I am not a proponent of the death penalty, it was officially abolished in Australia in 1985, that was way too late, but at least we moved on it. I don’t believe the state should kill prisoners, I am not soft on the judicial system, I believe in life imprisonment for certain offences, if you murder a person, you need to go to prison for a very long time. That should not be the sentence that we have in Australia where prisoners are released after 15 years, you need to be at least 30 years minimum in prison for taking a life.
Interestingly, in Western Australia was the last state along with New South Wales to abolish the death penalty. The last person hanged in Western Australia was Eric Edgar Cooke in 1964 at the gallows in Fremantle Prison. This is where it becomes interesting, Cooke was involved in at least twenty violent crimes and eight deaths. However, Darryl Beamish and John Button were wrongfully convicted of some of Cooke’s crimes. Darryl Beamish was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by hanging in 1961, his death penalty was commuted to life inprisonment and he was parolled in 1971.
Beamish returned to prison a number of years later for assaulting a young girl whilst on parole. Beamish had been in the view of police for burgalary offences prior to his inprisonment and had molested four young girls. So it is fair to say, Darryl Beamish was on the radar of the police and whilst burgalary is annoying, it may require a period of inprisonment of a couple of years for repear offences. Aggrivated burglary where violence is involved has a much higher sentence, Beamish was not convicted of this crime though. Child molestation is a very different issue, Beamish should expect a lengthy prison sentance for these crimes. But this is not what he was convicted for, it was for murders committed by Cooke. After six appeals, Beamish was exonerated
John Button’s case was completeely different, Button was innocent and had not committed any crimes. This was a miscarrige of justice where Button was convicted of manslaughter by killing his girlfriend Rosemary Anderson in 1963, Button was sentenced to ten years inprisonment and eventually released in 1968. Button was not sentenanced to the death penalty. Button never gave up, he fought on and lost a number of appeals, in 1998 his case was championed by a journalist and a number of top lawyers took on his case pro bono. It was not until 2002 that Button’s case was quashed where vehicle crash experts determined that Cooke was the [most likely] culprit.
The last person hanged in Australia was Ronald Joseph Ryan in Pentridge Prison in Victoria in 1967. So, whilst Australia kept the death penalty, it was rarely used. It is not the role of the state to kill people, that cannot be justified in any sense. However, we must follow the rule of law and if people break those laws then there should be consequences, that is where people lose their freedom and are incarcerated in the prison system.
