by Wayne Leon Learmond

Created on: June 09, 2010

For years the Death Penalty [or Capital Punishment] has been one of the most [if not, the most] controversial systems that a country has in its law and statute books. There have been, and continue to be, just as many people who are for the Death Penalty, as there are against it. Yet one has to remember that the Death Penalty will only work when its use is applied appropriately.

Too often though this is not always the case. For instance, in the United Kingdom, Capital Punishment by hanging, ended in the latter part of the 20th Century [1964], and was ended altogether in 1969 - in Northern Ireland it was 1973.  One of the main reasons for the ending of Capital Punishment on English soil was exactly because the tide of public opinion had turned against it.

Why had public opinion changed so much toward Capital Punishment?

Timothy Evans

The answer to the above is simply because there had been too many cases in which the Death Penalty had been used  - even though sufficient doubt existed as to the guilt of the accused. This was never more shown to be wrong as with the case of a young man named Timothy Evans. Evans was hanged in the United Kingdom, in the year 1950.

Accused of the murders of both his wife and baby daughter, at 10, Rillington Place, London [which was based at Notting Hill], Evans, because of his simple demeanour, stood no chance of receiving a fair trial in a court of law.  Evans who was 24 at the time, was a semi-illiterate van driver and of course, it was easy for the police to play on this.

It was in the year 1949, that Evans walked into a police station in Wales, and reported that both his wife and infant daughter were dead. Evans had arrived home to discover both of their bodies. Evans had admitted to putting his wife's body down the drain. Yet, it was only later that both the bodies of his wife and child where found in the backyard - they had obviously been strangled.

A statement was made in which through rough interrogation by the police, Evans admitted to the killing of his wife and child - he even made a written statement admitting his guilt in the crime. It was sometime later that Evans accused a man named John Reginald Christie of the murders of both his wife and child.

Christie lived in the same house as Evans, 10 Rillington Place, where Evans lived in the flat above, with his wife and child - Christie lived in the flat below, with his own wife. Of course Christie denied everything

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