Death penalty

The death penalty is death as a punishment given by a court of law for very
serious crimes such as murder, treason, espionage, war crimes, crimes against humanity and
genocide.
Capital punishment is a matter of active controversy in various countries and states,
and positions can vary within a single political ideology or cultural region. In the European
Union, Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use
of capital punishment. Also, the Council of Europe, which has 47 member states, prohibits the
use of the death penalty by its members. Although most nations have abolished capital
punishment, over 60% of the world's population live in countries where executions take place,
such as China, India, the United States and Indonesia.
The most common methods of executions are: beheading (Saudi Arabia), hanging
(Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Palestine,
Singapore, Sudan), lethal injection (China, USA, Viet Nam) and shooting (Belarus, China,
Equatorial Guinea, North Korea, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Taiwan, UAE, Yemen). In
UAE one woman was sentenced to death by stoning for committing "adultery" while married.
Public executions were carried out in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
In the majority of countries where people were sentenced to death or executed, the
death penalty was imposed after proceedings that did not meet international fair trial
standards. Moreover, mandatory death sentences continued to be imposed in Barbados, Iran,
Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore and Trinidad and Tobago. Mandatory death sentences are
inconsistent with human rights protections because they do not allow any possibility of taking
into account the defendant’s personal circumstances or the circumstances of the particular
offence.
People continued to be sentenced to death or executed for crimes that did not involve
intentional killing, and therefore did not meet the threshold of most serious crimes. The death
penalty was imposed or implemented for drug-related offences in a number of countries,
including China, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, UAE
and Vietnam. Other capital crimes which did not meet the standard of “most serious crimes”
but for which the death penalty was imposed included: economic crimes such as corruption
(China, North Korea and Vietnam); armed robbery (DRC); committing "adultery" while married
(UAE); rape that resulted in death (Afghanistan); rape committed by repeat rape offenders
(India), rape (Saudi Arabia, UAE); kidnapping (Saudi Arabia); torture (Saudi Arabia); “insulting
the prophet of Islam” (Iran); blasphemy (Pakistan); “witchcraft” and “sorcery” (Saudi Arabia).
Proponents of the death penalty say it is an important tool for preserving law and
order, deters crime, and costs less than life imprisonment. They argue that retribution or "an
eye for an eye" honors the victim, helps console grieving families, and ensures that the
perpetrators of heinous crimes never have an opportunity to cause future tragedy.

Opponents of capital punishment say it has no deterrent effect on crime, wrongly gives
governments the power to take human life, and perpetuates social injustices by
disproportionately targeting people of color (racist) and people who cannot afford good
attorneys (classist). They say lifetime jail sentences are a more severe and less expensive
punishment than death. There are many arguments against capital punishment such as value
of human rights, right to live, execution of inocent, torture and unnecessity and the absence
of free will in human behaviour.

Value of human life

Everyone thinks human life is valuable. Some of those against capital punishment
believe that human life is so valuable that even the worst murderers should not be deprived
of the value of their lives. They believe that the value of the offender's life cannot be
destroyed by the offender's bad conduct - even if they have killed someone. Some
abolitionists don't go that far. They say that life should be preserved unless there is a very
good reason not to, and that the those who are in favour of capital punishment are the ones
who have to justify their position.

Right to live

Everyone has an inalienable human right to life, even those who commit murder;
sentencing a person to death and executing them violates that right.This is very similar to
the 'value of life' argument, but approached from the perspective of human rights.

The counter-argument is that a person can, by their actions, forfeit human rights, and
that murderers forfeit their right to life.Another example will make this clear - a person
forfeits their right to life if they start a murderous attack and the only way the victim can
save their own life is by killing the attacker.

Execution of the innocent

The most common and most cogent argument against capital punishment is that
sooner or later, innocent people will get killed, because of mistakes or flaws in the justice
system.

Witnesses, (where they are part of the process), prosecutors and jurors can all make
mistakes. When this is coupled with flaws in the system it is inevitable that innocent people
will be convicted of crimes. Where capital punishment is used such mistakes cannot be put
right. The continuous threat of execution makes the ordeal of those wrongly convicted
particularly horrible.

Uniqueness of the death penalty

It's argued that retribution is used in a unique way in the case of the death penalty.
Crimes other than murder do not receive a punishment that mimics the crime - for example
rapists are not punished by sexual assault, and people guilty of assault are not ceremonially
beaten up.

Many offenders are kept 'waiting' on death row for a very long time; in the USA the
average wait is 10 years. Source: Death Penalty Information Center. In Japan, the accused
are only informed of their execution moments before it is scheduled. The result of this is that
each day of their life is lived as if it was their last.

Free will

The idea that we must be punished for any act of wrongdoing, whatever its nature,
relies upon a belief in human free will and a person's ability to be responsible for their own
actions.If one does not believe in free will, the question of whether it is moral to carry out
any kind of punishment (and conversely reward) arises.

Arthur Koestler and Clarence Darrow argued that human beings never act freely and
thus should not be punished for even the most horrific crimes.The latter went on to argue
for the abolition of punishment altogether, an idea which most people would find
problematic.

Salem v. Portugal 9 May 2006

This case concerned the extradition to India of a terrorist suspect. The Minister of
External Affairs of India had made a request for the applicant’s extradition, saying that the
applicant was suspected of having played a key role in the major terrorist attacks carried out
in Bombay in 1993. Under the relevant Indian legislation, the offences were punishable by
the death sentence or life imprisonment. In response to a request for further information
made by the Portuguese authorities, the Deputy Prime Minister of India gave solemn
assurances that the applicant, if extradited to India, would not face the death penalty or a
prison sentence exceeding 25 years. The Court declared the application inadmissible
(manifestly ill-founded). It its view, the Portuguese courts had rightly considered the legal,
political and diplomatic assurances given by the Indian Government in the present case to be
adequate and convincing. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, the Court could
not reverse the findings of the domestic courts, which had examined the extradition request
in adversarial proceedings and had been able to hear evidence directly from the parties,
who, among other things, had attached to the case file a large number of opinions from
experts in Indian law. The Portuguese Government’s good faith could not be called into
question in this case, seeing that what was in issue was compliance with intern

Bibliography
1. http://deathpenalty.procon.org/
2. http://www.echr.coe.int/Pages/home.aspx?p=home
3. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment
5. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/study-88-criminologists-do-not-believe-
death-penalty-effective-deterrent
6. https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/death-penalty/
7. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-penalty-international-perspective