Chapter 14
The Vexed Question of
Capital Punishment

Men are naturally disposed to do wrong, in public and private matters, and increasingly severe penalties have failed to check this.

– DIODOTUS, SON OF EUCRATES, TO THE GREEK POLIS AT THE TIME OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS

The Peloponnesian wars took place approximately 2,500 years ago. Aren’t we slow learners? We still haven’t got it. Increasingly severe penalties, such as life imprisonment, are not a deterrent to people like Dupas who are predisposed to commit horrendous offences.

Whatever is governing the behaviour of such offenders – genetics, childhood experiences, conditioning, or whatever else – deterrence does not enter their thought processes. In Peter Dupas’s case, as has been seen from the catalogue of convicted and suspected crimes, it is obvious that jail has no impact whatsoever, save to say that each time he is released he promptly reoffends. All the evidence shows a similar modus operandi in all his offences, the only difference between offences being that with each murder the attack has become more violent and vicious.

Dupas sits and talks to ministers of religion who visit the units inside prisons. I wonder whether he ever confesses his crimes to a priest or minister and whether on his death bed he will finally make a dying admission about all his past crimes. This man is so bereft of humanity that I doubt it.

This leads one to the question: Should capital punishment be reintroduced?

I have given this question a lot of thought in the five years while I was in prison. During that time, I was forced to live with people like Ray Edmonds, Peter Dupas and Leslie Camilleri, and three indisputable facts became clear to me from this contact.

One: These people, if released into society, would reoffend, and I say that without one moment’s hesitation.

Two: Let’s be practical. It costs you the reader, as an Australian taxpayer, somewhere in the vicinity of $75,000 a year to keep a man alive in prison. That does not include the medication they take all the time, or the around-the-clock maximum security. In total the cost would be more like $100,000 a year. On the basis of pure economic rationalism, are we getting much bang for our buck? The answer is unequivocally no.

Three: These people have no chance of being rehabilitated. Apart from anything else, are we as a society prepared to take the risk that these people may be rehabilitated? A classic example is Peter Read, a notorious cop killer. Peter Read served well over twenty years and he was supposedly rehabilitated to the degree that he was able to practice as a draftsman in jail, readying him for release. Much to the disgust of the Victoria Police (with some justification, I hasten to add), Read had not been on parole long when he committed a number of serious armed robbery offences. No, nobody was killed, but his willingness to again use a firearm to commit a serious offence was indicative of the fact that it would only have been a matter of time before Read would have killed again if he had not been apprehended.

In my case the only way I overcame my drug problem was that I stopped using, and that was it. What rehabilitation did jail offer me? All I was offered was further medication! In other words, I had the chance to replace one drug with another – a one-way street to oblivion.

In any event, how do we ascertain that somebody is rehabilitated? Is it the sheer effluxion brought about by having to serve a very long term of imprisonment? Is it, like with Read, a matter of them indicating that they have equipped themselves adequately for the life awaiting them outside jail? Is it a result of intensive assessment by counsellors, psychiatrists and psychologists? If the latter, then this system is fundamentally flawed, because people like Dupas, Camilleri and Read are veterans of having been assessed and interviewed by such health professionals. They know the questions they are going to be asked, and they know precisely how to answer those questions so as to be seen in a most favourable light.

The problem with psychiatry and psychology is that it is all based on psychological assessments, and conclusions are all based on what you are told by the person you are assessing or interviewing. There are few, if any, objective physical symptoms on which to base a diagnosis.

A mate of mine who has a psychiatric qualification is of the opinion that, if psychiatry is all smoke and mirrors, where does that leave the practice of psychology? It logically follows that if somebody knows the ropes, and is devious, as most of these blokes are, then you will get the answer that will require you to give the go ahead to release the prisoner on parole. Unfortunately, the proof of the pudding as to the honesty of those answers, is well and truly in the eating, and no amount of speculation or guesswork by a health professional can change that.

Take, for instance, Paul Haig, who has recently made an application for a minimum term to be fixed by the Supreme Court in Victoria. Haig is serving life with no minimum for a number of murders. I served time with Paul Haig. He is mad, dangerous and has a very short fuse. If he were ever released into the community he is sure to wreak havoc. He is still at Port Phillip, not in protection, but in a unit where the better behaved prisoners are put. Everybody tiptoes around Haig like they are walking on eggshells, and that’s because he is likely to go off at the drop of a hat. The worst of Haig’s murders was when he shot a mother in front of her child – I think the boy was about ten years of age – a life-shattering experience by any account, but this child didn’t have to worry about that, because Haig then comforted the boy before murdering him as well. His reason for murdering the child was that the child could potentially identify him. Anybody who is prepared to murder a child in cold blood like that, has in my view, forfeited the right not only to live in our society but to live at all.

The next contentious aspect of this is what categories of offences should carry capital punishment. In my view the first and most obvious category that should not carry capital punishment, and probably the one that elicits more hysterical and uninformed opinions than any other (both for and against), is that of drug offences. And no, this is not because I was a drug offender. I hold this view because prohibition never has worked and never will work. Like it or not, the drug war is lost, and it was lost before it even started. Drugs are here to stay. What are you going to do? Swing every second person in Victoria? I don’t think so. Drugs are a health issue, and must be treated as such. If drugs were treated as a health issue, the constant squawking by politicians, police and other do-gooders that the police are undermanned would stop overnight.

At the time of writing this book the biggest ecstasy haul in the world took place in Australia. The electronic and print media were awash with customs agents and coppers, even the Customs Minister, all grinning like Cheshire cats at this momentous achievement. What precisely was achieved? Within days of this blow to the forces of darkness, drug experts and social workers were saying the bust had made no difference to availability on the streets or cost. The resources wasted and the corruption generated by police trying to enforce unenforceable drug laws make the whole thing absurd.

I call on the law makers in the parliaments and courts to look at this issue in a clear, cold, calculating manner and draw the inescapable conclusion: drugs are health issues and need to be properly addressed. We need to concentrate on proper education for the children coming through, and on rehabilitation and ongoing treatment, not jail, for those that will inevitably fall through the cracks.

I spoke recently about the issue of capital punishment with Peter Farris QC, a controversial Melbourne barrister, Peter’s view was that four categories of offences should attract the death penalty. They are: terrorists, cop killers, rapist/murderers and paedophile/murderers. I would add another category: child murderers such as Paul Haig.

If convicted after due process, those people have, in my view, forfeited their right to live and ought to be executed.

The view opposing capital punishment is that nobody in our society has the right to take the life of another. But the recidivist murderers that I am suggesting ought to be eliminated have no thought for the life of their innocent victim. Now, this argument is as old as the hills. The bible says we should turn the other cheek, but it also says “an eye for an eye”. So whichever way you want to look at this argument, there are two sides, and both have pluses and minuses in their favour.

The opinion expressed here is my view, and my view alone, and I know that it will draw a lot of criticism.

This is a debate we must have. I think there is a huge groundswell of opinion in favour of the death penalty in extreme cases, but I also know that no government will have the guts to run a referendum for fear of getting the answer they don’t want: Bring back the death penalty!