I'm all for the death penalty and believe only the victim's family has the right to offer clemency to the murderer. I also think the family should have the right to carry out the execution using any state approved method. Some may consider this to be an exteme view and maybe it is but is an honest reaction to living through the horror of having 2 young family members violently murdered. As the father and grandfather of our lost loved ones', I would dearly love to take this person's life in order to avenge our girls deaths. I dont want revenge, if I did I would be asking to inflict the same pain on him as he did to his victims. I believe I'm a tolerant person, but I also believe in responsibility for one's actions. The person who decides to take another life has to accept full responsibilty and pay an adequate price for their crime. I dont think the death penalty will ever be introduced in Australia, so the next step should be mandatory life in gaol till the day you die. If we wish to call ourselves civilised then we need legal and justice systems to reflect this. Surely it is still civilised to expect a murderer to spend the rest of his life segregated from mainstream society. What does it take an individual to do to be seen as losing the right to be part of a civilised community? My view of prison is firstly one of retribution from society but also of redemption. Give the prisoner his fixed-term sentence to adequately reflect the severity of the crime and make it known to the prisoner the only redemption that matters is what he finds himself. By the time the prisoner has completed his gaol term, hopefully he will have taken full responsibility for the situation he found himself in and feel remorse for the victims of his crime instead of himself. Any society which has an unbalanced justice system is doomed to anarchy. Rights and responsibilties must be of equal value.
