I have always been against the death penalty but the case of Sara Sharif makes me question that view

17 December 2024, 11:27

I have always been an opponent of the death penalty because history has shown us that the court system and the police can be fallible and mistakes can be made.

What must have been going through the mind of Timothy Evans as he was led to the gallows following the death of his wife and infant daughter in 1949.

Yes, he was later pardoned for the murder but it was 17 years too late. Mr Evans had been robbed of his life and his last moments were full of injustice and terror.

But Mr Evans isn't the only case where we can legitimately ask if capital punishment truly fits the crime.

Should Derek Bentley have been hanged for saying 'Let him have it Chris' when confronted by a policeman during a burglary? Mr Bentley was sentenced to death under the principle of joint enterprise despite never firing the gun that killed the officer and may have been telling his friend to hand over the weapon.

Should Ruth Ellis have been hanged for killing her lover in a crime of passion? History shows she was treated dreadfully by him before shooting him in the heat of the moment.

Is the death penalty a deterrent for serious crime? I would argue the answer is no.

Look at America. Many states have the death penalty and that hasn't helped bring the murder rate down. While in the UK, the spate of high-profile armed robberies in the 1970s was caused partly by the draconian sentences slapped down on the Great Train Robbers.

For a criminal, if you were going to get 25 years for robbery with a cosh you might as well carry a gun.

But this now brings me to the tragic case of Sara Sharif.

And I admit that I am torn.

Who could fail to be revulsed by what her father Urfan Sharif and stepmother Beinash Batool did to the poor child.

The plain facts do not begin to describe the torture visited on a young child over many months during which she was regularly restrained, beaten, burned with an iron, scalded, bitten, hooded and left to lie in her own faeces.

By the time she died Sara had suffered more than 25 broken bones from being hit repeatedly with a cricket bat, a metal pole and a mobile phone. Specialist doctors and pathologists found evidence on Sara’s body of around 100 separate internal and external injuries including a traumatic brain injury.

Even just writing those two paragraphs I can feel the horror and revulsion building up inside of me. How can we seriously let people who can do these things to a child live?

Heartbreakingly, in recent years, Sara is not the only case of children being subjected to the most appalling torture before being murdered. We must ensure that names such as Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson are never forgotten.

Does this mean the death penalty for the people guilty of these appalling crimes?

On balance, I would have to say no because I don't want our society to embark on the bumpy road back to the death penalty. How long would it be before we see cases like Timothy Evans or Derek Bentley?

But that can't be a let-off for the scum that treated Sara so horrifically.

The rest of their wretched lives need to be as grim as possible before they find their rightful place...rotting in hell.

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