capital punishment

Challenge to protocol means Albertan could die of old age before constitutionality of capital punishment is decided

Conservative backbencher Brent Rathgeber explains why he opposes the death penalty.

The Justice Minister’s decision to order the extradition of Hassan Diab is a source of concern. Meanwhile, interim Liberal leader Bob Rae has written to the governor of Montana to plead for clemency for Ronald Allen Smith.

Last week, the NDP criticized Conservative Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu after Mr. Boisvenu suggested convicted murders be given rope and allowed to decide for themselves whether they wanted to live. Pat Martin referred to the Senator using a bad word.

The Conservative senator seemingly has some ideas on reducing prison expenses

Prominent members of the federal government—that’s who

Canadian murderer Ronald Allen Smith is entitled to the benefit of a written, objective government policy concerning his situation

Capital punishment in Japan it seems to be growing in popularity

I happened to stay up late last night to finish the Man Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall, in which novelist Hilary Mantel imagines Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s often vilified chief minister, as a wily humanist who ushers England toward modern government. This being a story of 16th-century statecraft, torture and executions feature prominently. More than once the question of whether the king might show sufficient mercy to have someone’s head cut off, rather than burning them alive, arises.

The debate over the net costs of the government’s Truth in Sentencing bill is of the kind that makes me want to throw up my hands and whine “Aw, I don’t knowwwww…”. On the one hand, the Parliamentary Budget Office has presented an estimate of the costs that makes the bill seem demented. Kevin Page’s numbers don’t factor in the benefits of any potential deterrence effect; they admittedly rely, at many points, on wild assumptions; and they were assembled with the help of a lot of the sort of “independent” expert who sees prisons as inherently barbarous and would happily blow them all up if someone presented them with a big red button that would do it instantly. But as Page himself has pointed out, this is a fight between questionable evidence and no evidence. The government hasn’t really shown any good-faith sign of a serious effort to cost out the elimination of two-for-one credit for time in remand.

A condemned man chose death by bullets rather than lethal injection—and he’s not alone

Is our education system producing citizens who can’t make a tough call?