Feb. 12
CANADA:
Reason over passion in death penalty debate
Chris Levy, our brilliant criminal law professor at the University of Calgary,
had just asked who among us favours the death penalty. My hand was one of them.
It was our first year of law school, 1984. The death penalty had been abolished
by Parliament eight years earlier.
“Very well,” said Levy. “I will ask you again in your final year.”
It’s almost 3 decades later and the subject of capital punishment is again with
us. Last week, Angus Reid Public Opinion surveyed more than 1,000 Canadian
adults about the subject in an online poll. We don’t know why they felt
compelled to do so, but they did.
The results were surprising to some of us.
63 % believe the death penalty is “sometimes appropriate.”
About 1/4 of Canadians, however, believe capital punishment is never warranted.
The pollsters also found that 61% of Canadians say they support reinstating the
death penalty for murder in Canada. 1/3 of the respondents disagreed.
There were some unsurprising regional differences — westerners, being mainly
conservatives, favour it; Quebecers, being mainly progressives, oppose it.
Asked why they disagree with the death penalty, 75% of opponents said they were
concerned about “the possibility of wrongful convictions leading to
executions.”
That is, making a mistake. When you execute the wrong person, there’s obviously
no going back.
Me? As a liberal, I’ve (cravenly) avoided taking a public position for years.
The hemispheres of my brain — like public opinion — are divided.
The right side of my brain, where scientists tell us emotion holds sway, feels
this way: If someone killed someone I love, I’d want to kill them with my bare
hands.
If someone kills a child, with malice aforethought, I’d want to see them
receive the same treatment.
That’s admittedly an emotional response to a very difficult question, but it’s
no less valid for that. It’s a position held by other progressives I admire,
such as Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
The left side of my brain, where reasoning purportedly dominates, holds a
contrary view. For example, what we all learned in law school — more than
anything else — was how imperfect our system is. When you study the law, you
learn that it is in need of continual improvement, and that it is fundamentally
flawed. It is flawed much like the human beings who created it.
When you study the law, you also learn — as 75% of Canadian dissenters
apparently already know — wrongful convictions are common enough to concern
every right-thinking person.
And, therefore, it’s irrational to impose death sentences in a legal system
that everyone agrees is deficient.
That’s probably a position held by another progressive I admire, Jesus Christ —
who, it should be noted, was the victim of a wrongful conviction himself.
It’s not, however, that progressives like me oppose ending another’s life in
any circumstances.
Our view on war isn’t dissimilar. Waging war against an enemy, and killing its
combatants, isn’t any sane person’s first preference.
But when we sometimes wage war — as we did, say, against Nazism — our cause is
just and defensible. But make no mistake: There is still a moral failing, even
when fighting fascism, the ideology of murder.
In most cases of capital punishment, you see, society is terminating the lives
of those few found to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But in wars, we know
— or should know — that we are, inadvertently or otherwise, killing innocents
on a large scale (witness Dresden and Hiroshima).
And we still do it. Reason over passion, someone once said.
It’s not the world we live in, but it’s the world we should aspire to.
Oh, in the final year of law school? Prof. Levy asked us again who favoured the
death penalty. No hands went up.
(source: Warren Kinsella ,QMI Agency; Toronto Sun)
INDIA:
Death penalty for 6-year-old's rape & murder
A Delhi court has awarded death penalty to a man, who killed a 6 1/2-year-old
girl after raping and sodomising her and later chopped off her hand to mislead
investigators.
The court said the killer is a "menace" to society, having committed the
`brutal and grotesque' offence and said parents must be educated to take
measures for safety of the girl child.
"There is no shadow of doubt that the offence has been committed in an
extremely brutal, grotesque, diabolical, revolting or dastardly manner that
invited extreme indignation of the community and shocked the collective
conscience of society. The convict is a menace to society," additional sessions
judge Gurdeep Singh said in a ruling.
Vinod, then a 20-year-old and a resident of Rohini, lured away his minor
neighbour on the night of August 14, 2007. He then raped her before brutally
beating her and strangulating her to death.The court prepared a balancesheet of
mitigating and aggravating circumstances and concluded he cannot be reformed
and deserved to be eliminated.
(source: The Times of India)
MALAYSIA/SAUDI ARABIA:
Malaysia has reportedly deported a Saudi journalist facing the death penalty
for his tweets
Being arrested for a tweet or a Facebook post in the Middle East is certainly
nothing new. We’ve seen activists and journalists questioned, sentenced and
imprisoned based on statements made on both social networks.
The latest story of this kind to come out of the region started in Saudi Arabia
and is meeting a swift end in Malaysia. 23-year-old Saudi Arabian journalist
Hamza Kashgari fled his home country after a series of tweets received far more
attention than he could have anticipated.
The tweets, addressed to Islam’s prophet Mohammed, were deemed blasphemous, and
received over 30,000 comments, quickly followed by the creation of a Facebook
page calling for the journalist’s execution.
The tweets, which have since been deleted from his account, have been
republished in countless blog posts and on news sites. They read:
“On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve
always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of
divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.”
“On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved
aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.”
“On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather,
I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall
speak to you as a friend, no more.”
Kashgari left Saudi Arabia where he could face charges of apostasy, which in
Saudi Arabia is punishable by death. Boarding a plane from Malaysia bound for
New Zealand, Kashgari was apprehended by Malaysian authorities, and according
to the most recent reports, he may already be on his way back to Saudi Arabia.
According to IC Publications Kashgari was to be sent back to Saudi Arabia,
following a statement from Malaysia’s Home Ministry, saying:
“Malaysia has a long-standing arrangement by which individuals wanted by one
country are extradited when detained by the other, and (Kashgari) will be
repatriated under this arrangement…The nature of the charges against the
individual in this case are a matter for the Saudi Arabian authorities.”
Kashgari’s arrest in Malaysia has been a topic of controversy, with accusations
leveled at Interpol for its involvement in the matter.
Human rights lawyers based in Malaysia have been fighting to stop the
extradition, receiving a court order to halt Kashgari’s deportation. Fadiah
Nadwa Fikri, of Lawyers for Liberty, who have publicly spoken out in Kashgari’s
favour, has been tweeting their progress, which has seen no success so far:
Justice Rohana Yusuf jz gave interim order 2stop Govt fr deporting
#HamzaKashgari to Saudi Arabia.On our way to serve court order to police.
— Fadiah Nadwa Fikri (@FadiahNadwa) February 12, 2012
Got info #HamzaKashgari is on plane at Subang airport,on our way nw to serve ct
order.its contempt of court if they do dont stop deportation
— Fadiah Nadwa Fikri (@FadiahNadwa) February 12, 2012
Still waiting at immigration office at Subang airport to find out status of
deportation of #HamzaKashgari
— Fadiah Nadwa Fikri (@FadiahNadwa) February 12, 2012
No record found at Subang airport.Nw on d way to KLIA 2serve court
order.authorities r deliberately trying to suppress info #HamzaKashgari
— Fadiah Nadwa Fikri (@FadiahNadwa) February 12, 2012
In the meantime, AFP has already reported that the Saudi Arabian journalist is
in fact on his way back to Saudi Arabia.
(source: thenextweb.com)
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