Christa Pike case yet another reason why UK was right to abolish death penalty: Christa Ackroyd

I spent so many happy days as a youngster mucking out other people’s horses just to be near them and watching that same show night after night with my granny when TV bosses knew a good thing when they had it and it was an annual treat on the telly for those who could only dream of owning our own, but were determined to work hard enough to ensure that dream came true, as it did for me.

The girls, my granddaughters, were mesmerised by all they saw as they continue their journey to become, just like their mummy and me, more and more fascinated by these majestic animals including the little ponies now in their care, animals that teach them responsibility, hard work and days spent bonding with nature, the perfect antidote to iPads and external noise.

I was going to reminisce about meeting a young man many moons ago who came from a family of potato farmers, on the outskirts of Huddersfield, who encountered a lowly bred horse, Ryan’s Son, bought from a back street in Halifax to take on the world and win.

And how decades later and at the age of 71 John Whitaker is still doing so, although proving that which we of a certain age know, that even the most experienced among us can always make mistakes, when in one class he completely missed the start, jumped the wrong jump and was eliminated. But that’s life in a nutshell.

You are never too old to get back on board, try again and succeed – despite suffering a life threatening stroke aged 45.

But I won’t. Just let it be said that if you work hard doing something you love, you will love it for the rest of your life.

Instead this week my thoughts have been elsewhere. As mummy and the girls snoozed in the back seat on the way home after a day for the memory box, my son-in-law and I discussed everything from politics, to immigration, the cost of living to Donald Trump.

On the long journey home we enjoyed the kind of debate that we should all be able to have, disagreeing where we disagreed, and agreeing to disagree when we did.

One thing we were in tune with. Capital punishment doesn’t work as a deterrent or dare I say it, in its execution.

Maybe we agreed for different reasons but we were as one when we discussed the appalling situation where a woman on death row in America was ‘executed’ by lethal injection twice, and lived. Because if there is one thing the case of Christa Pike shows us it is that the state cannot be trusted in matters of life and death.

Before I continue I want to make it clear that there are some people so wicked that they do not deserve to live among us. I believe Christa Pike is one such person. She was 18 years old when she and her 17 year old male accomplice, spared the death penalty because of his age by a matter of months, carried out the most heinous of crimes.

Not only did they take away someone’s life but they did so in the most evil way. They tortured and murdered a 19-year-old girl they had befriended at a training camp for low-income youngsters in what was described as a brutal and satanic manner, details of which are too horrific to even put on paper.

Suffice it to say I have no sympathy whatsoever for the fact they should be both locked up for the rest of their lives. But to spend 30 years arguing about whether another human being deserves to die, deciding she does, and then failing to do so is not justice, it’s incompetence of the highest order.

What is more it means she now has the opportunity to sue the authorities for the manner in which they failed to force her to die. Which is mixed up thinking in itself.

The solution should be simple there and in this country. If you deliberately take away someone’s life then you lose the right to live your own for as long as it continues, repentant or not.

Do I trust the authorities to decide when you are fit to be released? No I do not. There are too many who have been set free to do the same and worse again.

Do I believe we in this country made the right decision to end capital punishment here? Yes I do, largely because of the case that brought about this change of heart Ruth Ellis, hanged for shooting her violent coercive boyfriend and pardoned only a few weeks ago posthumously some 70 years later. As if that counts for anything.

The state, like the rest of us gets it wrong, but at least here it now does so without the ultimate penalty already having taken place. There are many examples as to why I say thank goodness.

Just a year ago a man who had served 38 years in prison for the murder of a young woman was released when DNA proved his innocence. Like one case I covered, that of Stefan Kiszko, he had learning difficulties but was never a killer.

Sadly Stefan died two years after his release and 18 years after his conviction. The state effectively took the life of an innocent man even after the abolition of the death penalty.

Stephen Downing a teenager with the mental age of 11 was questioned without a lawyer, signed a confession he didn’t understand which led to him being convicted of the Derbyshire murder of a woman in a cemetery and serving 27 years before being set free.

The Guildford Four – released. The Bridgewater Four – released, apart from one who died before he could be. The Birmingham six where the Court of Appeal found that evidence had either been fabricated or withheld and confessions extracted with physical or psychological torture.

Barry George freed after a year for the murder of Jill Dando after firearms forensic evidence was discredited. There are more and there will be more I am sure.

And now this, when the state can’t even carry out the punishment they deem fit. So no, capital punishment is not fit for purpose and not just on moral grounds. As for American planning to live stream an execution by firing squad, heaven help us.

So forgive me if I want my little grandchildren to live an Enid Blyton world with ponies and puppies and parents and grandparents who live to spoil them, keep them safe and more importantly away from the ills of the world.

Because don’t tell me the state knows better than we who tasked with protecting them how they should be raised. It never has and it never will. And if that means playing ponies, long may their innocence continue.