Should Joe Cahill have been executed in 1948?

I

Ian

Guest
Joe had a good innings, which is more than can be said for the poor young policemen he murdered in the 1940s.

Joe was sentenced to death for that but then reprieved. He then went on to be highly instrumental in forming the Provisional IRA who have been responsible for thousands of innocent deaths.

Any future high school debate about the merits of capital punishment should have Joe's example as Exhibit A for the case in favour.

As to Dog Food attending his funeral, no more shocking than Dev attending requiem mass for Hitler.
 
How do you execute someone in 1948 for something they haven't done yet? Sounds like a dopey argument to me.
 
Joe Cahill

I was born right next door to Joe Cahill in Belfast.
He was a lovely man.
RIP.
 
sheesh

I see the quality of debate is high here as usual!! I'll be glad when the school holidays are over.
 
Friendly neighbour

I was born right next door to Joe Cahill in Belfast.
He was a lovely man.
Click to expand...
Adolf Hitler's NDN said the exact same thing (in Deutcsh of course). Adolf listened to Wagner and talked to his goldfish, couldn't possibly hurt a fly.
 
Cahill

If Cahill was executed the Provo's would still have been formed however, come the start of the peace process, the guy who would have been in Cahill's place may not have supported the process and therefore made it very difficult to secure the provo's support for it. I am no fan of the murdering scum, nor of capital punishment, but it is all swings and roundabouts. The many headed hydra and all that jazz.

BTW on www.portadownnews.com there is a funny depiction of Mr C in hell.

(Sorry still can't do links...)
 
Re: Cahill

As Edward Woodward once said in 'The Equaliser' - when you end a mans life you not only take away his life but his chance to change that life.
 
Should my neighbour be executed in 2005?

There's a guy lives a few doors down from me. I don't like the look of him. He looks shifty and has bad dress sense. I reckon he may become a terrorist or something in years to come. Because of this I think he should be executed now. All those in favour?
 
..

"Joe had a good innings, which is more than can be said for the poor young policemen he murdered in the 1940s."

In fairness, I think the point made was that because he murdered a police man in 1948 he should have been hung for that.
Remember, the death penalty for murdering a gaurd was in existence here until quite recently, so you'd be sentenced to death and the President would commute this to life imprisonment.

Of all the crimes that could be viewed as meriting the death penalty, the murder of a member of the police force tends ot be one that is top of the list because a cop killer is viewed as someone above the danger levels of your 'average' killer.
 
Anotherguy uses another logic

AG, can't see ur point at all. JC was convicted of a crime committed (not potential) and sentenced to death. It was commuted to "life??" imprisonment on the mistaken belief that such a punishment would teach him a lesson and eliminate any further threat from that quarter to society. Boy, did the do-gooders get that one wrong in spades!
 
......

Well said Ian. If he had been executed, or at least locked up for life - and I mean life - it would have done society a favour. If you let people go around killing cops, society is on the slippery slope. People like him were scum.
 
Re: ......

Not attempting to open a can of worms here but which of the following should have been (or were correct to have been)executed:

Theobald Wolfe Tone
Robert Emmet
Padraic Pearse
Countess Markievich (sp?)
Michael Collins
Richard Mulcahy
Eamon DeValera
Dan Breen
Tom Barry
Joe Cahill
Martin McGuinness

If your answer to the above is all then you're particularly committed to your opinions. Or do you draw a line at Emmet the true idealist. Or maybe the treaty and wish Richard Mulcahy down was executed. Or maybe the cut off is the treaty only if on the pro-treaty side and you execute from Dev down. Or the end of the Civil War is the line and anyone involved in the border campaigns should be hung (Tom Barry hung by the Republic anyone?). Or maybe only those from up north should be hung and we arrive at Joe Cahill?

I'm not saying all of the above were of equal moral integrity, just wondering where that line should be and why.
 
.....

Who cares about the above? They were all terrorists in their time. If the above had met as untimely an end as their victims in the beginning, it would have saved a lot of innocent lives.
 
Terrorist...

Well somebody was gonna say it, so I guess I will.

One mans Terrorist is another mans Freedom Fighter.
 
untimely ends...

Pat, the US used the same logic when they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.

Do you think they were right or wrong?

Same argument, just a matter of scale.
 
Heavens above

Lads, it's great up here, wish I had been sent earlier. :D
 
Re: .....

Who cares about the above?
Click to expand...

Very much depends who you ask. Ask about most of the above anywhere in this country and you'll find very many that do. Like it or not this State is a product of and only exists because of gunmen. The Greens are the only party in the Dáil that don't have lineage back to gunmen and Sinn Féin are the only one of those to have decommisioned to get there. Remember when Fianna Fail entered the Dáil in 1927 they did so with guns in their pockets. Saying that terrorists/gunmen down through Irish history should have been hung would be like handing out speed tickets at the Indy 500.
 
All Gunmen

I've said it before Brouhaha...but try telling them. They've got short memories down here, and tiny minds filled with FF/FG/PD revisionist propoganda.
 
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