[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 21



INDIA:

A travesty of justice


In an otherwise verbose Constitution, one of the simplest  yet the one of
the most important provisions  is the one relating to the Right to Life:
Article 21. "No person shall be deprived of life or liberty, except by
procedure established by law." For anyone alive, this is the most
important guarantee there is in the Constitution. No doubt the more
privileged among us rely not only on the law for our protection, but also
on our class background, our connections with those in power and so on.
But the poor have only the law to depend on  and that is where the
guarantee of the procedure prescribed by law comes in.

Many among us detest the death penalty. Legal processes are fallible, but
execution cannot be revoked to restore justice. Be that as it may, at
least the process by which the penalty is imposed needs to be fair. The
seminal requirement of this fairness is that the person facing a death
penalty be represented by a lawyer. How would we like it if we entered a
court room, when arraigned as an accused, without a lawyer? Journalists
facing defamation, newspapers facing contempt, business tycoons locked in
legal battles are all represented by very senior lawyers. What if a person
facing the death penalty were to be unrepresented by a lawyer?

In order to avoid such an eventuality, the Constitution was amended in
1976 to introduce the Right to Legal Aid for indigent people as a
directive principle of state policy. The Supreme Court has held the Right
to Legal Aid for an accused facing a trial which could lead to deprivation
of life or liberty. The government enacted the Legal Services Authority
Act 1986, to ensure that legal aid is available to indigent people.

And yet, Afzal went to trial for a capital crime without adequate
representation. From his arrest till he made a so-called confession, he
was not represented by a lawyer. He gave a list of 4 lawyers who he would
have liked to have represented him. Judge Dhingra, who finally found him
guilty of conspiracy to wage war against the country, records that two of
the named lawyers refused to represent him. There is no record of the
other 2 being asked. When produced in court, he was told that a lawyer,
who he had never met, who had not visited him in jail to get a first-hand
account of what happened, would represent him. He is then said to have
admitted documents identifying the 5 dead persons and the post mortem
reports. It seems that the die was cast then: if he admitted to knowing
the 5 who were dead, he must have been be part of the conspiracy.

Sometime early in the trial, the lawyer withdrew her appearance and
represented another accused. Afzal was told that her junior would
represent him. During the trial, he noticed, that the young lawyer was
denying facts he had admitted, at which point he said that he did not want
the lawyer in question.

>From then on, the record indicates that he was cross-examining witnesses
against him himself and that too without being given copies of the
depositions. The court, in the meantime, appointed the very same lawyer in
whom Afzal had expressed no confidence as an amicus curiae. Amicus curiae
means "a friend of the court"!

Now that Afzal's curative petition has been dismissed by the Supreme
Court, there will be far-reaching consequences for thousands of people in
this country. To send a man to his death without legal representation is
not only unconstitutional but also barbaric. Why go through an elaborate
trial if the accused is not represented by a lawyer? One might as well be
judge, prosecutor, and counsel for the accused anyway and pronounce
judgment.

The tragedy is that Afzal is not the only one in these circumstances;
there are hundreds like him, deprived of liberty without adequate legal
services. The legal profession is privatised, regulating its own fees. The
legal aid on offer provides no more than Rs 3,000 to the counsel
representing an indigent accused for the entire trial. Can one really hope
to get adequate representation for that fee? It is pointless to argue that
lawyers should appear free of charge in an otherwise unregulated
profession.

A well-funded Legal Services Authority should pay its legal aid lawyers
better to attract talent to legal aid. There are many young lawyers
committed to providing legal services to the poor, who need to be backed
by a proper legal aid system. There is no lack of finances with the
authority; the question is how the money is spent. On conferences and
airfares, or on providing legal services to the poor?

I am aware that these questions have been raised in the appeal and the
review petition. But review petitions are rejected without reasons and
without a hearing. The law laid down by the Supreme Court visualises the
filing of a curative petition to cure a miscarriage of justice.

That was done by Afzal  to no avail. Now, only the President of India can
have the last word.

We can only give opinions that there has been a gross miscarriage of
justice.

(source: Hindustan ZTimes; Guest Column---- Indira Jaising; the writer is
a senior advocate.)






NIGERIA:

>From the gallows to paint brush: Arthur Judah's LifeBridge campaigns
against death penalty......


HE was set free 2 years ago, having survived about 16 years behind bars
awaiting the hangmans noose. Arthur Angel Judah through the help of
providence is alive today: Alive not only to reminiscincise over his
narrow escape from death but also to contribute to the all important
campaign of revisiting the issue of death penalty in the nations status
book.

In fact, ever since he regained his freedom, Judah has been going about
campaigning in favour of the abolition of capital punishment using the
medium of his art. Upon regaining his freedom in 2004, Judah, who learnt
the art of painting while serving his jail term, mounted an art exhibition
titled "On the Gallows," to relive memories of his travail, frustration,
pains, innocence and belief in the abolition of capital punishment in the
country.

The exhibition which held at the Quintessence Art gallery, Ikoyi, Lagos
ultimately served as a platform to launch the artists crusade against the
use of death penalty in combating crime in Nigeria. With 2 years gone, and
having set up a non-governmental organization (NGO), known as "LifeBridge"
to further persecute his cause, Arthur Angel Judah, an ex-student of Basic
Studies Department of Government College, Port-Harcourt seems set to
influence the cause of history with his second solo show; "On the Gallows
II," which opened yesterday, again at the Quintessence Art gallery, Ikoyi.

The show is coming on the heel of his return from Ghana, where he had gone
to feature in an exhibition that exposed the Ghanaian art community to the
plight of inmates in Nigeria. On display are Judah's most recent works
depicting the travails and pains associated with being an inmate in
Nigeria. The self-taught artist cum ex-convict revealed that the essence
of the show, among other things, was to give impetus to his position
regarding the application of capital punishment as a measure to combating
crime wave in the country. Judah who claims to be living in 2 worlds: the
world of a free man, and that of a man who is completely enmeshed in the
plight of inmates in the country, said he believed that he was set free to
advocate the freedom of many other innocent Nigerians who are languishing
unjustly in the various prison centres across the country. While he hopes
to document the experiences and comments, emanating from the exhibition
which he said would be mounted in Abuja, Port-Harcourt, Kano and Kaduna,
later in the year, Judah could be said to be stirring up a strong debate
on whether or not, capital punishment should be considered appropriate to
combating the incidence of crime wave in the country.

Last November, through the aid of Amnesty International, Judah featured in
a Drawing Workshop;"Death Penalty is A Bad Teacher," which held at
Amsterdam as a mark of global condemnation, following the use of capital
punishment to avert crime in Nigeria. At that workshop, Judah noted that
Nigeria remains one of the countries in the world that still had capital
punishment in its statute books and has been implementing it for decades.
According to him, the event remained one of the many drawing workshops
that his organization would be holding in different parts of the country
this year to create awareness and awaken the consciousness of Nigerians on
the need for the abolition of death penalty in Nigeria and other African
countries as a whole.

He said: "Punishment as is being argued must have the tripartite role of
being reformatory, retributive and must act as deterrent. This standard
represents what a large number of jurists and social analysts view as a
standard. This standard enjoys acceptance globally. History paints a sorry
and black picture of the gains of capital punishment. Treason, (coup
plotting), armed robbery, murder and all such offences applies to capital
punishment. It is the aim of the government that capital punishment will
help to curb crime and finally have crime eradicated so that its citizen
will have a better life.

"But Nigeria has witnessed more murder, coup plotting and armed robbery
since the application of death penalty to such offences. 10 coup attempts
are on record since the application of death penalty on the offence of
treasonable felony. Nigeria has equally witnessed more violent crimes and
gruesome murder since the application of death penalty. The poor and the
very less privileged are the souls that are on death rows; what an irony?
Death penalty has failed to deliver." According to Judah, while it is a
sad note that great number of Nigerians today perceive death penalty as
truly the last option to combating crime, it will equally pay the nation
well to consider the option of talking about crime prevention rather than
making so much noise about crime wave.

Capital punishment

Noting that the gains of capital punishment remain an indictment to his
generation, Arthur listed the names of some innocent Nigerians who have
been made to suffer state injustice, including the late Ken Saro Wiwa, Bud
Basil, Edmund Okoro, Sunday Nwajagwu, the very talented Francis Orok,
Nathaniel Mbenu, and many others, whom he claimed were executed while
being ignorant of the offences for which they were convicted.

"LifeBridge is not standing in the gap for crime perpetrators, but with
the high rate of unemployment, corruption in high places, wealth in the
hands of the very few mischievous individuals, economic imbalance, and all
such that make smooth the high way for crime and anti-social behaviour,
one should be forced to posit that snuffing out lives is not the ultimate
answer to curbing of crime. Death penalty is not a good teacher. I was a
death row inmate and can tell of the very dehumanizing and faceless
process that obtain from death row cells to the gallows. The state comes
down without shame and conscience as a willing partner in debasement of
life whenever the hangman uses the rope....Capital punishment is another
way of telling us that man can not be redeemed and that life is
worthless."

Judah, who was on death row for nine of those 16 years he was incarcerated
regained his freedom 2 years from the Enugu prison, courtesy of the
Amnesty International. He was jailed following an alleged offence he
claimed innocent of - "getting involved in an armed robbery incident."

(source: The Vanguard)