Why Kyle Clifford's horrific murders should make us all think again about the death penalty

My latest column, published in The Scotsman on 18th March 2025.

I know all the arguments around the abolition of the death penalty but awful crimes like that of Kyle Clifford make me pause for thought.

The death penalty was barbaric, illiberal, and besides which there was little evidence that it deterred most killers. Juries shied away from convicting for murder and there was always the chance of an irreversible miscarriage of justice.

So goes the orthodoxy around the death penalty and most of these assertions have merit. Most murders, and I have been involved in investigating a few, are committed by people who have been overcome by passion, or who have lost all reason along with their temper in the heat of the moment. 

For crimes committed in a blind rage, no prospective punishment could act as a deterrent. 

I doubt that even some of the serial killers of recent times would have been deterred by a death penalty. Like many of my old police colleagues in the east of Scotland, I was involved in the hunt for two of the worst. The multiple child killer Robert Black was sexually fixated with children. One of my colleagues described him as like a guided missile, utterly compulsive when he saw a likely target. I doubt he would have deterred by any potential punishment.

Likewise Angus Sinclair, The World's End Killer was a sexual predator with such a high regard of himself that he would not have been able to imagine being caught, let alone weigh the consequences. 

I doubt either of these monsters would have been deterred by the prospect of a death penalty but there is surely the possibility that some killers would be. 

I was thinking about this when reading about the awful crimes of Kyle Clifford, the young man who brutally, and in cold blood raped and murdered his ex girlfriend and murdered her mother and sister.  Having been dropped by his ex girlfriend, his jealousy and self pity was such that he set out on an elaborate scheme to slaughter and defile his ex and her family. He even made sure the only man in the family would not interrupt his crimes. 

Equivalence in murder is a tricky business but it is hard to imagine a more cold and calculated act of evil. 

And I wonder if there had been even the remotest prospect of a death penalty whether Clifford would have committed these murders. Kyle Clifford is a narcissist, whose preening self love was a contributory factor to his crimes. This was no murder/suicide act of self destruction. He attempted to escape and it was only when he was cornered that he attempted self harm. He is also a coward as his refusal to attend his sentencing, and face the consequences, surely attests. 

Perhaps, just perhaps had there been even the remotest chance of a death penalty, might a man like Clifford have been deterred. I do not suggest a general return of capital punishment, but perhaps as a backstop, in the most exceptional of cases, it would serve as a deterrent for some. 

The lessons of the Clifford case are already shaping as the familiar ones of misogyny. Fair enough, but for me there is another more important question. Is there a way to deter killers like Clifford? 

This is a debate that in a mature society we should surely have all options on the table, but don’t hold your breath. I suspect few, if any of our political leaders have the stomach to put such matters to the test of public opinion. If you are in two minds and have a strong disposition read the details of the Kyle Clifford case. See what you think?