The Death Penalty

Personally I don’t like the death penalty (even though I will shout hang the bastard at the TV from time to time, and that’s just during question time!), for a number of reasons.

The main one is the justice system does make mistakes, and corpses find it hard to appeal. But also I don’t like the state executing citizens, even after due process. If you can’t create life, then you probably shouldn’t terminate it.

But having said that I find it somewhat tiresome about all the outrage shown when as Asian country executes a foreigner rather than one of their own citizens. Yes I agree I would rather they didn’t, but they are free to make their own laws and my sympathy for those stupid enough to ignore the fact that a country has a mandatory dealth penalty for drug trafficking, is limited. Not totally unsympathetihc but very limited.

However Keith Locke is holding a silent vigil. And the Press is also outraged, as is the Dom Post.

UPDATE: To balance things up former United MP Marc Alexander defends the Singaporean justice system.

UPDATE2: Murray from SR has IM’s me links showing the the NZ violent crime rate is 1146 per 100,000 population while in Singapore it is 46 violent crimes per 100,000 population.

We have 20 times more violent crimes per capita than Singapore. Ouch.