Death penalty remarks condemned

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has denounced as “deeply misguided and frivolous” a suggestion by the former president of the High Court that the use of the death penalty should be revisited.

The rights watchdog was responding to remarks made by Mr Justice Richard Johnson in which he said the issue of capital punishment for certain kinds of murder, such as those committed during armed robberies, should re-examined.

In an interview in The Irish Times, the former judge said: "The Government should look at it. Then if the people want it they should have it."

“I am not totally in favour of it. But it should be revisited,” he said. “It would have to be for specific offences. If people arm up and go out to rob and decide to take out anyone who gets in their way, they should pay the price. It should be a matter for each individual case.”

But ICCL director Mark Kelly said the death penalty was unlawful in every European Union and every Council of Europe State.

“If Ireland wished to re-introduce the death penalty, it could do so only at the cost of renouncing its membership of the European Union and the Council of Europe," he said.

“As a matter of law, it is deeply misguided for a retired judge to suggest that it is within the realms of possibility that the use of the death penalty in Ireland could be revisited.

“This would seem to be a frivolous suggestion by a judge noted for his wit,” Mr Kelly said.

The State legally abolished the death penalty in 1990 and put a constitutional ban on its re-introduction in 2001.

Labour’s  human rights spokesman Joe Costello said the former  judge’s proposal should not be countenanced by the Government.

“Every government has a duty to protect the life of its citizens. It is wrong for a government to take the life of a citizen because that citizen may have taken the life of another citizen," he said.

“The death penalty is brutal, it gives rise to irreversible miscarriages of justice and there is no evidence that it is an effective deterrent.

"It would be foolish to re-open the debate on the death penalty considering the proximity of constitutional and legislative decisions by the Irish people to abolish it,” Mr Costello said.