June 6
IRAQ:
Iraq to bring back death penalty
Iraq is to restore the death penalty after the return of sovereignty later
this month, in a measure which could affect ousted president Saddam
Hussein.
Justice Minister Malik Dohan al-Hassan today said: "The death penalty is
suspended in Iraq, but with the return of sovereignty, nothing obliges us
to maintain this suspension.
"We want to reinstitute it for very specific cases."
The death penalty was suspended in Iraq by then US Central Command chief
General Tommy Franks in April last year, as the US-led coalition invaded
the country and toppled Saddam's regime.
On June 12 last year, the coalition adopted the 1969 Iraqi criminal
legislation, but maintained its ban on the death penalty.
"Under Saddam Hussein, there were some 120 crimes punishable by death, but
we are going to narrow it down to those who, for instance, were
responsible for mass graves or plundering the country's oil wealth," the
minister said.
In 2002, the 214 executions carried out in Iraq put the country in third
place behind China and Iran in the grisly ranking of states where the
death penalty is applied, according to campaign group Hands off Cain.
The justice minister, less than a week after his appointment, was adamant
that Saddam deserved no less than the firing squad.
"Some people ask me if Saddam Hussein can escape a death sentence. For me,
his case is very simple. He was the head of the armed forces and he
deserted.
"According to his own laws, his crime is already punishable by death," he
said.
The US adviser to the Iraqi justice ministry forwarded a request from the
coalition for the death penalty to be abolished, but Mr Hassan said he
rejected it.
"I told him the social situation and the cultural level were not the same
in Iraq and his country," he stressed.
"A sentence should contain a deterrent element. The harshness of a
sentence and its deterrent element should be decided on the basis of local
social values.
"If you condemn a criminal in Iraq to 10 years in prison, it won't prevent
him from doing it again."
Mr Hassan cited a case in which Saddam slapped the death sentence on
Iraqis who had been found guilty of a string of car thefts. "The
phenomenon stopped immediately," he said.
His fellow minister in charge of finance, Adel Abdel Mahdi, concurred.
"In the present circumstances, we cannot but reinstate the death penalty.
We have already discussed the issue in the Governing Council and the
majority was favourable to the death penalty," he said.
When Saddam was captured last December, the United Nations and the
European Union voiced their opposition to the idea of restoring the death
penalty, but Mr Hassan remained unimpressed.
"There are still many countries like the United States that resort to the
death penalty. Why shouldn't Iraq have the right to do it?" he asked.
(source: The Australian)
UNITED KINGDOM:
'Surely everyone in the Scottish parliament thinks it's bad to execute an
innocent Scot? But maybe some in Westminster think it's good'
The Political Interview - Kenny Richey's death-row lawyer needs help, he
tells Neil Mackay, but will he find it here?
CLIVE Stafford Smith lives in the belly of the very beast he wants to
destroy. He wakes up every morning, hops in his car and goes to court to
tell the US justice system that it is rotten to the core. Tomorrow,
Stafford Smith, an English-born attorney who lives in Louisiana, is going
to drop in on the Scottish parliament and tell them just how rotten the US
justice system is - and then he's going to ask them to do something about
it. He's going to ask them to fight for a fellow Scot, Kenny Richey, who
is on death row in Ohio for a crime that nobody now really believes he
committed. Stafford Smith will detail the case for Richey's innocence to
MSPs and then ask each of them to sign a legal document to be lodged with
the Ohio supreme court supporting Richey.
The legal document is known as an amicus curiae (friend of the court). It
is lodged by someone who is not a party to a case, but believes that their
opinion might influence the court. In other words, it's highly likely that
an Ohio judge would listen to the collective will of the Scottish
parliament.
Richey, who was sentenced to death for killing a child while he was trying
to murder her mother in a fire, is now at the very last stages of his
fight against execution. If he fails, he will soon die. The Scottish
parliament, says Stafford Smith, has a chance to save a man's life or to
turn its back and allow him to be killed.
"The prosecution has said that the fact that he's innocent is not reason
enough to set him free as they didn't know he was innocent at the time of
the trial," Stafford Smith says, outlining the Orwellian world of US
justice.
"In 1993, a federal judge ruled that, as the US constitution has no ruling
against killing the innocent, then it doesn't matter whether you are
innocent or not when you are executed. It's profoundly stupid - the
constitution doesn't say the sun must set in the west but it does.
"Put in that context, the belief that the US has the finest legal system
in the world is total bullshit." Stafford Smith has represented some 300
death row cases - of the eight that he is now preparing to take to trial,
he believes five are truly innocent.
Stafford Smith is the antithesis of Bush's America - a man who makes most
liberals I know look like ardent Nazis. He says he'd never send anyone to
jail - ever. It sounds ridiculous at first, but then you and I haven't
spent most of our working life on death row or in Kafkaesque courtrooms
where the rich kill and walk free while the poor fry for crimes they
didn't commit.
Stafford Smith's alternative to custody is medical and psychological
treatment. He says he has never met someone who was born evil - it's
society that made them what they became.
"I've been held up seven times and I'd no sooner put those people behind
bars than I would my brother. Prison is a sick concept. Some people are
dangerous but we have an alternative called secure mental hospitals.
"I just know I'd never send anyone to prison. I couldn't be a judge. It's
disgusting. It's like slavery. Define a crime. It's defined by rich, white
men. The people we define as anti-social don't choose to be anti-social. I
find that the worse the crime is, the easier it is to understand why it
happened."
He asks why Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee cannibal killer, was not
sentenced to detention in a mental hospital. He thinks that the defence of
insanity should find anyone mad if their refrigerator is filled with body
parts. Ted Bundy, one of America's most prolific serial killers, was "so
crazy he couldn't put a sentence together". These are men that should be
given treatment, not killed, Stafford Smith believes. "I don't believe in
those absurd tabloid myths about the notion of evil," he goes on. "It's as
stupid as calling someone a nigger."
Despite his maverick status, Stafford Smith is held in high esteem by the
establishment, so his task of winning around Scottish politicians may not
be that hard. He was awarded the OBE in 2000 for his humanitarian services
and during his trip to Scotland this weekend he will also pick up the
prestigious Robert Burns Humanitarian Award.
He's just come out of a Louisiana courtroom when we start talking. The
case he was dealing with involved a man called Dan Bright, who was charged
with a murder during Super Bowl Sunday in 1995. Bright's co-defendant
wrote to the district attorney to say Bright was innocent and she knew who
the real killer was. She was never allowed to testify. As a result, Bright
was sentenced to death. That's when Stafford Smith got involved.
"We asked the Feds what they had, and we got a sheet of paper that showed
they knew who the real killer was but wouldn't tell. The federal judge was
horrified. The foreman of the jury was incensed and she has now started a
campaign called Jurors for Justice." Just over a week ago, Bright's death
penalty was reversed and Stafford Smith is now pushing for a full
exoneration for his client.
Stafford Smith equates the way the Americans treat criminals with the way
British society reacts to paedophiles. "We just love to hate," he says.
"The KKK teaches poor whites to hate poor blacks so they will feel better.
My relatives, when I was growing up in the 1970s, hated the Irish. We do
the same with paedophiles. It's the politics of hatred. Paedophiles suffer
from a serious mental illness. Most hate themselves. Normal people don't
go around raping babies. We always condemn. We are always judgmental. We
always wish to blame."
Stafford Smith's professional life and private views have triggered waves
of hate mail from Americans. His role acting for detainees at the
notorious Guantanamo prison camp for alleged al-Qaeda terrorists sent
right-wing America into paroxysms of anger. "A foreigner? Representing
terrorists? The anger was amazing," he says. "It was treason, I was told.
I should be taken out and shot."
Stafford Smith says he sees similarities between himself and the alleged
terrorists he represents. "I'm a zealot," he says. "I'm a patronising
foreign guy who came over here and wants to set the USA straight."
The British government, in Stafford Smith's opinion, has failed UK
citizens who have fallen into the American penal system. Stafford Smith
says he watched one Briton, Nicky Ingram, "die on death row because John
Major wouldn't make a call. I struggle to forgive Major for refusing to
use his own considerable power.
"All he needed to do was call the Parole Board. They told me they were
waiting for him to call. If he had called, they told me, they would have
commuted Nicky's sentence.
"When it comes to Kenny's case, the British government says there is no
international issue for them to get involved in. The hell there is. The UK
is opposed to the death penalty internationally, so, if it won't intervene
on behalf of a British citizen who is innocent, then what point is there
in having a government?
"If the British government won't do it, then the Scottish parliament
should. The parliament has a last chance to speak up. Surely everyone in
the Scottish parliament thinks it's bad to execute an innocent Scot? But
maybe some in Westminster think it's a good idea.
"I can't see why Westminster would slap down the Scottish parliament for
doing the right thing. They don't need to do anything anyway, they just
need to sign the petition."
If they don't then Kenny Richey may well be left to die on death row.
"Death row is a lonely place to be - but it might not be so lonely with
six million Scots behind you," says Stafford Smith.
"Going to death row for me is still an incredible experience. That is
where the people I really care about are. I'd prefer to live in a society
of people who'd been on death row than in America - they are much nicer
people. It's terrible to leave death row - to leave people you know locked
in a cell the size of a toilet to be slowly tortured to death.
"US society just doesn't care for others. It is selfish and money-driven.
On death row, people are more thoughtful. They may have done one heinous
act - but then who isn't better than their own worst moment? The people on
death row are better than the people you meet on the street."
(source: Sunday Herald)
