[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 17



LIBYA/BULGARIA:

AIDS death row has to be solved only by Bulgaria and Libya: Gaddafi
foundation


The case of the 5 Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who were
sentenced to death in Libya has to be solved only by Bulgaria and Libya,
director of the Gaddafi foundation Saleh Abdel-Salam said, the Libyan
newspaper Libya Today reported. According to Saleh Abdel-Salam, a proof of
the 2 countries wish to find an acceptable solution is Bulgarias readiness
to remit the whole Libyan debt for the sake of ending the case, and Libyas
participation in the fund for treating the HIV infected children.

(source: Focus News Agency)






INDIA:

Has society accepted death penalty?


3 AIADMK workers have been sentenced to death for setting a bus on fire
during a political agitation in Tamil Nadu seven years back. The verdict
pronounced by a Salem court on Friday  has sparked off an intense debate
over the ethics of capital punishment all across the country.

The judgment takes the total number of death sentences, which have been
awarded in last 3 days, to 7. The question that was being discussed on
CNN-IBN's Face The Nation was: Is Indian society more accepting of death
penalty now?

On the panel of experts to discuss the question were well-known Supreme
Court lawyer Ram Jethmalani, who have argued several cases related to life
and death; and former chief justice of India and former chairman of
National Human Rights Commission J S Verma.

Denying that there is a set pattern in the increasing instances of death
sentences being awarded all across the country, J S Verma said, "It is a
coincidence that many such cases happen to be heard and decided at the
same time."

On the issue of lower courts pronouncing death sentences in cases like
political agitation or mob fury, Verma said that in the case of a session
court announcing capital punishment, it is not implemented unless it is
confirmed by the High Court. So, it is the High Court, which ultimately
awards the death sentence, and it is only then that it can be implemented.

On the matter of existence of death sentence, Verma said, "I think for
offences that can be termed as heinous crimes  for example, the raging war
against the state  death sentence should be there. But my own view is, if
it is not to be there, then the life sentences should be for really whole
of the remaining life and not merely a few years."

Regarding the type of cases on which death penalty may be awarded, Verma
said that "rarest of the rare" case is the formula but there is no precise
definition of "rarest of the rare." So, death sentence may be given on the
basis of proper evidence, in cases that are too shocking, he added.

Blaming the media for the increasing instances of death sentences being
awarded all across the country, Jethmalani said, "There is a good reason
to suspect that the judiciary is responding to the pressure from the
press. I won't say that it is proved beyond doubt that it is so, but
people are entitled to think that this is having a serious impact on the
judicial minds."

(source: CNN-IBN)

*****************************************

3rd woman on death row


The 1st case of a woman being hanged in independent India could happen
soon. When the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court order
sentencing Sonia to death in the chilling murders of her father former
Haryana MLA Relu Ram Punia and 7 others, it added the 3rd woman to the
country's death row.

Last August, the court upheld the death punishment for 2 women from
Maharashtra. They were thieves and were charged with killing 13 children.
The last time a woman was executed by the government of the country was in
the 1920s.

There's very little detail about who she was and why British-ruled India
thought it fit to give her that punishment. LTTE assassin Nalini was given
death for killing Rajiv Gandhi but the sentence was later commuted to life
on humanitarian grounds.

Sonia, along with her husband Sanjeev, who's also facing the gallows, has
decided to appeal for presidential mercy. It was on August 23, 2001, that
Sonia, then 20, was enraged over whispers that she and her husband would
be kept out of wealth accumulated by Punia.

She and her husband attacked the family of 8 with an iron rod, battering
them to death. Among the dead were Punia, his wife Krishna, son Sunil,
daughter-in-law Shakuntala, daughter Priyanka and grandchildren Lokesh,
Shivani and Preeti. One of them, Preeti, was just 45 days old at that
time.

(source: The Times of India)






KUWAIT:

Kuwait appeals court upholds death sentence for Filipino maid


A Kuwait appeals court upheld on Saturday the conviction and death
sentence handed to a Filipino maid for fatally stabbing her employer here
2 years ago, her lawyer said.

Marilou Ranario, a 33-year-old teacher who came to this oil-rich state to
work as a domestic helper, still has one appeal left before the ruling
becomes final.

Ranario's lawyer, Abdul-Majid Khraibet, said his client would make that
appeal.

Khraibet also quoted his client as saying her employer had abused her and
that she had overheard her saying she was going to arrange for men to rape
Ranario.

A criminal court found Ranario guilty of murder in September 2005 and
sentenced her to death by hanging.

(source: Associated Press)






CANADA/USA:

Senior U.S., Canadian judges spar over judicial activism----Courts should
move with the times, Supreme Court's Binnie says at McGill


If the framers of the Charter of Rights did not want judges to rule on
moral and ethical issues, they should have said so, Mr. Justice Ian Binnie
of the Supreme Court of Canada said yesterday during a freewheeling debate
with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

In a good-natured but hard-fought debate to close a McGill University
conference marking the 25th anniversary of the Charter, Judge Binnie
extolled the virtues of measured judicial activism over an archaic notion
of "frozen rights" that do not evolve with the times.

Judge Binnie said that judges who make a fetish of determining the
"original intent" of constitutional drafters are deflecting their
responsibility, weakly saying that "I'm only following orders."

"The ability of the courts to move with the times has served this country
very well," Judge Binnie said. "I say that if you erect a silo over our
court system based on a theory of originalism, it is a very good reason to
throw it out."

However, Judge Scalia attacked Judge Binnie and his own U.S. Supreme Court
brethren for believing that unelected judges are qualified to act as
social engineers who possess a greater level of expertise in deciding
morally laden issues than doctors, engineers, the U.S. Founding Fathers or
"Joe Six-Pack."

"We have become addicted to abstract moralizing," Judge Scalia said. "It
is blindingly clear that judges have no greater moral capacity than the
rest of us to decide what is right."

He mocked the prevailing judicial belief in Canada that the Charter is "a
living tree" that must be given a broad and liberal interpretation, lest
its growth be stunted.

This notion simply encourages judges to make anti-democratic decisions
that extend rights to questionable groups such as bigamists and pederasts,
he said.

Judge Scalia said back in the days when the United States was a true
democracy, citizens changed the Constitution if a consensus developed
around adding or eliminating a human right. "What democracy means is that
the majority rules," he said. "If you don't believe that, you don't
believe in democracy.

Judge Scalia ridiculed his court's landmark ruling legalizing abortion in
Roe v. Wade, saying that it was absurd to issue such a decision without
deciding first when a fetus becomes a human life. "Amazing!" he said. "Of
course, that question was central."

However, Judge Binnie countered that adding and subtracting constitutional
rights can become close to impossible. Every time the extension of a right
is proposed in Canada, he said, "everybody jumps up with their own
complaint."

Judge Binnie cited an attempt by former Newfoundland premier Brian
Peckford in the early 1980s to have his province's right to control
fisheries written into the Constitution. When former prime minister Pierre
Trudeau asked how he could possibly balance fish against human rights, he
quoted Mr. Peckford as saying, "That's your problem."

"I say that judges are as much a part of society as anyone else, and they
can recognize a dead letter when they see one," Judge Binnie said.

Judge Binnie also took a backhand swipe at former Federal Court judge
Barry Strayer, who said earlier in the conference that, when he helped
frame the Charter as a senior Justice Department bureaucrat, nobody
anticipated how far the Supreme Court would one day go in assessing the
wisdom of laws.

Judge Binnie said that if the drafters had actually intended for the
courts to tinker only around the edges with procedural aspects of laws,
rather than their pith and substance, "then you should have said so. . .
."

"This more or less disposes of judge Barry Strayer's complaint. . . ,"
Judge Binnie added.

Judge Binnie referred to the Supreme Court's Burns and Rafay ruling -- in
which it refused to extradite 2 men to face murder trials in the U.S. if
they were subject to the death penalty -- as a high-water mark for his
bench.

Judge Scalia immediately turned it on his head, ridiculing those who
believe that any convicted murderer might actually be innocent.

"I have been on the court for 20 years and I have not seen a case where I
thought there was the slightest doubt about the person's innocence," he
said.

(source: Globe and Mail)