Death Penalty: Doesn’t it violate the Right to Life?

Death Penalty: Doesn’t it violate
the Right to Life?
“…how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!”
D.H.Lawrence – Snake

Says Amnesty International, a human rights organization striving hard for an end to executions and for the abolition of death penalty, “Death Penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment. It violates the right to life. It is irrevocable and can be inflicted on the innocent. It has never been shown to deter crimes more effectively than other punishments.” Their main argument (against death penalty) that it violates the right to life is so true and so convincing that we can hardly disagree with them. Still, looking at the rising number of crimes, today, it is mandatory for the State to find effective deterrents for the prevention of crimes and to stop potential criminals.

Among the deterrents so used, in some countries and territories, death penalty is identified as an effective method to curb crimes. But, clearly, sentencing people to death as a way to punish them for the crimes they have perpetrated and to deter potential criminals has been a subject of bitter controversy right from the beginning. Human rights activists have been lobbying intensely for the abolition of death penalty in the countries and territories, where it is passed and actively carried out. According to Amnesty International, by now, nearly 128 countries have abrogated death penalty in law or practice. The re-activation of the gallows in Sri Lanka is, therefore, hardly likely to happen. And, though there are people who argue in favor of death penalty, now it is accepted more widely than ever that it is paltry, mean and cruel.

Crimes and criminals
In Sri Lanka, at present, it is needless to say that we are witnessing an alarming increase in crimes; namely robbery, fraud, intimidation, beating and mugging, abduction, rape, child abuse, drug trafficking, murder etc. Many people attribute this phenomenal rise in crimes to the decades` long ethnic strife in the North- East. The war-mentality of people, they say, has rendered them insensitive to the crimes they witness today. Axiomatically, in a war situation, where people are regularly exposed to abhorrent violence, it is natural that they may start to regard crimes as ordinary occurrences. For people in the North-East, for example, despite the CFA, standing but on paper, killings and abductions are nearly as commonplace as their daily chores. To put it in a nutshell, the more violence people witness or are exposed to, the more callous they grow towards crimes be they petty crimes or big ones.

When it comes to wrongdoers, it has to be said that no one is born a criminal. By the same token, a murderer’s child does not become necessarily a murderer; nor does a rapist’s child become necessarily a rapist. The chances of a drug trafficker’s child becoming a drug trafficker himself are just as slim. People do not commit crimes as a hobby; nor do they do so just out of curiosity. Except in very rare cases where the criminals suffer from mental disorders, I believe, all other criminals are not unaware of the illegality of their acts. Further I believe most people (including, of course, criminals themselves) are not willing to inflict studied harm on others. On the contrary, I think, almost all of them prefer to lead good, decent lives, making a living by a fair means. But when they are deprived of that opportunity, they may feel compelled to engage in unlawful acts. In other words, every criminal is a victim of circumstances. At the end of the day, it is the circumstances that force a man to become a criminal perhaps in spite of himself. But this is not to mean that all men are forced by the circumstances to act or to react in the same manner!

People, in fact, respond to the same stimulus in different ways. Their responses may depend partly on their values and attitudes, and partly on their perception of the circumstances; religion is believed to play an important role here in shaping people’s values and attitudes so that they may see the society as a good place on the whole and be ashamed to do things which it disapproves of.

Further we must realize that criminals are not a different kind of animals who perpetrate heinous crimes in the guise of human beings. In reality, they are just as human as you and I. what differentiates you and me from them is the fact that we do not yield to the impulse to engage in an unlawful act and they do; here I cannot resist the temptation to quote the wise Walt Whitman in his wonderful poem, ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.’
“It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,
The best I had done seem`d to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meager?”
The poem continues, but I should discontinue my quotation at this point since I must keep to the space constraint.

We may restrain ourselves when we feel compelled to commit a crime, partly because we have an attitude that committing crimes is morally unacceptable, partly because we are too afraid to contravene the country’s law, and partly because we fear the nemesis to follow our misdeeds. Perhaps it is also possible that all three factors are more or less contributive to our resistance. The criminals, unfortunately, do not have such moral scruples as we do often enough-even if they do, I believe, theirs may not be, at least, half as strong as ours- and may be driven, perhaps oftener, by primitive impulses; thus, they may commit crimes.

Drug trafficking, rape and child abuse
Obviously, all these are rather serious crimes and there must be tougher punishments for those, found guilty of them. If a drug-trafficker is allowed to go scot-free, he will certainly feel encouraged to re-engage in the self-same trade; also, that will be little short of deliberate inducement on the part of the law for potential drug-traffickers. Certainly, drug traffickers should be given the severest possible punishments. But there is a problem when it comes to this vile business of drug trafficking; because here oftentimes it is the small fish that are caught in the net of law and those who are actually responsible for it are very seldom caught in it. Even if they were to get caught, there would always be rich and influential people who would do anything to secure their release. This, I think, should be separately discussed on some future day in the Daily News Debate itself.

Rape too is no less severe offense. A woman, subjected to rape, may continue to suffer, possibly for the rest of her life, both the cruel ordeals that rape may cause her and the social stigma, attached to it by ignorant people. It may be because of this that the rape victims reportedly commit suicide. So rape, I believe, is nearly as serious an offense as murder. Considering all this, I think it is reasonable to suggest that rapists are so nearly tantamount to murderers that they ought to be given as harsh a punishment as is given to those convicted of murder.

When it comes to child abuse, the victim, as in the case of a sexual assault will continue to be haunted by the emotional trauma caused by the abuser. This will definitely have a dire impact on the self-esteem of the child involved. Some children might be able to recover themselves from the traumatic experience with the passage of time, but others will not be able to shake it off their memory. So it behooves us to meet out justice for them.

Conclusion
There is no denying that these three crimes are almost as serious as crimes against humanity which fall under the category of exceptional crimes. In fact, all crimes, though they may be big or small looking from the point of view of the law, are nothing favorable to the humanity and are certainly against it. Nevertheless, in my humble opinion, I believe death should not be the penalty for those three crimes in question or for any other crime for that matter. This, I must say, is not to mean that criminals should not be penalized and be forgiven. In reality, they ought to be punished, they ought to be made to feel repent their foul deeds. But, no matter how bad they are, we should, decidedly, honor their right to life!
Hatred never appeases hatred!