Should the Death Sentence be retained or abolished? Why?
In 2015, more than 1,634 people were executed in 25 countries worldwide and 20,292 people were on death row at the end of year. This represents the highest number of executions in more than a quarter of a century and is more than a 50% increase compared to 1,061 executions in 2014. While most of these took place in Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and China, due to high protection and state secrecy, exact numbers for China are unavailable. Contrast this to the fact that 102 countries have abolished the death sentence. (Amnesty International Report, 2016). Over the past decade in India, 3 people have been executed, while in one-third that time in the United States of America, 78 people have been executed. (IndiaSpend, 2016) (Death Penalty Information Centre, 2016).
These figures put things in perspective and raise a very pertinent question- Why is it that India and the U.S., the largest democracies of the world, still award death sentences? The argument raised in 1764 by Italian Jurist Cesare Beccaria for the abolition of death sentence questioned the state’s right to take the life of a citizen to whom it granted the right to live in sovereignty and the very objective of such punishment as a deterrent for potential future criminals. (The Hindu, 2013)
There are many reasons expressed for and against a death sentence. The main reasons why I feel the death sentence is wrong is that rehabilitation is likely to be a more effective deterrent, that it is morally wrong, that innocent people have been executed due to weak judicial processes and that too many governments use the death penalty to execute their political opponents. These issues substantiated by facts from online sources shall be briefly covered in the following text.
Death sentence as a deterrent for more crimes is one of the strongest arguments put in its favour. But does it really achieve the sought objective? According to a study in 1975, ‘The deterrent effect of capital punishment- A matter of life and death’ by American economist, Isaac Ehrlich, each execution potentially prevented the loss of eight lives during the 1960s. (The American Economic Review, 1975). However, recent reports show that studies about the crime deterrent effect of death sentence are empirically unsound. There is no actual information to prove the decrease of murders due to executions and thus no conclusive proof that death sentence is a deterrent for crime. In fact the murder rate in abolitionist states is less as compared to those in states with death sentence and this gap is increasing. (The Death Penalty Information Centre, 2016).
There is a need to question the efficacy of this as a deterrent and seek alternatives to it. In rehabilitation, the criminal is made to understand what he/she has done wrong through the process of educating them and communicating to them. They learn how to show remorse and reform their ways. A lot of countries in Europe are now stressing on the incorporation of rehabilitation in their justice systems after imprisonment because they believe there is no sound proof that death sentences stop people from committing serious offences. This is a model which should be seriously considered.
My personal opinion is that death penalty is not a deterrent for more crimes. Neither in India nor the U.S has death penalty resulted in lower crimes. Every few days we read about another crime being committed leading to the loss of another innocent life. All the available data also confirms that the death penalty has not really been the solution to bringing down crimes.
In recognising the ineffectiveness of death penalty as a deterrent lies the fact that every person (even criminals) in this world has the inalienable right to life. Sentencing a person to death and executing him/her, even one who has killed someone is a violation of this right. The saying “Bad guys deserve to suffer” is simple in putting across the notion that people who have done wrongs deserve to be punished for the same.
We see on the television and social media the public opinion and treatment of those on death sentence. Large crowds gathered outside court, with large banners, shouting protests demanding the immediate execution of the suspected culprit while being restrained by the police from attacking the accused. This shows the belief of the public that it is effective to avenge a murder with a sanctioned execution.
But is this vengeance a good thing? Mahatma Gandhi once said, ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.’ It is much easier to comprehend why people seek merciless punishment for a heinous crime than to understand whether such execution actually brings peace to the victims and their families. An accused is executed by lethal injection, shooting, hanging or whichever other method used to achieve this end. The question then arises, the criminal is dead, what next? Here I refer to two studies, one published in 2008 in the ‘Journal of Personality and Social Psychology’ and the other published in 2007 by a criminologist, Scott Vollum. In the former, financially cheated victims thought taking revenge would make them happier but in reality, punishing the culprit made them think more about the negative incident and feel worse. In the latter, interviews of friends and family of murder victims revealed that in Vollum’s sample size of more than 150 cases, only 17% felt peace and relief as opposed to 20% who got no such experience. (Greater Good, 2015)
In the context of morality, religions across the world have an ambivalent opinion towards the death sentence. In India, the concept of Ahimsa or non-violence exists as a part of Hinduism and Buddhism. In the Old Testament, we hear about taking an ‘eye for an eye’ while in the New Testament, we learn of turning the other cheek and react to injury without revenge. While Islamic states across the world, such as Pakistan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia have the highest execution rates, the Quran teaches forgiveness and reacting to evil with ‘mercy and not retaliation.’ (The Conversation, 2015)
I am of the opinion that taking another life by violent means is morally repugnant, especially so when it is done by the State or sanctioned judicially. Our religious beliefs do not advocate such violent actions. There is a certain inevitability to a death sentence. If killing a human being is a wrong, killing the criminal is committing the same sin and is wrong by the same yardstick, even if sanctioned by the state.
There is a lot of data available for the U.S. regarding the innocence of those executed. Out of the 1400 people executed since 1976, it is hard to ascertain the innocent from the truly guilty. More than 8,000 men and women on the death row since it was reinstated in the 1970s were falsely convicted. (Death Penalty Information Centre, 2015). Once executed, the court pays no attention to claims of innocence of the dead prisoner and lawyers focus on cases where lives can actually be saved. This raises questions on the machinery in place that determines whether the accused should be executed or not. It highlights the violation of rights of innocent prisoners who are being subjected to grave miscarriages of justice. It is shocking to think that no one knows the number of innocents that have been put to death in this manner.
In India, since 1996, the Supreme Court has sentenced 15 innocent people to death, out of which two have been hanged. This was highlighted in a document written by 14 retired judges to the President of India in 2012. While the Supreme Court admitted 15 wrong sentencing cases in 2009, since 2000 it has ordered 60 death sentences with irregularities.
To highlight a few cases chronologically, Ravji, from a Rajasthani tribal community was executed in 1996 for killing five people. In 2009, it was declared that the case had failed to follow certain protocol before the death sentence was handed out. (The Telegraph, 2015)
The hanging of Dhananjay Chatterjee in 2004 for the rape and murder of a teenage girl has raised questions on whether an innocent man was hanged. Furthermore, when the case of Surinder Koli is considered (with respect to the serial killings in Nithari, Noida in 2006), the accused may have been executed by now had a certain technicality been overlooked. (Scroll.in, 2016). The hanging of Kehar Singh in the Indira Gandhi assassination case was another controversy which is still not accepted as a mistake of judgement. (InfoSud, 2008)
Human error is natural because judges are human beings after all. There is no standardised structure followed and biases and opinions of judges are often reflected in their judgments. There is nothing that shows why a certain accused is sentenced and another is not. These anomalies only make the case for death sentence weaker and that is one of the biggest issues I have with the death sentence- that innocent persons are convicted and hanged with no conclusive evidence. A lot of them are poor and do not have the financial ability to hire good legal talent to represent them. Instead they have to fall back on public defenders to fight their case and invariably they are never properly defended. When you consider that in India we have slow judicial processes and poorly run investigations, the chances of an innocent person being wrongly executed is high. Reliable investigations, better policing, a strong public defender system and quicker judicial decisions are essential to ensure that innocent people are not convicted. Unless we have these in place we should not execute people.
Countries including the U.S. have constantly violated human rights but sentencing those accused in crimes not leading to death and those with mental disabilities and disorders. Crimes such as corruption, kidnapping, adultery, political dissent and so called sedition, for which the death sentence is handed shows how the punishment is used as a political weapon. Lots of cases in the interest of national security and countering terrorism- the status of North Korea in this is, how thousands of executions in China are held in tight secrecy, the high numbers in Pakistan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia- all show the misuse of a tool that should in its truest form impart justice.
Based on these, I feel strongly about the necessity for the abolition of the death penalty in all countries. Having said that, in cases such as those of Nirbhaya, the brutal gang rape, torture and murder of a 23-year-old, who died subsequently and the innocent victims in the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai, the perpetrators have shown inhuman behaviour. Do these criminals deserve rehabilitation?
It is one thing if a crime has been committed in a moment of passion, but cold blooded murder of a number of innocent people is a very different story (either way, both are wrong). But a doubt arises, if we had sentenced Kasab to life imprisonment, could we face an incident where terrorists kidnap innocent Indians and negotiate to trade these victims for the release of Kasab? This does not look impossible these days with all the violence going around the world. After all some years back the Indian Government had to release a number of terrorists to save the lives of a number of passengers in an Indian Airlines plane kidnapping.
This is when the decision of the Supreme Court of India that the death penalty should be used only in the “rarest of the rare” cases is probably a rational decision. We should have the death penalty for heinous crimes, acts of terrorism and for big criminals. We need to set as many safeguards and processes as is required to ensure that only this category of people are considered for death penalty. Unfortunately we are living at a time when there is a lot of violence all over and while we should have empathy, there are occasions we do need to enforce capital punishment for major criminal activities.
Reference List
Death Sentences and Executions in 2015, (2016, not dated) , Amnesty International Report 2015, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2016/04/death-sentences-executions-2015/
10 Years: 1303 Death Sentences, 3 Executions (2015, July 29), Chaitanya Mallapur and Devanik Saha, India Spend, http://www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/10-years-1303-death-sentences-3-executions-89089
Executions by year, (2016, July 15), Death Penalty Information Centre, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions-year
India’s muddled thinking on Punishment, (2013, September 16), Suhrith Parthasarthy, The Hindu, (http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/indias-muddled-thinking-on-punishment/article5131843.ece)
The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: A Question of Life and Death, (1975, June), Issac Ehrlich, The American Economic Review, http://deathpenalty.procon.org/sourcefiles/Issac%20Ehrlich%20The%20Deterrent%20Effect%20of%20Capital%20Punishment%20A%20Question%20of%20Life%20and%20Death.pdf
Discussion of Recent Deterrence Studies, (not dated), Death Penalty Information Centre, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/discussion-recent-deterrence-studies/
Deterrence: States Without the Death Penalty Have Had Consistently Lower Murder Rates, (not dated), Death Penalty Information Centre, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-penalty-have-had-consistently-lower-murder-rates/
Is Vengeance Better for Victims than Forgiveness?, (2015, July 29), Jason Marsh, Greater Good, http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/is_vengeance_better_for_victims_than_forgiveness
Death Penalty: Is capital Punishment morally justified?, (2015, August 1), The Conversation, http://theconversation.com/death-penalty-is-capital-punishment-morally-justified-42970
Innocence and the Death Penalty, (2015, October 13), Death Penalty Information Centre, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty
US death row study: 4% of defendants sentenced to die are innocent, (2014, April 28), Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/28/death-penalty-study-4-percent-defendants-innocent/
You were wrong, My Lords, (2015, August 2), Avijit Chatterjee, The Telegraph, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150802/jsp/7days/story_34917.jsp
How India hanged a poor watchman whose guilt was far from established, (2015, 21 July), N. Jayaram, Scroll.in, http://scroll.in/article/741784/how-india-hanged-a-poor-watchman-whose-guilt-was-far-from-established
Innocent persons are sentenced to death in India, InfoSud (2008, August 25), InfoSud, http://www.infosud.org/Innocent-persons-are-sentenced-to,3390
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