Northern Territory Chief Minister Denis Burke spoke...

Northern Territory Chief Minister Denis Burke spoke out against the death penalty after Western Australia (WA) Premier Richard Court claimed that the death penalty was appropriate in some cases. WA was the last state to abolish the death penalty. It did so in 1984. The last man executed in West Australia was serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke, hanged in Fremantle Prison in 1964. Shortly before he was hanged, Cooke confessed to killing two Perth women for which John Button and Darryl Beamish were convicted separately. In a surprising twist, Button offered qualified support for the death penalty. "I have faith and belief that God allows us to have the death penalty on the books," he said. "But the system we have in place at present is flawed. There are too many loopholes and if we had the death penalty it would be too easy for people to be hanged.