This is a story I’ve never told. Frankly, it’s been too painfully intimate to recount, and when I was younger the story was the preserve of my older relatives. It was their’s to tell if they wished, not mine.

Now though, as the years passed and I entered my fifties, I’ve become one of the oldest members of my family. So I’m now the custodian of these memories.

The story is quite simple in its horror: many years ago, long before I was born, one of my family was executed for a murder they didn’t commit. Some years later, the real killer was identified and my relative posthumously pardoned.

I’ll go into no further, for now. There’s not space to do justice - how ironic that word is in this context - to my relative and what happened to them. It needs a long telling. So, one day I’ll write the story, perhaps a book, as it’s a tale worthy of public attention.

There are many lessons to be learned from those awful events. For now, though, I invoke this family tragedy to explain my own personal hinterland, and what shaped me, specifically my views on capital punishment.

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You can be sure that any time the subject of the death penalty arises this story sits heavy in my thoughts. If such a dreadful mistake could befall my relative - to be dragged to the gallows innocent yet hanged by the state - then it could befall anybody.

And if that’s the case, if the state can make mistakes, then the state should never have the power to take the life of a citizen in the first place.

This old family story has played over in my mind of........

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