Of course, a new debate on the death penalty will not be influenced at all by fevered front pages and panting columnists :

THE killer who escaped the noose in the '60s only to kill again 40 years later has sparked a debate on whether the death penalty should be reintroduced.

A poll conducted in Melbourne, where Leigh Robinson committed his crimes, found 78 per cent of about 3000 respondents voted for the return of capital punishment.

Was it a phone poll, or a read-this-story-and-now-click-vote poll? The story doesn't say. But only one person, Leigh Robinson's stepson, was needed for this headline :



We just can't get out of the 20th century.