DEATH PENALTY: SHOULD IT BE ABOLISHED?

Presented by:Chandan Ray-100103084

Bharat Sharma- 100103078Deepak Rawat – 100103092

G. Shakti Priya –

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” said Mahatma Gandhi.

Capital punishment is the execution of a person

by the state as punishment for a crime Crimes that can result in the death penalty are

known as capital crimes or capital offenses. In most places that practice capital punishment

today, the death penalty is reserved as punishment for premeditated murder, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice.

In some countries sexual crimes, such as rape, adultery and sodomy, carry the death penalty, as do religious crimes such as apostasy (the formal renunciation of the State religion).

In China human trafficking and serious cases of corruption are also punished by the death penalty.

Killers, murderers, terrorists, drug lords. Who cares if they are faced with death, right? 

These are the arguments of many pro-death penalty advocates who highlight the guilt of the convicted and the serious nature of their crime.

But what if you couldn't be sure? What if the person awarded death

penalty is clear?  We need to challenge the notion of "an

eye for an eye" equals justice.

The death penalty is unjust and inhuman. Its continued use is a stain on a society built on

humanitarian values, and it should be abolished immediately.

Many think that there could be nothing wrong with the death penalty as the Indian Constitution allows for capital punishment, which means that the founding fathers of this country must have also fully approved of it.

In reality, several members of the Constituent Assembly were firmly opposed to the death penalty.

The architect of the Constitution, Babasaheb Ambedkar, admitted in the Constituent Assembly that people may not follow non-violence in practice but “they certainly adhere to the principle of non-violence as a moral mandate which they ought to observe as far as they possibly can.” With this in mind, he said, “the proper thing for this country to do is to abolish the death sentence altogether.”

On June 3, 1949, Professor Shibbanlal

Saxena, a freedom fighter who had been on death row for his involvement in the Quit India Movement, spoke in the Constituent Assembly of how he had seen innocent people being hanged for murder during his days in prison.

Proposing the abolition of the death penalty, he said that the avenue of appealing to the Supreme Court “will be open to people who are wealthy, who can move heaven and earth, but the common people who have no money and who are poor will not be able to avail themselves” of it.

WHY SHOULD WE OPPOSE THE

DEATH PENALTY?

1. You can't take it back The death penalty is irreversible.

Absolute judgments may lead to people paying for crimes they did not commit.

Texas man Cameron Todd Willingham, for example, was found innocent after his 2004 execution.

2. It doesn't deter criminals In fact, evidence startlingly reveals the

opposite! Twenty seven years after abolishing the death penalty, Canada saw a 44 per cent drop in murders across the country. And it wasn't alone

3. It makes a public spectacle of an individual's death

Executions are often undertaken in an extremely public manner, with public hangings in Iran or live broadcasts of lethal injections in the US.

3. There's no 'humane' way to kill

The 2006 execution of Angel Nieves Diaz, by a so-called 'humane' lethal injection, took 34 minutes and required two doses.

Other methods of execution used around the world include hanging, shooting and beheading.

The nature of these deaths only continues to perpetuate the cycle of violence and does not alleviate the pain already suffered by the victims’ family.

4. The death penalty is incompatible with human rights and human dignity

The death penalty violates the right to life which happens to be the most basic of all human rights.

It also violates the right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment.

Furthermore, the death penalty undermines human dignity which is inherent to every human being.

5. DEATH PENALTY IS DISCREMATORY

In India, it is largely cases involving the poor and the down-trodden - who are the victims of class-bias - which result in an imposition of a death penalty.

Here one hardly finds a rich or affluent person going to the gallows.

Therefore, it is apparent that the death penalty, as it is used now, is discriminatory.

It strikes mostly against the disadvantaged sections of society, showing its arbitrary and capricious nature - thus rendering it unconstitutional.

INSTANCES OF INNOCENCE

Last year, 14 eminent retired judges wrote to the President, pointing out that the Supreme Court had erroneously given the death penalty to 15 people since 1996, of whom two were hanged.

The judges called this “the gravest known miscarriage of justice in the history of crime and punishment in independent India.”

The “Innocence Project” in the United States [a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals and reforming the criminal justice system] has found, on the other hand, several cases where innocent people were given the death sentence. 

One such case is that of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 for the deaths of his three young daughters. In 2009, reinvestigation of the case raised serious doubts in the appreciation of forensic evidence in the case and the judge concluded that Willingham was wrongfully convicted.

Carlos DeLuna Case

Another case is that of Carlos DeLuna who was executed in 1989 for the murder of a young woman some years before. In 2004, a study by Columbia Law School students brought to light the wrongful conviction of Carlos DeLuna, which turned out to be a case of mistaken identity of the actual perpetrator of the murder.

RAJIV GANDHI CASE

The death penalty is little more than judicially sanctioned murder.

Justice K.T. Thomas, who headed the three member bench in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, has said that executing Perarivalan, Murugan and Santhan, convicted and sentenced to death in the case, would amount to punishing them twice for the same offence, as they had already spent 22 years in jail, the equivalent of life imprisonment.

HOW THE WORLD SEES DEATH PENALTY?

The world is moving away from using the death penalty.

The European Union has made “abolition of death penalty” a prerequisite for membership.

The 65th United Nations General Assembly voted in December 2010, for the third time, in favour of abolishing the death penalty and called for a global moratorium on executions. 

Out of 198 countries around the world only 21 continue to use capital punishment.

With this clear downward trend, public pressure may help persuade the world's biggest executors China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the USA to stop.

What’s the future of the death

penalty in India?

The global trend is increasingly and overwhelmingly in favour of abolition.

We would be deluding ourselves if we were to believe that the execution of a few persons sentenced to death will provide a solution to the unacceptably high rates of crime.

In reality, capital punishment does not have any deterrent effect.

Death Penalty Should be Abolished.

 Death penalty should be abolished. Every year, thousands of people are put on death

row for a crime they didn't even commit. There's no way of knowing if they actually did or not.

Is it worth the risk? It can be seen as a cruel and unusual punishment, which goes against one of our amendments in the Constitution. Crime will always be apart of the world and there will be better ways to handle it.

 According to many religions which decree that it is a sin to kill, no matter whom one is killing and no matter what he or she has done. Killing a criminal is not an exception.

There are countless arguments for and against the death penalty.

In an imperfect world where we can never be sure we have ever got the "worst of the worst" is it ever justified to take a life?