. Fortunately too most of you will not have to see the things I have had to see in my career.

As a society we ask, if not require, some people to put themselves into danger on our behalf. If there is an armed robbery, we expect the police to respond and arrest these armed and dangerous men. There are many prisoners serving life who have little to lose should they commit further offences in prison. We expect our prison officers to deal with them. What have these people to lose if they remove the policeman or prison officer standing in their way? I recall, in the Klondyke case involving the importation of over £100 million of cocaine, the genuine fear of prisoners of talking to me about their involvement in case they were stabbed in prison.

Notwithstanding this, I am not a believer in capital punishment.

I do not believe it to be a deterrent. Over eighty per cent of killings are domestic i.e. the victim knew, and was closely connected with, the killer. These are crimes committed in the special circumstances of their relationship. They are committed on the spur of the moment and are not carefully planned. Sentence is not even a consideration. Of the rest, the killer usually considers himself too clever to be caught. He too will not therefore be deterred. There are even horrible examples in the States of killers deliberately moving to executing States in order to be executed to obtain notoriety and recognition.

I studied Law at University at a time when capital punishment was a possibility. It was clear then that there was little reason to be found in differentiating between the facts of cases where a murder conviction was returned or one of culpable homicide. What became obvious even then was the reluctance of juries to convict of murder if there was a possibility of the accused being hanged. In other words the possibility of hanging swayed the jury more than the facts of the case. This reluctance by juries is also seen when considering cases of death by driving. If one looks at the definition of murder and culpable homicide, many cases of causing death by dangerous driving clearly fall into those crimes. The Crown used to prosecute for culpable homicide but juries repeatedly failed, or refused, to convict. Thereafter the separate crime of causing death by dangerous driving was created. As a former Fiscal I can assure you it was always very difficult to obtain convictions in such cases. If we put back in the possibility of execution, the most likely result will be a drop in convictions.

We must also consider the mistakes of the past and the developments in science and our understanding of people and their actings. How happy will you be as a juror to convict someone of a capital crime knowing how often mistakes have been made in the past? Are you going to risk being responsible for the decision to have someone hanged when a few years later it might be shown he was innocent? Until recently it was an unarguable "fact" that fingerprint evidence was always right. Now we have had the case of the Strathclyde police officer whose fingerprint was "found" at the murder scene when she had never been there. Can you ignore the likelihood of developments in forensic science, which could throw more light on what happened? Are you going to be so confident that there could not be the slightest mistake in the evidence and convict given he might hang?

What too do we do if, for example, we convict and pronounce death on a member of a terrorist organisation and thereafter they seize hostages to be exchanged? There is always a time gap between sentence being pronounced and carried out. Should we refuse rights to appeal to minimise this risk? The law of duress is based upon the real threat of terrorist or other violent organisations or individuals forcing innocent people to commit crimes. How much more is that to be increased if there is a threat of executing one of their members?

Capital punishment is part of our past and should be left there.

At my daughter's I found yet another example where insisting upon your rights may not be advisable. She lives in a village on Salisbury Plains. On the main roads, where of course those travelling along them have right of way, there are a number of junctions bearing the sign "Give way to tanks."