A LETHAL JUSTICE

IT IS interesting that in the midst of a debate on whether abortion should be decriminalised/legalised in Trinidad and Tobago, there is another issue of life and death that has been widely ignored — the death penalty. While almost daily one can find a letter either for or against the legalisation of abortion, the majority of the public seems morally indifferent as to whether the death penalty is enforced or not. As of right now, since the death penalty was deemed the mandatory punishment for murder, there are three men on death row for their crimes. A few daily papers have been interviewing random people in the street to get their opinion on the issue, and generally most say the same thing — hang them high! Most people seem to believe the death penalty is fair justice; that if you take a life your life should be taken, that it will give justice and satisfaction to the loved ones of the person who was killed, and that it will be a deterrent for future criminals.

But the death penalty has always been a flawed (and irreversible) form of justice because the law is an imperfect system of punishment that can unfairly incarcerate someone based on many factors. The accused may have unqualified lawyers, evidence may be lost or damaged, there may be internal corruption or bribes, the inability to make bail, a mistaken identity, racism, and a variety of factors that may put an innocent person in prison. Also, around the world the death penalty has always targetted those with the least resources to defend themselves — the poor, the mentally challenged and the marginalised. The death penalty is an ancient law in every society and in each country the methods can vary — some use a firing squad, some the gas chamber, some use beheading, some the electric chair. But in recent years a number of countries have opted for a supposedly more “humane” form of death through lethal injection, the first being the United States in 1982. In Trinidad and Tobago, our weapon of choice for State-sanctified murder is one of the oldest in the book — death by hanging — and it is not a pretty picture.

The person is hanged by a slip-knot around his neck which is fixed to a support. Death occurs by asphyxiation and the person loses consciousness. If the person is dropped from a great height, the neck can fracture or pop, but if not the person will suffocate to death. The person does not die immediately — in fact the process can take eight to 15 minutes. During these eight to 15 minutes the weight of the body can cause the tongue to hang out, the eyeballs can pop out of the sockets, and certain bodily functions may take place, such as urination or excretion. The rope can cut into the neck causing bleeding. The main arteries are blocked and blood pools in the person’s face. It is not a quick and painless death and the duration of the process depends on the height the person falls and of course on the person’s body — weight, strength, bone structure and so forth. We are currently struggling through the highest level of homicide Trinidad has ever seen, and every year the number rises. When this happens people tend to get desperate. They demand swift justice, and an execution is supposed to be evidence that the State is acting on crime and dealing with criminals.

But the death penalty has never proven in any country to be a long-term or sustainable deterrent to crime any more than life in prison has — usually because criminals do not believe that they will ever get caught. Thus the countries that still support and employ the death penalty tend to have poor police performance and some of the highest murder rates in the world. Allow me to use the United States as example. The southern states of America, such as Texas, are responsible for 80 percent of all the executions in America, yet the south has the highest murder rate in the country. America’s neighbour to the North, Canada, abolished the death penalty in 1976 and had no marked increase in crime, yet Canada has three times less the number of homicides as America. All of the countries considered the best places in the world to live — the countries that are the most “civilised” in terms of quality of life, infrastructure, environment, education, health care, stability and prosperity — do not have the death penalty. At the top of the list are Norway, Sweden, Canada, Belgium and Australia, all of which have abolished the death penalty altogether. The United States ranks sixth on that list of best countries in the world — but has three times as many murders as its European counterparts.

The poorest and least developed countries in the world also tend to be the ones with the highest levels of crime, the worst justice systems and the most inhumane penal systems. Topping the list of the poorest nations are Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Rwanda and Nigeria — all of which retain and regularly carry out the death penalty. So the question we need to ask ourselves is what kind of society do we want to emulate — Afghanistan or Switzerland? Nigeria or Canada? Ehtiopia or Norway? If we want to go from a developing country to a developed country, reinstating the death penalty as mandatory is a step in the wrong direction.

The death penalty is barbaric, cruel, and serves no purpose other than to promote vengeance, anger and bloodlust to those who have lost their loved one, while giving a short-lived and superficial sense of justice to the general population who is desperate for any form of action. Our laws and our criminal justice system should ultimately lead all of us, as citizens, to be better people with a higher respect for each other’s lives — even the life of a murderer. If we want to be a more civilised country, then life in prison should be the ultimate punishment, not death by hanging. Encouraging our basest emotions will only extend the chain of societal violence. An execution will not right the wrong, and while we no longer live by the literal rule of an eye for an eye, neither should we live by the rule of a life for a life.