Sept. 30
BERMUDA:
Killing the killers
Earlier this year, Dame Lois Browne Evans made a rather odd comment.
During a meeting of the Bermuda Independence Commission, she suggested
that Independence could pave the way for the reintroduction of capital and
corporal punishment, should an independent Bermuda decide to replace the
Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice.
"Some of the islands in Jamaica dont want the Privy Council any more, or
in the Caribbean, because they dont believe in hanging," said Dame Lois.
"[The Privy Council has] been overturning all these appeals on hanging for
the last ten, 15 or 20 years now and its gotten under the skin of some
attorney generals and some of those islands who believe like Bermudians,
bring back the whip, bring back the cat-o-9-tails, bring back hanging."
It was a strange thing for Dame Lois to say given her own feelings about
the death penalty. When the PLP abolished capital and corporal punishment
in 1999 she said that these forms of punishment hearkened back to the
barbarisms of slavery and the colonial era, and that it was "time for us
to stop treating wrong-doers as if they were animals."
Do Bermudians really want to bring back hanging? If they still feel the
way they did in 1990, perhaps they do. In a referendum that year, 78 %
voted to retain capital punishment for premeditated murder, although only
1/3 of the electorate turned out.
The subject will be in the news again the week after next. On Monday,
October 10, the World Coalition against the Death Penalty, an umbrella
organisation, is organising a World Day against the Death Penalty. This
year its dedicated to abolition in Africa.
I have never been comfortable with the idea of state-sponsored executions,
even for the most egregious of crimes. Mainly, its the prospect of
accidentally executing the wrong person. In the UK, the Birmingham Six
were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 for two pub bombings that
killed 21 people; the Guildford Four were convicted of another pub bombing
in the same year. It later emerged that their convictions were unsafe; all
were eventually cleared and released. Although they had served 15 or more
years in prison, had they been executed no amends could have been made.
Some supporters of the death penalty argue that more innocents have been
killed by released or paroled murderers than have been executed. They say
that the death penalty is the only guaranteed way to prevent a murderer
from killing again. Theyre wrong. Imprisonment without parole for the
length of the murderers natural life would achieve the same effect.
I have often wondered whether support for capital punishment would drop if
everyone had to watch the executions, particularly the ones that go wrong.
When Bert Leroy Hunter was executed by lethal injection in Missouri in
2000, he suffered a violent and agonising death, convulsing, coughing and
gasping for air. When Frank Coppola was electrocuted, it took 2 55-second
jolts to kill him, producing a sizzling sound and the smell of burning
flesh; his head and leg caught on fire. Botched hangings can behead the
prisoner.
A fitting end, those from the "eye for an eye" school of justice might
think. But that isn't justice, it's revenge.
Worse, there's little evidence that the death penalty deters others. It
may even make juries less likely to convict if they know that the
defendant will lose his life as a result. This would probably be a
particular problem in close-knit Bermuda.
Nevertheless, there have been calls to reintroduce the death penalty here
to stem Bermuda's rising level of violent crime. Last year, Shadow Home
Affairs Minister Maxwell Burgess suggested that he would be prepared to
bring an amendment to reinstate capital punishment. Shadow Deputy Leader
John Barritt said that he too would like to see the death penalty back on
the books. "[Mr. Burgess] reflects a sentiment not only within our party
but in the community," he said. "The challenge is how to do it."
If that's true, then the UBP and the community are out of touch with the
way the capital punishment debate is going. In 1977 only 16 countries had
abolished capital punishment for all crimes. Today, 80 countries have done
so. Every year since 1997, the UN Commission on Human Rights has passed a
resolution calling for a moratorium on executions in those countries that
have not abolished the death penalty; a record 81 states sponsored this
year's resolution, 5 more than in 2004.
In 1998, in a letter to the Bermuda Sun, Eugene Carmichael pointed out
that the further we are from a crime, the easier it is to condemn, but the
closer we are, the easier it is to lose our objectivity. He proposed a
better test for us to judge how we really feel about capital punishment:
would we favour the death penalty for premeditated murder if both the
murderer and the victim were our loved ones?
Bermuda made the right decision when it abolished the death penalty. It
should never look back.
(source: Royal Gazette)
INDIA:
Swiss rape case: Rapist's death sentence upheld
The Allahabad High Court on Friday upheld the death sentence awarded to a
man for the rape and murder of a Swiss woman in Varanasi in eastern Uttar
Pradesh.
The court held that Dharam Dev Yadav was guilty of the rape and
cold-blooded murder of 25-year-old Diana, who had come to visit Varanasi
in 1997.
According to the police, Yadav, a rickshaw-puller, had managed to entice
Diana to his home in the Ghazipur district near Varanasi, where he raped
her and kept her in illegal confinement. After a few days, Yadav hacked
her to death and buried her body in his own compound.
Diana's father came to India in 1998 to search for his missing daughter.
After much persuasion by the Swiss embassy, Varanasi police registered a
case and managed to get on the murder trail and eventually arrested Yadav.
Yadav initially claimed Diana had fallen in love with him and had chosen
to stay with him in India. However, after sustained interrogation by the
police, he revealed the truth.
Yadav was convicted by the Varanasi sessions court after about 6 years.
The death sentence awarded by the district court has now been confirmed by
the High Court.
(source: Hindustan Times)
******************
SC upholds death sentence of man killing 13 family members
The Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence awarded to a man who
killed 13 members of his family, including eight children below the age of
10 years, in the night of August 17, 1986.
A bench comprising Mr Justice K G Balakrishnan and Mr Justice Arun Kumar
upheld an Allahabad High Court order sentencing Gurmeet Singh to death for
killing his father, two brothers and their wives and children.
Singh, alongwith his friend Lakha Singh who died during the trial, had
attacked the family who were caught unwarranted.
The convict and his friend had attacked the family with swords and killed
them brutally.
According to prosecution, the accused was upset with his family because
they objected to Lakha Singh meeting his wife in his absence.
Denying leniency, the court said that the accused did not have even a
grain of mercy or human kindness in his heart. He did not spare even small
kids with whom he had no enemity.
(source: WebIndia123)
