“The death penalty is fundamentally a poor person’s issue. I have never met a single person with money or resources on death row. Capital punishment means ‘those without the capital get the punishment’” – Sister Helen Prejean
“There is no justice in killing in the name of justice.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu
There has been a renewed interest in introducing the death penalty for certain offences related to illegal drugs in Sri Lanka in the recent past. This might be an indication of an upcoming election process for local or national governing bodies.
Candidates of elections know that they can win some votes by playing the ‘tough on crime’ card.
Candidates
Not very many candidates of any of the elections in Sri Lanka within the next few years would want to say anything about the sky-rocketing food prices or the economy of the country in general since they do not have anything positive to say and also since they themselves are responsible for the current situation anyway.
However, they will play ‘anticorruption’, ‘tough on crime’ and ‘national security’ drums as loud as they can prior to the elections. Since similar strategies have worked very well during elections in the past there is no reason to believe that it wouldn’t work this time either.
Though such strategies have worked well for the candidates and perhaps for some of their close friends and families it may not be an easy task to prove that they have worked well for the country. One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that the country wouldn’t be where it is today if those strategies did work for the benefit of the country.
Irrespective of whether suggestions such as, introducing death penalty for offences related to illegal drugs, are just empty promises political parties or candidates make during their campaigns for elections it is always better for the country if the citizens can be aware of the repercussions of implementation of such policies.
“The death penalty is no more effective a deterrent than life imprisonment…it is also evident that the burden of capital punishment falls upon the poor, the ignorant and the underprivileged members of society.” – Thurgood Marshall
Statements made by legal scholars such as Thurgood Marshall who was a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 to 1991 show that Sister Helen Prejean’s view that the capital punishment means those without capital get the punishment, is not purely based on her religious beliefs.
Religious leaders all over the world have claimed that there certainly is an element of revenge hidden in the death penalty, though proponents do not explicitly state it as a factor influencing their thought process.
Sri Lankans, majority of whom claim to be followers of Buddhism, would find it difficult to comprehend the contradictory nature of their religious beliefs and agreeing with implementation of the death penalty, even on a person convicted of murder.
If one assumes that there is no element of revenge in implementing the death penalty, then one would only support it under the assumption that it will help reduce crime, especially murders.
Killing a person, whether it is ordered by the court system of the country or not, is murder. Therefore, the logic behind supporting the death penalty is that, killing one person, in this case the convicted criminal, might save the life of many others.
This line of thinking assumes that if this convicted criminal is not killed, then there is a possibility that he/she may kill again, or when this criminal is killed the others who may be thinking of committing similar crimes would be scared of the death penalty and therefore refrain from committing similar crimes.
Scientific study
No scientific study shows that the death penalty has effectively reduced the rate of similar crimes to a sustainable level anywhere in the world. Another assumption, knowingly or not, the proponents of the death penalty make is that the margin of error, of the proceedings of the judicial system they live within, is zero and there will not be any wrongful conviction.
Because if there is a possibility that at least one innocent human being could be killed by the State due to a mistake made by anyone of the hundreds of other people who were involved with the judicial system, then that would be a murder that should also be prosecuted under the same conditions.
There is no judicial system in the world with a zero margin of error. Sri Lanka is no exception. United States had executed hundreds of innocent people due to wrongful convictions.
The Innocence Project founded by a few leading lawyers of the country has helped hundreds of such people who were wrongfully convicted to prove their innocence, especially after the DNA technology was developed for identification.
They were able to revisit the cases and prove that the DNA submitted as evidence did not match with those of the person convicted for the crime. About seventy of those people who were proven to be wrongfully convicted were waiting for their execution.
There are other countries where the judicial systems are so corrupt that over 75 percent of convictions are wrong. There are cases where some people are targeted by the Government or the powerful people in the society so that the evidence is planted by the authorities themselves in order to make the conviction of that person legitimate.
If such an innocent person is given the death penalty, then wouldn’t that top the list of acts that characterise premeditated murders?
The international trend towards abolition of the death penalty is continuing with 121 countries voting in favour of a moratorium on the use of the death penalty during the year 2019 alone.
The Islamic Republic of Iran even lifted the death penalty for a number of drug offences reducing the number of executions significantly in the following year. Annual Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights indicated that out of 193 member nations only 23 countries carried out executions in 2017 and it even went down to 19 in the following year.
What is even more important for Sri Lankans to note in that report is their findings that indicate that resumption of the use of the death penalty after a long de facto moratorium on its use would necessarily increase the rate of executions and would therefore potentially be in conflict with the object and purpose of article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Article 6 prohibits arbitrary deprivation of life and provides for specific conditions for the imposition of the death penalty with respect to countries that have not yet abolished it.
Therefore, it is always better for everyone to learn more about the policy proposals politicians bring in before they decide whether to support it or not.
As Noam Chomsky says: “The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a State that is so powerful that it has the right to kill.”
The writer has served in the higher education sector as an academic for over twenty years in the USA and fifteen years in Sri Lanka and he can be contacted at [email protected]