Capital punishment has no place in modern society

Capital punishment has no place in modern society

• MTHULISI MATHUTHU: Who will hang the hangmen?

• Abnormal baby shocks Beitbridge town

• Man who sired 2 kids with own daughter jailed

• Man has two kids with own daughter!

• Headmaster in 5-year relationship with daughter

• Zim sex beast nailed in UK

• Zim man gets life for killing wife in UK

• Zim man on murder rap in UK

• 'Zim doctor groped nurses in Canada'

• Zim man faces kidnap charges in Wales

• Nyarirangwe hits back at rape charges

• HIV tests for Zimbabwe preachers

By John Dzvinamurungu

IN the average public mind, the death penalty is viewed as the most appropriate penalty for a person convicted of murder. Many people think that justice is only done when the offender is killed.

A closer look at the death penalty however dismisses this assumption. But does the average person understand that the death penalty carried out in the name of a nation’s entire population involves everyone?

The death penalty is not only a constitutional matter but also a moral and social one. Citizens should therefore be aware of what the penalty is, how it is used, how it affects them and how it violates fundamental human rights.

An execution, like physical forms of torture, involves a deliberate assault on a prisoner. Thus it is a violation of human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In the past decades many thousands of prisoners have been executed in scores of countries around the world. Men, women and even children have been hanged, electrocuted, gassed, poisoned, beheaded or shoot to death in fulfilment of judicial orders. Many of the executed were convicted of brutal crimes. Others died for non-violent offences including "economic corruption" and adultery. Many met their deaths for purely political reasons or after blatantly unfair trials.

Nobody knows the exact number of innocent victims of execution. Cruel, arbitrary and irrevocable, the death penalty is imposed disproportionately on the poor and powerless. It is high time the death penalty is abolished worldwide. Everywhere experience shows that executions brutalise those involved in the process. Nowhere has it been shown that the death penalty has any power to reduce crime or political violence. In many different countries it is used disproportionately against the poor or against racial or ethnic minorities. It is often used as a tool of political repression.

The death penalty is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state. Indeed, it makes the state the killer. The state can exercise no greater power over a person than that of deliberately depriving him /her of life. At the heart of the case of the abolition, therefore is the question of whether the state has the right to do so.

When the nations of the world came together five decades ago and formed the United Nations, few reminders were needed of what could happen when the state believed that there was no limit to what it could do to a human being. The staggering extent of the state brutality and terror during the Second World War and the consequences for people throughout the world were still unfolding in December 1948, when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights (UDHR).

The UDHR is a pledge among nations to promote the fundamental rights as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace. The rights it proclaims are inherent in every human being. They are not privileges that may be granted or withdrawn by governments for good or bad behaviour respectively. Fundamental human rights limit what the state may or may not do to a man, woman or child. The death penalty is an inseparable component of human rights violation.

The UDHR recognises each person’s right to life and categorically states further: "No one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".

Admittedly, self-defence may be held to justify in some cases the taking of life by state officials, for example when a country is locked in warfare (international or civil), or when law enforcement officials must act to save their own lives or those of others. Even in those situations, the use of lethal force is surrounded by internationally accepted legal safeguards to inhibit abuse.

The death penalty however is not an act of self-defence against an immediate threat to life. It is a premeditated killing of a prisoner who could be dealt with by equally less harsh means. The cruelty of the death penalty is evident like torture and execution constitutes an extreme physical and mental assault on a person already rendered helpless by government authorities.

If hanging a woman by the arms until she experiences excruciating pain is rightly condemned as torture, how does one describe hanging her by the neck until she is dead? If administering 100 volts of electricity to the most sensitive parts of a man’s body invokes disgust, what is the appropriate reaction to the administering of 2 000 volts to his body in order to kill him?

It is undisputed that the physical pain caused by the action of killing a human being cannot be quantified, nor can the psychological suffering caused by foreknowledge of death at the hands of the state — whether the death sentence is carried out six minutes after trial or six weeks after mass trial.

The methods of execution, like physical forms of torture, involve a deliberate assault on a prisoner. There are seven principal methods of execution — hanging, shooting, electrocution, lethal injection, gassing, beheading and stoning.

To just highlight one method, execution by stoning is usually carried out after the prisoner has been buried to the neck or otherwise restrained. Death may be caused by damage to the brain, asphyxiation or a combination of injuries. This type of execution is rampant in Islamic states and is the highest manifestation of barbarism.
By way of background the death penalty which is upheld by Zimbabwe has a long and sad history. Our most celebrated hero and heroine Sekuru Kaguvi and Ambuya Nehanda, respectively, of the first Chimurenga were the first casualties in 1890 and despite the foregoing, which reminds us of the bitter past, Zimbabwe still upholds capital punishment; Section 12 of the Zimbabwean constitution stipulates that "it shall be lawful for a person to be killed following a death sentence imposed on him/her by Court".

Zimbabwe’s retention of the death penalty is a sad reflection which casts a dark shadow on its human rights record.

The death penalty should be abolished for a host of reasons. It is undesirable because it robs society — with proper rehabilitation the convicted person might become a useful resource and a tool in the development of society.
It is inhuman and is fraught with retribution which serves no useful purpose. An execution cannot restore life or lessen the loss to the victim’s families.

Again the death penalty is morally abominable because it has made men assume the role of the ultimate decider of life and death, which is the preserve of God alone. From the Bible we are reminded that God had harsh words for Cain for killing his brother Abel Genesis 4 vs. 9-15.

While acknowledging the general feeling of society is that punishment should be given relative to the crime. capital punishment is wrong because two wrongs don’t make a right. Murdering the murderer is another form of murder.

Apart from the foregoing, the death penalty is irrevocable and can be inflicted on an innocent person. Despite the most stringent judicial standards, human error cannot be ruled out, resulting in innocent people being executed.

Considerable research in the US has provided no evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than other punishments. These findings are consistent with what is known of the relationship between crime rates and the presence or absence of the death penalty in other countries. In some US states the homicide rate has actually increased after the resumption of execution and despite public execution in countries like China and Islamic states, crime leading to the death penalty has not declined.

It is undisputed that the death penalty has been used in some instances to suppress political dissent and to consolidate power, especially after coups and counter-coups. Members of the opposition, political groups have been eliminated as a matter of political expediency.

The case of the former Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto becomes a vivid reminder. Bhutto, overthrown in a military coup by Gen Ziaul Hag in 1977 and charged with complicity in the murder of a political opponent in 1974, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1978. His appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected in February 1979 by a vote of four to three. Bhutto was executed in April 1979.

Gen Zia had to ensure that Bhutto had to be eliminated as a political foe.
Unlike the arguments of deterrence and incapacitation, the retribution argument maintains that certain offenders must be killed, not to prevent crime, but because of the demands of justice. Execution is deemed to be a repayment for an evil deed; by killing offenders society shows its condemnation of the latter’s crime.

The persuasiveness of the argument that certain offenders deserve to die is rooted in the deep aversion felt by law-abiding citizens to terrible crimes. Close examination of how the death penalty actually works shows that the retribution argument is fundamentally flawed.

Finally, the death penalty denies the right to life. It is a cruel and inhuman punishment, brutalising all who are involved in the process. Indeed the death penalty brutalises and dehumanises the convicted person, the executioners and society at large. It serves no penal purpose and denies the widely accepted principle of rehabilitation of offenders.
John Dzvinamurungu is the vice-chairman of Amnesty International Zimbabwe. This article was originally published in the Financial Gazette
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
newsdesk@newzimbabwe.com