Nirbhaya Case: And Thereby Hangs A Tale...

Humans remain divided whether capital punishment deters crime, and whether the ‘revenge’ justifies killing the convict

- M Ramesh

Between 1932 and 1956, Albert Pierrepoint, an Englishman, killed around 600 people. Legally!

He, in fact, made a living out of killing. He was the Executioner in Her Majesty’ Prison Service, or, simply, the official hangman.

Pierrepoint — described by his friend Gordon Herod as “a very, very nice man”, would have gone on killing but for a tiff he had with the Sheriffover a payment, which made him resign in a huff and open a pub. He still took hanging assignments once in a while. After all, it was a sort of a family vocation — before him, his father Henry was one of the official hangmen.

In 1974, Pierrepoint wrote his autobiography. What he said in it would warm the hearts of those who are against capital punishment. A telling sentence from the autobiography is: “I have been amazed to see the courage with which they take that walk into the unknown. It did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.” A good example of a ‘brave’ murderer was Ruth Ellis, a colourful nightclub hostess convicted of murder, who was the last woman to be hanged in the UK. “She was a brave woman,” said Pierrepoint, who had pulled the lever to end her life.

Rope for rape