THE DIRECTOR of Public Prosecutions, James Hamilton, yesterday expressed his opposition to the death penalty and warned that any move to reintroduce it in Ireland could lead to our isolation from Europe.
Asked about recent comments by the former president of the High Court, Mr Justice Richard Johnson, that the death penalty should be revisited, Mr Hamilton said that he was opposed to it.
“I’m not going to comment on it other than to say you cannot be a member of the Council of Europe or of the European Union if you don’t accept that the death penalty is fundamentally wrong,” he said.
“Personally, I am totally against it . . . we would be putting ourselves outside of every European institution if we did it,” said Mr Hamilton after addressing a conference on policing at Waterford Institute of Technology.
Last week, Mr Justice Johnson suggested that the Government should revisit the issue of having the death penalty on the statute book for specific categories of murder, such as ones committed during an armed robbery.
A constitutional ban on the death penalty was introduced as the 21st amendment to the Constitution in 2001 after the electorate voted by 62.08 per cent to 37.92 per cent to ban it. Another referendum would be necessary if it was to return.
But speaking to The Irish Times earlier this week, Mr Justice Johnson said that it should be looked at again. “The Government should look at it. Then if the people want it they should have it . . . I am not totally in favour of it but it should be revisited,” he said.
“When I was growing up if a murder took place there were headlines in the press for a week. Now no one notices,” he added.
“Murder is no longer shocking anybody. People have far less respect for each other than they used to.”
