Every day, all over the world, prisoners – men, women and even children – face execution. The death penalty is cruel, inhuman and degrading. We are opposed to its use, everywhere in the world, for whatever reason – it is never acceptable, ever.

Whatever form it takes – electrocution, hanging, beheading, stoning or lethal injection – the death penalty is a violent punishment that has no place in today’s criminal justice system.

Yet it persists.

Though there has been progress. More countries than ever have abolished the death penalty and the United Nations General Assembly has voted for a global moratorium.

Executions don’t deter criminals

Scientific studies consistently show that that the death penalty does not deter crime more effectively than other punishments.

Research on the relationship between the death penalty and homicide rates, conducted for the United Nations in 1988 and updated in 2002, found: "...it is not prudent to accept the hypothesis that capital punishment deters murder to a marginally greater extent than does the threat and application of the supposedly lesser punishment of life imprisonment".

Recent crime figures from abolitionist countries fail to show abolition has been followed by increased crime rates. In fact, in Canada the homicide rate has fallen by 40 per cent since 1975, the year before the death penalty for murder was abolished.

Use of the death penalty diverts attention away from real solutions for the survivors of violent crime and their families.

Powerless and poor

Research shows it’s used against people who have been tortured into confessing, it’s part of corrupt criminal justice systems and it is used after unfair or politically motivated trials.

It’s often used disproportionately against the poor, powerless and marginalised. Repressive governments use it against people they want to eliminate and to silence dissent.

Asia a lead executioner

Despite the worldwide trend towards abolition, each year in Asia an alarming number of people are executed for a wide range of crimes, often following torture or unfair trials. In recent years, record numbers of people have been sentenced to death for drug-related offences.

China executes more people than any other country, and yet there are serious flaws at every level of its justice system. Singapore executes more people per head of population than any other country. And Indonesia has resumed executions, even though it can't guarantee fair trials.

However, across Asia, in countries such as Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, there is growing debate and pressure to abolish the death penalty – there has even been unheard of discussion in Singapore and China.

Abolition from Asia to Africa

Support for global abolition is building. In late 2007, the UN adopted a resolution calling for a global moratorium on executions, and since 1990 more than 40 countries have done away with the death penalty for all crimes.

That includes countries in Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Africa and the Americas – places such as the Philippines, Bhutan, Samoa, Albania, Serbia, Turkey, Liberia, Rwanda, Canada, Paraguay and Mexico.

Once a country has abolished the death penalty it’s hardly ever reintroduced.

Since 1985 only four abolitionist countries have brought back capital punishment. Two of them, Nepal and Philippines, have since re-abolished the death penalty and the other two, Gambia and Papua New Guinea, haven’t carried out any executions.

Children facing death penalty

International human rights treaties prohibit courts sentencing to death or executing anyone who was under 18 at the time the crime was committed. But a small number of countries continue to execute child offenders.

More than 100 countries those laws still allow for use of the death penalty have laws prohibiting the execution of child offenders, or else they are party to international treaties covering the issue.

We know of nine countries that, since 1990, have executed prisoners who were under 18 at the time the crime was committed – they are China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, US and Yemen.

The US and Iran have each executed more child offenders than the other seven countries combined.

Innocent awaiting execution

The death penalty is irrevocable, and because all legal systems make mistakes as long as it exists innocent people will be executed.

In the US, 124 death row prisoners have been released since 1973 after evidence of their innocence emerged. Some of them had spent many years on death row and had come close to actually being executed.

Other prisoners in the US have been executed despite serious doubts over their guilt.

The problem is not confined to the US, death row prisoners were acquitted and released in Tanzania and Jamaica in 2006.

"The death penalty is too simplistic a way to settle crimes. As far as I am concerned, [the] execution did nothing to put my mind at ease. On the contrary, I felt that it deprived me of my chance to get back on my feet again."

Masaharu Harada whose brother’s killer was executed in Japan in 2001, two decades after the murder.

 

http://www.amnesty.org.au/adp/comments/2003/

WASHINGTON — For a moment last year, it looked as if the Obama administration was moving toward a history-making end to the federal death penalty.

A botched execution in Oklahoma brought national attention to the issue, public opinion polls began to shift and President Obama, declaring that it was time to “ask ourselves some difficult and profound questions,” directed Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to review capital punishment.

At the Justice Department, a proposal soon began to take shape among Mr. Holder and senior officials: The administration could declare a formal moratorium on the federal death penalty because medical experts could not guarantee that the lethal drugs used did not cause terrible suffering. Such a declaration would have pressured states to do the same, the officials reasoned, and would bolster the legal argument that the death penalty is unconstitutionally cruel punishment.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/us/white-house-balks-on-ending-death-penalty.html?_r=0

 

See also: app-ollo and the rise of mediocrity...

 

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has described it as "odd" for an Australian university to announce scholarships in honour of executed drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

The Australian Catholic University was involved in the campaign for clemency and has announced it would recognise the two men by introducing scholarships in their memory.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-01/bali-nine-scholarships-honour-of-chan-and-sukumaran-odd-abbott/6439222

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I would suggest here that Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran are example of people who made it good in rehabilitation and deserved "clemency". It can prove to young ones that "salvation" or in this case "rehabilitation" is possible and though it seems to proved to naught at the end, it still leaves a legacy of hope — or in the case of Pandora's Jar: expectation of good beyond a bad deed. We all die at the end.

But of course our Liar-inChief, Turd Extraordinary, Fudger of the Liberal (CONservative) party and Religious Aggressive Armed Forces (or  RAAF) is against redeeming features. Lies shall be pursed to the end. 

The gesture by the religious outfit might also promote views against the death penalty around the world. As much as an atheist as I am let me say good one to the Australian Catholic University... Thank you. 

 

 

Nebraska legislators on Wednesday overrode the Republican governor's veto to repeal the state's death penalty, a major victory for a small but growing conservative movement to end executions. The push to end capital punishment divided Nebraska conservatives, with 18 conservatives joining the legislature's liberals to provide the 30 to 19 vote to override Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto—barely reaching the 30 votes necessary for repeal.

Today's vote makes Nebraska "the first predominantly Republican state to abolish the death penalty in more than 40 years," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, in a statement shortly after the vote. Dunham's statement singled out conservatives for rallying against the death penalty and said their work in Nebraska is "part of an emerging trend in the Republican Party." (Nebraska has a unicameral, nonpartisan legislature, so lawmakers do not have official party affiliations.)

For conservative opponents of the death penalty, Wednesday's vote represents a breakthrough.  A month ago, overcoming the governor's veto still looked like a long-shot.  Conservatives make a number of arguments against the death penalty, including the high costs and a religion-inspired argument about taking life. "I may be old-fashioned, but I believe God should be the only one who decides when it is time to call a person home," Nebraska state Sen. Tommy Garrett, a conservative Republican who opposes the death penalty, said last month.

read more: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/05/nebraska-repeals-death-penalty-thanks-conservatives

 

Welcome Nebraska...

 

Nebraska’s legislature recently made headlines when it ended the state’s death penalty. Many found it odd that a conservatives-dominated legislature would support ending capital punishment, since conservative politicians have traditionally supported the death penalty. However, an increasing number of conservatives are realizing that the death penalty is inconsistent with both fiscal and social conservatism. These conservatives are joining with libertarians and liberals in a growing anti-death penalty coalition.

It is hard to find a more wasteful and inefficient government program than the death penalty. New Hampshire recently spent over $4 million dollars prosecuting just two death penalty cases, while Jasper County in Texas raised property taxes by seven percent in order to pay for one death penalty case! A Duke University study found that replacing North Carolina’s death penalty would save taxpayers approximately $22 million dollars in just two years.

Death penalty cases are expensive because sentencing someone to death requires two trials. The first trial determines the accused person’s guilt, while the second trial determines if the convicted individual “deserves” the death penalty. A death sentence is typically followed by years of appeals, and sometimes the entire case is retried.

Despite all the time and money spent to ensure that no one is wrongly executed, the system is hardly foolproof. Since 1973, one out of every ten individuals sentenced to death has been released from death row because of evidence discovered after conviction.

The increased use of DNA evidence has made it easier to clear the innocent and identify the guilty. However, DNA evidence is not a 100 percent guarantee of an accurate verdict. DNA evidence is often mishandled or even falsified. Furthermore, DNA evidence is available in only five to 10 percent of criminal cases.

read more: http://www.eurasiareview.com/14062015-ron-paul-death-penalty-is-the-ultimate-corrupt-big-government-program-oped/

 

The US Supreme Court has ruled that a convicted murderer on death row in Missouri does not have a right to a "painless death".

The ruling clears the way for the execution of Russell Bucklew, who asked for gas rather than lethal injection due to an unusual medical condition.

Bucklew, 50, argued the state's preferred method amounts to legally banned "cruel and unusual punishment". 

The 5-4 ruling split along the court's ideological lines.

Bucklew was sentenced to death in 1996 for rape, murder and kidnapping in an attack against his ex-girlfriend and her new partner and six-year-old son.

In recent court filings, Bucklew argued that his congenital condition, cavernous hemangioma, might cause him excessive pain if he is put to death by lethal injection.

The condition causes blood-filled tumours in his throat, neck and face, which he said could rupture during his execution causing him extreme pain and suffocation.

According to Bucklew, he would feel excessive pain if the state executioner is allowed to use the state's preferred method of a single drug, pentobarbital, applied by needle.

But the Supreme Court's conservative justices said on Monday they considered the legal effort to be a stalling tactic.

They said it was up to the prisoner to prove that another method of execution would "reduce a substantial risk of severe pain", but he had not done so.

 

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47780123

 

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Read also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/29915

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8323

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/13140