January 26, 2025 - 1:00pm

In response to the heinous crimes committed by Axel Rudakubana, who was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 52 years, the Reform UK MPs Rupert Lowe and Richard Tice led calls for a “national debate” on restoring the death penalty.  Their colleague Lee Anderson went further, posting an image of a noose on X with the comment “this is what is required”. But to grant Anderson’s wish would fly in the face of a swelling global movement towards abolition, and would not only be wrong but in the end, I believe, deeply unpopular.

Both Labour and the Tories have long been committed to abolishing the death penalty worldwide, and Downing Street made clear that the Government had no intention of joining the debate demanded by Reform. However, its MPs’ position may well get support from some of the many expressing concern over the purported “leniency” of Rudakubana’s punishment. Mr Justice Goose imposed the harshest sentence the law allows for a person who commits an offence as a juvenile — Rudakubana had been nine days short of his 18th birthday — and pointed out he is unlikely ever to be released. Nevertheless, Lowe claimed that “exceptional circumstances” demand “exceptional punishments”.

Capital punishment was abolished in Britain for ordinary offences in 1969 following a four-year moratorium, and for the rare crimes of mutiny and treason in 1998. In 1999, the UK ratified Protocol 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Second Optional Protocol of the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which means it could not restore the death penalty without denouncing them in their entirety. The last time Parliament debated capital punishment in 1998 MPs’ rejected it by a majority of 158, and despite the concerns over Rudakubana’s sentence, there is little sign of a groundswell in favour of bringing it back. Anderson’s tweet may have got 2.8 million impressions, but only 61,000 likes. Back in 2020, an online petition to restore capital punishment attracted just 12,691 signatures.

When Britain abolished capital punishment, it was in the global minority, but by the time it signed the relevant conventions 29 years later, there were 89 abolitionist nations. Today that figure stands at 128, a total joined just weeks ago by Zimbabwe, which in the past, was not known for its human rights record. Another 43 are what the UN terms “abolitionist de facto”, which means they have not executed anyone for at least 10 years.

One of the most compelling forces behind the shift in international attitudes has been increasing recognition of the potential for error. As they once were in Britain, where Timothy Evans was posthumously pardoned in 1966, 16 years after he was hanged for a murder committed by someone else, wrongfully convicted defendants have been sentenced to death and some have been executed in most retentionist countries. Possible innocence is not a feature of Rudakubana’s case, but where the death penalty remains in law, innocent people will be killed by the state, and it would be a moral disaster to allow his crimes to open the door to the wrongful judicial killing of other, future defendants.

The most common argument advanced by death penalty advocates is the claim that it is a unique and powerful deterrent — an appealing rationale in countries with high levels of violent crime, particularly following a heinous case. However, research in the US and elsewhere has not found any credible evidence to support this position.

Since Rudakubana was sentenced, some have suggested that at a time of fiscal restraint, the state should not bear the high cost of keeping prisoners incarcerated for the rest of their lives. It is grotesque and inappropriate to reduce a debate that involves profound issues about state power and the right to life to questions of cost, even if it were true that the death penalty might be cheaper than life in prison. However, in countries such as the US, which at least try to ensure procedural safeguards for those at risk of capital punishment and several ways to appeal, the death penalty costs more than life imprisonment. If Reform UK’s MPs wish to make this case, they will be on shaky ground.

The horror of Rudakubana’s crimes will not be forgotten. They were, as Mr Justice Goose made clear, “evil”. But to restore capital punishment would be an even greater evil, which unlike his crimes, we have the means to prevent.


Professor Carolyn Hoyle is Director of the Death Penalty Research Unit, part of the University of Oxford’s Centre for Criminology at the Faculty of Law, and co-author of Reasons to Doubt, a study of wrongful convictions.