MAY 5 — Hamlet aside, it has been a tough week’s work for the Grim Reaper. While the calamitous death toll in Nepal continues to rise, the executions in Indonesia precipitated worldwide condemnation.
Once again, the controversy surrounding the death penalty was brought sharply into the spotlight. Historically, it has been the ultimate deterrent for a government to keep its populace in line — commit certain heinous acts and you will pay for it with your life.
You would be within your rights to say that capital punishment is justified, an eye for an eye in the religious sense, and the fear of your own mortality will indeed keep you from straying over the line.
Yet, history has repeatedly shown us that capital punishment is not the deterrent it is thought to be, or even meted out in a just and fair manner.
Let us not forget the medieval European despotic monarchs, of which England’s Henry VIII was a prime example, who executed more on a whim and a need to maintain absolute control.
Then you have the religious pyres of the Inquisition and the political fervour of Le Terreur in France.
Such was the Gallic penchant for “Madame Guillotine’’ that she only hung up her blade for the last time in 1976, nearly 200 years after her introduction.
Meanwhile, Britain was coming to the fore as an empire during a time when a child wracked with hunger caught stealing an apple would likely have his or her neck stretched.
Not the glory and civilised behaviour Britannia would have you recall.
By this time, public executions were a thing of the past.
People had overcome their curious taste for the grisly and the macabre.
Besides, when a government needed someone to just go away, it was more politically expedient to do it in private when no one was looking.
Even so, as mentioned, when you read of the crimes murderers, rapists and drug dealers (the three most common capital offences around the world) commit, fouling our very society, it isn’t right that they be put up in their own room with a TV and three meals a day at our expense, is it?
They should feel society’s wrath and know that their crimes should be paid with their lives.
The families of the victims deserve justice, after all, and why shouldn’t they get it?
Just thinking about a killer getting away with his life is nonsense, isn’t it?
The problem is capital punishment is not the deterrent it’s assumed to be because of, well, the people who are put to death.
First, you have career criminals, often hardened, for whom violence and brutal killings are a way of life.
They grew up in this world and they accept death as an occupational hazard.
Organised criminal underworlds exist in just about every country that has the death penalty, including Malaysia, and as the reports in the newspapers attest, they are quite prepared to carry out capital crimes — often in the most brazen of circumstances and clearly not afraid of the noose.
Then you have, how shall I put it, accidental criminals. Men and women who would not ordinarily commit a crime, at least not a capital crime, but are a victim of circumstance, be it error of judgement, suddenly overwhelmed with passion or rage, or opportunity.
But it is one group of people that supporters of capital punishment conveniently overlook that deserves the most attention — the innocent.
They could be drug mules unaware of what they’re carrying, people who have been framed, devoid of alibi and generally fit the bill, in the wrong place at the wrong time, or — as in a successful death row appeal in the United States recently — just have a totally incompetent lawyer.
Can we really put our lives in the hands of such variables?
To kill an innocent person is not justice, it is not even vengeance. It is murder.
In which case, the government responsible has just become what it purports to prevent.
This is why many governments ceased killing because there is no recompense for ending the life of the innocent. No way a family can come to terms with that loss, not least surviving the public shame.
How do you compensate someone for that?
“Er, sorry, didn’t mean to stretch his or her neck,” doesn’t really cut it, nor a posthumous pardon justice for a life taken.
Even the best judicial systems in the world are fallible, so is it just that they should gamble that fallibility with people’s lives?
At least prison criminals have the opportunity to repent and reform, and the innocent have a chance to clear their names.
So, it is not so much about meting out a severe punishment to deter, but making sure you get the guilty party in the first place.
Meanwhile, Death would tell you that he already has enough work to do.
* Gareth Corsi is news editor at Malay Mail. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @GarethCorsi
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or organisation and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.
