TV programme tells it like it is

Having just read the anguished denial by a reader that the death penalty is a successful deterrent to serious crime (“Death penalty doesn’t stop crime”, July 10), one might consider a recent sobering television programme.

The reader insists that folk who are in favour of the penalty do so because they have been fed a “blatant lie”, implying that the murderer, rapist, etc would actually favour the penalty instead of a long gaol term.

In fact, he states that “to take away one’s freedom by incarceration is one of, if not the strongest, deterring measure”.

A few months ago there was a daily documentary on television titled Unusual Suspects.

It catalogued many serious crimes in the US, and the subsequent trials and punishments meted out.

It was fascinating to see the extraordinary measures that perpetrators pursued to avoid being sentenced in their own states that upheld the death penalty.

Unbelievable legal bargains were entered into so as to be shifted to states without the penalty.

Various plea bargains were made, ratting out accomplices and so on to be imprisoned for life, in return to be spared the “ultimate penalty”.

So, who’s lying to whom? You may decide!

Doubting Thomas

Port Alfred