Deterrence?

Article 50 has been triggered, but it has emerged that many Brexit supporters want more than tighter immigration controls – they want the return of capital punishment too, but what does it achieve? Deterrence?

If anyone should be deterred, it should be those aware of the consequences – police, lawyers, prison offices, for example, so let’s see whether it works in practice. It has been over half a century since Britain carried out its last execution. The 1950s was an important decade for executions in Britain – four serious miscarriages of justice and the only serving police officer at the time of his offence hanged for murder.

A Unique Place in Infamy

James Robertson was hanged on December 16th 1950. He was the only police officer to suffer execution in Britain in the 20th Century (http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=635) although former officers had been hanged in both that century and the preceding one too. But Britain is far from alone in executing police officers whom the death penalty failed to deter.

Robertson’s crime was callous, but Mohamed Mustafa Tabet was the Poster-boy of Infamy. His litany of crimes and the cover-up that was attempted disgrace any notion of justice.

Tabet was executed by firing squad on August 8th 1993. He was a serial rapist, believed to have claimed as many as 518 victims, mostly school-girls. Tabet had abused his position as a Commissioner of Police in Casablanca, and been allowed to commit these heinous crimes through the complicity of colleagues – later jailed – and a doctor who disgraced his profession, Dr Driss Lahlou (http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=1339).

Heinous

Despite terrorist atrocities in 2003 and 2007, Morocco’s last execution was that of Tabet. So what about countries that retain and use the death penalty? Has the death penalty deterred law enforcement officers from committing capital offences?

Tabet and Robertson are not the only examples of police officers who have been executed. Resenting the loss of his position as Vice-Chairman of the Brigade Revolutionary Committee, for failing to adhere to family planning policy, the Brigade Militia Company Commander Wang Xiwen’s became a mass murderer. His shooting spree killed seven and wounded 12 in Handan on November 17th1980.

His support for the notorious Gang of Four, and actions in support of them made clemency even less likely. The trial of the Gang of Four had been due to begin that month. Xiwen broke into an armoury and stole weapons, including grenades. He returned to stock up on weapons too. His rampage left six dead – another fatally wounded – and 12 more injured, five of them seriously.

Found guilty on April 1981, Xiwen’s appeals proceeded quickly – the last of which was dismissed on June 10th 1981. He was immediately executed by firing squad in front of a 50,000 crowd at the Handan Municipal Stadium.

Elite Assassin

On January 4th 2011 the Governor of Punjab (Pakistan), Salmaan Taseer was assassinated by his bodyguard Malik Mumtaz Qadri, because Qadri a fundamentalist Muslim, objected to Tasseer’s opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

Qadri shot Taseer 27 times with an AK-47. Qadri was convicted at an Anti-Terrorism court in Islamabad on October 10th 2011. His appeal against the death penalty was dismissed by Pakistan’s Supreme Court on December 12th 2015. He was hanged on February 29th 2016.

Qadri had been a member of the Elite Police – ironically a domestic counter-terrorist unit in the Punjab – since 2010. It also provided VIP protection.

Nothing Special

At first glance there is nothing special about December 16^th 1950, but it proved to be one of the most important dates in the history of British justice. It was the day that the veneer of deterrence was stripped away from capital punishment in Britain once and for all. James Ronald Robertson was not just another prisoner who paid the ultimate price for his crime – he was a special category of person who suffered capital punishment.

Robertson was hanged that morning in Barlinie Prison in Glasgow, but he was unique in the annals of people executed in Britain in the twentieth century. If ever a person should have been deterred from committing murder by the death penalty, it should have been Robertson. He was perhaps the most important guilty person executed in Britain in the twentieth century.

Why? Because James Robertson was the only serving police officer to be hanged in Britain in the twentieth century. So what brought a law enforcement officer to face the long drop at the hands of Albert Pierrepoint and his assistant Steve Wade?

The Road to Infamy

Catherine McCluskey died on July 29^th 1950. She had seemingly been the victim of a callous hit and run driver. Her body was left where she fell in the road. It soon became clear to Constable William Kevan that there was more to this than met the eye at first glance. There were no tyre-marks in the road indicating a screeching halt. There was no glass in the road from a sudden stop and McCluskey’s injuries were not consistent with an accidental hit and run.

It was a deliberate murder, which had been badly staged to look like an accident. The killer had not only hit McCluskey, but reversed over her. It could not have been an accident. The woman was soon identified as McCluskey when a friend reported that she had failed to return home to pick up her baby after reports of the death was published. Kevan was told that McCluskey had been having a relationship with a police officer named Robertson.

Investigations established that Robertson was supposed to be on duty on July 29^th, but between 11.15 and 1.30 that night he absented himself from his beat with Constable Dugald Moffat. The lack of an alibi soon became the least of Robertson’s problems. His car was a stolen vehicle with false number plates: the exhaust was damaged and the under-carriage was stained with blood and human hairs. He had run over McCluskey twice.

Disgrace

Charged with vehicle offences and murder, Robertson denied everything at his trial in November 1950. His defence on the car theft charges defied credibility. He claimed to have found it and driven it. A few days later he found the log elsewhere as well. Quite why a police officer would think this behaviour, even if true, was acceptable seems to have escaped him. They were still crimes.

His explanation of McCluskey’s death defied belief. He had met her that night. They argued and he drove off, abandoning her in the road. He then thought better of it and went back for her accidentally reversing into her. This explanation fails to explain how he managed to accidentally run over her twice. It took the jury just over an hour to decide that Constable James Robertson was a murderer.

The Ultimate Punishment

Robertson’s week long trial ended in Lord Justice Keith having the dubious distinction of sentencing a serving police officer to death. The execution was scheduled to take place on December 4^th, but a stay was granted while Robertson appealed. After the appeal was dismissed a new date was set, less than two weeks after the original date.

There was no reprieve, so Robertson became the only serving police officer to face the gallows in Britain in the last century. He was just 33 years-old when he demonstrated that capital punishment was not even a sufficient deterrent to prevent a police officer abandoning his beat to commit murder.

The allegedly ultimate deterrent had failed to stop a serving police officer unlawfully cutting short the life of a woman he was sworn to protect. Could it ever be taken seriously as a deterrent again after such a monumental failure?