Capital Punishment

The temptation was pretty high this post to write a rebuttal to Tasty Jack’s previous post, about the metadata, and his tomato as a fruit analogy. But turns out I’m far more opinionated on other issues, so this week I want to talk about capital punishment. It has come up again in the Australian news due to the eminent executions of two members of the Bali 9 group in Indonesia, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan. For me this isn’t a debate, it honestly shocked me that people, Australians can be against capital punishment in our own nation, but see it as legitimate in other countries, Australian citizens or not. These people are totally wrong (sorry to my bf and Tasty Jack but you are) and I’m going to tell you readers why. We shall start with why in my opinion any truly civilized person that values human life would not condone judicial executions. And then move on to the whole other issue of national sovereignty and interfering in other nations judicial system if you are all not bored by the end of this rant.

Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is the court-ordered execution of a person for a serious crime.  And I firmly believe that under no circumstances it is the right course of action, capital punishment dehumanizes and desensitizes all those involved and has a corrosive effect on society itself. Essentially by a nation condoning the legalized murder of a criminal; the state and justice system send the message that in some circumstance it is ok to kill. I don’t believe you can have it both ways and say murder of a citizen by another citizen is abhorrent; and the murder of a criminal by the state is not. Forcibly taking someone’s life is murder, even if you dress it up with fancy courts and court documents. Taking some inspiration from Andrea’s earlier post, on good and evil, I also don’t believe in the arbitrary good versus evil person, no person is all good or evil, and that fundamentally “people are worth more than the worst thing, crime, that they have done”. By having judicial executions a nation is accepting that the value of a person’s life is lowered because of what they have done, and thus that not everyone is equal. “Taking one life even for the most heinous of crimes in no way upholds or protects the value of all human life.” all it achieves is the diminishing of a life. If your humanity can be lowered because of what you have done, then it opens up more serious issues such as can your humanity be lowered because of who you are? Where you stand in society? Your background? etc. This leads nicely into the issue of the justice system being fair for all people of all classes. Going to my trusty statistics I’m going to say it’s not.  “The death penalty, both in the U.S. and around the world, is discriminatory and is used disproportionately against the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities.” (Amnesty international http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-penalty/us-death-penalty-facts) Looking at some fun facts also from Amnesty USA, and thus relate to the United States experience; almost all death row inmates could not afford their own attorney at trial. Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 82% of all executions have taken place in the South. Since 1977 the overwhelming majority of death row defendants 77% have been executed for killing white victims, even though African Americans make up about half of all homicide victims. Essentially when dealing with the justice system don’t be black, Hispanic or any minority group and most importantly don’t be poor that way you can be sure to receive some actual justice, and avoid being murdered by the State.  

While some countries employ the death penalty as a deterrent for what they believe to be unforgivable and unacceptable crimes, statistics have shown that on this front it also fails. Evidence increasingly shows that judicial executions are in no way a deterrent,  e.g. for 2013, the average Murder Rate of Death Penalty states in America was 4.4,  compared with the average Murder Rate of States without the Death Penalty was 3.4 (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state)  “In Texas, the United States Jurisdiction in which more executions are carried out than any other, there has actually been an increase in the number of homicides in recent years”. Despite the rhetoric of the Indonesian government “Ample evidence from Singapore, Malaysia and other countries proves its ineffectiveness in deterring drug trafficking and reining in drug use” http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/02/05/indonesia-uses-faulty-stats-drug-crisis-justify-death-penalty .Statics have shown that the death penalty is not a deterrent and does little to achieve justice and peace for the victims and their families, which makes it pretty useless as a tool against crime.

Capital punishment removes any chance of redemption or rehabilitation, which as far as my knowledge is one of the core ideals of the criminal justice system/prison system. Redemption and rehabilitation is what is ultimately need in healing the wounds that have been inflicted on all those involved, which achieves a sense of justice and peace while still upholding the value of life. Often the death penalty is often employed as a way of seeking revenge and justice offering little peace or relief for those involved.

All this has not taken into account the series issue of what happens when an innocent person is wrongly accused. I acknowledge that this is not really an argument in the case of the Bali 9, but it is still an important point in the anti-capital punishment debate. A life imprisonment for a wrongly accused man can be overturned but an execution cannot be undone. There is significant chance that an innocent man can be wrongfully convicted and executed, especially if you look at the argument above and death penalties bias towards the poor and minority groups. “DNA testing has suggested that as many as 70 of 1076 Americans executed since 1976 might have been innocent”. Not only has unnecessary traumatic pain been inflicted on the wrongly accused person and their families, but on the victims and their families, pain that cannot be undone. So yes, I’m going to air on the side of caution and say it is better to have no executions than to wrongfully execute even one innocent person.

Okay so this went on a little longer than expected, but let wrap up with the national sovereignty bit/linkage to the Bali 9. Yes they are Australian citizens who committed a crime in another country, with different laws and customs. I agree that laws of a sovereign nation should be respected, my arguments against the Bali 9 members not being executed do not relate to them being Australian citizens, but that capital punishment in any country be that the United States, China or Indonesia etc. should be criticised and protested against due to the arguments I have given above. Capital Punishment is not something you get to cherry pick, its wrong under all circumstances. It is easy to say that Australia has a terrible human rights record, and still perpetrates human rights abuses (asylum seekers being the big one) and therefore say that we should not criticise the Indonesian government. I think this is a weak argument as all nations have failures when it comes to human rights abuses. And that instead you should criticise human rights abuses such as capital punishment wherever they occur. I’m quite happy to lay out Australian’s failings with regards to Asylum seekers in my next post. 

-Mrouge-,