Capital Punishment In Australia
Capital punishment has been formally abolished in Australia. It was last used in 1967, when Ronald Ryan was hanged in Victoria. Ryan was the last of 114 people executed in the 20th century and prior to his execution Queensland and New South Wales had already abolished the death penalty for murder. Brenda Hodge became the last person sentenced to death in August 1984. Her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and she was paroled in 1995. It was removed as a punishment for murder in all states by 1984 when the state of Western Australia abolished the death penalty for all crimes, and the next year NSW removed death as a possible punishment for treason, piracy and arson of naval dockyards.
Between Ryan's execution and 1984 occasional death sentences were passed in Victoria, South Australia, and Western Australia, but were commuted to life imprisonment. In 2010 federal legislation prohibited capital punishment in all Australian states and territories.
Read more about Capital Punishment In Australia: History, Public Opinion
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“Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“It is a capital blunder; as you discover, when another man recites his charities.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“I like Australia less and less. The hateful newness, the democratic conceit, every man a little pope of perfection.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)