[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 17



GLOBAL:

Poverty and Capital Punishment Go Hand In Hand


In rich and poor countries alike poverty and the death penalty are almost
always inextricably bound together, according to a worldwide survey of
experts and human rights activists carried out by journalists as part of
the IPS Death Penalty Abolition Project.

"In its 40 years of fighting against the death penalty, Amnesty
International (AI) has constantly witnessed the relationship between
poverty and the death penalty," Piers Bannister, coordinator of the rights
organisation's death penalty team, told IPS. Social standing, wealth or
race were the overriding factors in deciding who received the death
penalty -- not the severity of the crime.

Penal Reform International (PRI), an organisation with a long history of
campaigning for death penalty abolition and the rights of prisoners,
echoed these views. "Imprisonment and poverty are closely linked," Mel
James, PRI policy director said, adding that many countries lacked the
technical resources to investigate serious crimes adequately and to
"ensure that the innocent are not wrongly accused."

In China, the world's most populous country, the number of executions is a
state secret, according to Antoaneta Bezlova, IPS correspondent in
Beijing.

Based on public reports, China imposed the most death sentences in 2006.
AI estimates that at least 1,010 people were executed in China in 2006.

A revealing glimpse into the "underclass" on death row is seen in Huan
Jinting's unique stories of 22 petty criminals on death row, Bezlova
reports. "Under Chinese law they pay a very high price for the mistakes
they make," Huan writes in his book Letters from death row. In China more
than 60 types of crime -- including many non-violent offences -- are
punishable by a death sentence.

Pakistan, with some 7,000 people on death row, is home to 1/3 of the
estimated world total.

"Many of Pakistan's death row inmates are innocent or had unfair trials,"
Mirza Tahir Hussain, a former death row inmate released after an
international campaign last year, told IPS correspondent Zofeen Ebrahim.
"Most of the convicts finally sent to the gallows are from poor
families... The more affluent and influential use coercion to force the
victims' family into a compromise and get off the hook," Hussain told
Ebrahim.

Even in Japan, one of the world's richest nations, the relationship
between poverty and death sentences can be seen in the high number of the
100 or so on death row who cannot afford their own defence and needed
court-appointed lawyers, according to IPS correspondent Matsuko Murakami.

"Most of the death row prisoners have no choice but to have such
court-appointed defence counsels," Akiko Takada, a leading member of Forum
90, an anti-death penalty rights organisation, told Murakami.

In Malaysia, it is estimated that nearly 90 percent of the 300 people on
death row are poor, according to Charles Hector, a human rights lawyer
interviewed by IPS correspondent Baradan Kuppusamy.

In the U.S., 95 % of the 3,350 people currently on death row are poor,
Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in
Alabama, told IPS's Adrianne Appel.

"We have a serious issue in the U.S. Our criminal justice system is very
sensitive to wealth. Our system treats you better if you are rich and
guilty, than if you are poor and innocent," Stevenson said.

In Arab and Muslim countries the death penalty is also linked to poverty,
writes Abderrahim El Ouali, IPS correspondent in the region.

Since 2003, "all suicide bombers who were arrested by the police and later
sentenced to death have been from poor areas and living in difficult
conditions," Mostafa Hannaoui, a member of Morocco's Progress and
Socialism Party told El Ouali.

Tahar Boumedra, PRI's Middle East and North Africa regional director, told
IPS that the Islamic 'diyat' -- under which the accused can pay money to
the family of the victim in exchange for freedom -- could be used to
discriminate against the poor in capital punishment cases.

"This practice is common in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other Middle Eastern
countries with a criminal justice system based on Islamic law," Boumedra
told IPS. "Those who cannot pay the 'diyat' have the death sentence
applied against them."

In Saudi Arabia, a nation that imposes one of the highest numbers of
executions in the region, Bannister reports that poor migrant workers from
Asia and Africa are most likely to receive a death sentence today.

"Unfamiliar with the legal system, often not understanding the language in
which they are questioned and put on trial, such workers are particularly
vulnerable to capital punishment. Shockingly, almost half of all the
executions in Saudi Arabia are foreign nationals," Bannister said.

In sub-Saharan Africa, Marie-Dominique Parent of PRI reports that few
countries in the region provide adequately financed legal aid schemes
offering "quality defence" for the poor.

It was completely "illusory" to think that the poor, especially those in
far-flung villages, were being afforded fair trials.

In Malawi, for example, any meaningful state legal aid was "impossible",
Parent told IPS.

>From Africa's most populous state, Nigeria, IPS correspondent Toye Olori
reports that human rights activists agree that almost all the estimated
600 people on death row are poor and without adequate legal assistance.

Olawale Fapohunda, a leading human rights lawyer working for an
independent organisation providing free legal aid, told Fapohunda that
Nigeria's death row inmates wanting to appeal were essentially "without
legal representation" because of the absence of a fully financed state
legal aid scheme.

Rights groups consider the link between poverty and the denial of
competent legal defence one of the most compelling reasons for the
abolition of the death penalty.

"It is the right of everyone to stand equal before the legal systems of
the world," Bannister said. "Otherwise, there remains the ever-present
reality that someone is put to death not for the crime they were convicted
of... but because they were poor..."

(source: IPS News)

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

Death penalty's time has run out


Of all the countries in the world, in any comparison of human rights or
compassion toward one's fellow man, the grouping of China, Iran, Pakistan,
Iraq and Sudan is likely one that any American would not want his country
to be a part of.

But there is one. According to Amnesty International, 91 % of all
state-approved executions come from these five nations and the United
States.

Long before Abu Ghraib and waterboarding, the United States gave the rest
of the world reason to believe in our brutality and barbarism. One week
ago today, activists around the world demonstrated for World Day Against
the Death Penalty and the death row of the U.S. prison system held more
than 3,300 men and women. Since 1976, more than 1,000 men and women have
been legally executed.

Execution methods only in the past dozen years have included lethal
injection, hanging, shooting (death by firing squad) and perhaps the most
famous method of all, electrocution. You heard right - as recently as 1996
men were put to death in the United States by hanging, firing squad and
the gas chamber. Methods vary from state to state; some even allow the
convict to choose how he will die. Lethal injection has become the default
method in every state except Nebraska, which offers only the electric
chair.

And even as thousands sat behind bars last week, knowing the time and date
of their deaths, one Texas man was granted a stay of execution. With
400-plus executions in the past 30 years, Texas lives up to its reputation
as the state in the union with the most executions. When Texas hesitates,
it sends a loud message. Along with 10 other states, Texas is waiting for
clarification from the Supreme Court on a case filed by 2 death row
inmates from Kentucky, asserting that lethal injection presents
"unnecessary risk" of pain and is therefore cruel and unusual.

The method of lethal injection has become prevalent in the past few
decades because it is considered more humane than the other, more
obviously gruesome methods. The three-drug "cocktail" as it is often
referred to by the media, is one part to lose consciousness, one part to
paralyze and one part to stop the heart. If performed correctly, the
inmate feels no (physical) pain. But horror stories of botched
administration abound, tales of inmates writhing in pain for a half-hour
hardly able to move because the paralyzing drug has taken effect but awake
and alive because the other two drugs for some reason have taken longer to
kick in. The likelihood of such mistakes is so high that the American
Medical Association prohibits its doctors from any involvement in lethal
injections.

(source: Daily Illini)