Many of the killers feel terribly ashamed after committing the act and about 20 percent commit suicide later. The argument of professional criminals, and pre-meditated crimes being among the majority of cases, do not stand the test of statistical details. It is argued that even in these extreme and relatively rare cases the cause of deterrence is served as much by long imprisonment, that could be for 30 years or more, as bydeath sentence. In a letter to the Guardian a large number of eminent psychiatrists from the London Institute of Psychiatry made some important points against capital punishment. They contend that the prisons are already stretched to the limit because of a mistaken approach to criminal penology.
Executions dehumanise both the staff and the prisoner alike.
Death penalty would make murder trials much more subjective and less objective, devaluing courts and the legal process. Since under the death sentence the condemned persons become new victims and gain most the support, the actual victims of crime whose needs are considerable find their chances of support receding. There are added reasons for its abolition in poor countries like India where the legal process takes unduly a very long time and where the poor hardly get any worthwhile legal assistance.