The people who feign what they deem to be human rights most likely were among those who levelled criticism at Dr Saphire Longmore’s call for the death penalty for convicted child killers. Those individuals have no regard for the rights of victims. They see only some sort of twisted cause in defending monsters who take it upon themselves to deny people their right to life, and thus inflict pain and loss on the victims’ family, friends, and community.

Dr Longmore, a Government senator and consultant psychiatrist, reiterated her position on this matter in the Upper House on Friday, even as she acknowledged that, while the country has capital punishment on its books, it is not being enforced.

Her position, though, is based on her belief that the most severe punishment should be the fate of anyone who kills a child, especially when the killing is premeditated. Such individuals, Dr Longmore argued, “…should not even be considering that they have the chance of seeing sunlight again”.

Previously, this newspaper supported capital punishment; however, over time we re-evaluated our position and have been advocating life without the possibility of parole for people convicted of the most heinous crimes.

The murder of children, we believe, is one of the most horrific crimes that, undoubtedly inflicts unimaginable pain on their families.

Still fresh in our minds is the testimony of Ms Sudine Mason, whose eight-year-old daughter Danielle Rowe was kidnapped and brutally murdered in 2023 by Ms Kayodi Satchell.

Last December, at the sentencing exercise in that gruesome murder case, Ms Mason, in her victim impact statement, told the court that the cemetery where her daughter is buried has become her “second yard”. She also said that little Danielle’s murder has driven her eldest child to attempt suicide four times; and has left Danielle’s six-year-old brother battling trauma and saving meals and toys for his dead sibling.

“My heart is so full that I don’t know where to start,” Ms Mason said, adding that the murder has left her devastated.

Similar expressions of deep pain have been elucidated in our courts before as such brutish acts are, unfortunately, a manifestation of the epidemic of violence that we have come to accept as normal.

We recall the similarly savage murder of nine-year-old Gabriel King in St James in January 2022; the abduction, rape, and murder of six-year-old Shanika Anderson in downtown Kingston in April 2005; the case of 14-year-old Yetanya Francis, who was raped, stabbed, and burnt while on her way to buy a meal from a community shop in Arnett Gardens, St Andrew, in August 2018; the callous slaughter of four siblings — 15-year-old Kimanda Smith, 12-year-old Sharalee Smith, five-year-old Rafaella Smith, and 23-month-old Kishawn Henry Jr — and their mother Ms Kimesha Wright at their house in Cocoa Piece, Clarendon, in June 2022. There are, of course, many more.

There is never an acceptable answer to these horrendous crimes, and the torment can last a lifetime.

We share Senator Longmore’s view that anyone who can so callously take the life of child should not be allowed to exist in the same space as law-abiding people. If threatening the death penalty will serve as a deterrent, it will be worth it.