[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

July 22




SINGAPORE:

Geylang murder suspect is charged in death of coffeeshop helper


A 64-year-old man was charged on Friday (Jul 22) with the murder of 52-year-old 
Goh Eng Thiam, who was found dead in Geylang 2 weeks ago.

Toh Sia Guan was accused of killing Goh between 7.30am and 8am on July 9, at 
Lorong 23 Geylang.

Toh, who wore a red polo T-shirt to court on Friday, will be remanded for a 
week, and the judge granted permission to take him out for investigations. He 
is expected to appear in court on July 29.

The murder case was first reported on July 9, when Goh was pronounced dead by 
paramedics at the scene at 8.11am, said a statement from the Singapore Police 
Force. The police also said they had received a call asking for assistance at 
about 8am that day.

According to media reports, Goh worked as a coffeeshop helper. Several weapons, 
such as a long wooden stick and a short knife, were reportedly found at the 
scene.

If convicted, Toh faces the death penalty.

(source: todayonline.com)






GLOBAL:

Why the Death Penalty is Still Necessary


Given the Church's longstanding and irreformable teaching that death may in 
principle be a legitimate punishment for grievous crimes, the key issue for 
Catholics is an empirical and practical question.

Editor's note: This is Part 2 of a 2-part article on Catholicism and the death 
penalty. Part 1 was titled "Why the Church Cannot Reverse Past Teaching on 
Capital Punishment" and was posted on July 17th.

As we showed in Part 1 of this essay, for 2 millennia the Catholic Church has 
taught that the death penalty can be a legitimate punishment for heinous 
crimes, not merely to protect the public from the immediate danger posed by the 
offender but also to secure retributive justice and to deter serious crime. 
This was the uniform teaching of scripture and the Fathers and Doctors of the 
Church, and it was reaffirmed by popes and also codified in the universal 
catechism of the Church promulgated by Pope St. Pius V in the 16th century, as 
well as in numerous local catechisms.

Consider the standard language of the Baltimore Catechism, which was used 
throughout Catholic parishes in the United States for educating children in the 
faith for much of the twentieth century:

Q. 1276. Under what circumstances may human life be lawfully taken?

A. Human life may be lawfully taken: 1. In self-defense, when we are unjustly 
attacked and have no other means of saving our own lives; 2. In a just war, 
when the safety or rights of the nation require it; 3. By the lawful execution 
of a criminal, fairly tried and found guilty of a crime punishable by death 
when the preservation of law and order and the good of the community require 
such execution. 1

Thus, killing another human being in self-defense, during a just war, or 
through the lawful execution of a criminal does not violate the Fifth 
Commandment's rule "Thou shall not kill" (which many modern editions of the 
Bible translate as "Thou shall not murder"). The permissibility of these 3 
types of lawful killing (unlike the deliberate killing of the innocent, which 
is always prohibited) depends on contingent circumstances. As long as (in the 
words of Pope Innocent III) "the punishment is carried out not in hatred but 
with good judgment, not inconsiderately but after mature deliberation," the 
death penalty may be imposed if it genuinely serves the common good.

Generally, the Church has left these and similar prudential judgments to public 
officials. For example, the current Catechism of the Catholic Church expressly 
affirms that when it comes to judging whether a decision to go to war is 
morally justified, "the evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy 
belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have the responsibility for the 
common good." The institutional Church respects the authority and 
responsibility of public officials, guided by the sound moral principles it 
preserves and promulgates, to make these judgments. Similarly, to the best of 
our knowledge, the Church has fully respected the authority of lawmakers to 
write statutes on self-defense that detail the conditions under which 
individuals may use force, including deadly force, to protect themselves and 
others.

Unfortunately, in recent years churchmen have not been equally respectful of 
the authority and duty of public officials to exercise their prudential 
judgments in applying Catholic teaching when it comes to the death penalty, 
despite the fact that churchmen bring to the debate over capital punishment no 
particular expertise derived from their religious training and pastoral 
experience. Given the Church's longstanding and irreformable teaching that 
death may in principle be a legitimate punishment for grievous crimes, the key 
issue for Catholics is the empirical and practical question of whether the 
death penalty more effectively promotes public safety and the common good than 
do lesser punishments. We maintain that it does and thus devote about half of 
our forthcoming book, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of the 
Death Penalty, to making this case.

The current Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms that "[l]egitimate public 
authority has the right and the duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the 
gravity of the offense" and that "[p]unishment has the primary aim of 
redressing the disorder introduced by the offense." 2 Thus, punishment is 
fundamentally retributive, inflicting on the offender a penalty commensurate 
with the gravity of his crime, though it may serve other purposes as well, such 
as incapacitating the offender, deterring others, and promoting the offender's 
rehabilitation.

The significance of this point cannot be overstated. Secular critics of capital 
punishment often reject the very idea of retribution - the principle that an 
offender simply deserves a punishment proportionate to the gravity of his 
offense - but no Catholic can possibly do so. For unless an offender deserves a 
certain punishment - whether that be a fine, imprisonment, or whatever - and 
deserves a punishment of that specific degree of severity, then it would be 
unjust to inflict the punishment on him. Hence all the other ends of punishment 
- deterrence, rehabilitation, protection of society, and so on - presuppose the 
retributive aim of giving the offender what he deserves. This is why the 
Catechism promulgated by Pope St. John Paul II reaffirms the traditional 
Catholic teaching that retribution is the "primary aim" of punishment.

Among the many reasons why capital punishment ought to be preserved (all of 
which we set out at length in our forthcoming book), the most fundamental one 
is that for extremely heinous crimes, no lesser punishment could possibly 
respect this Catholic principle that a punishment ought to be proportional to 
the offense. We devote the remainder of this article to developing this point.

In the American states today the only crime for which the death penalty may be 
imposed (according to U. S. Supreme Court decisions) is murder. (The Court has 
not ruled on the legitimacy of the death penalty for the national crimes of 
treason and espionage.) Western societies, both before and after the rise of 
Christianity, never imposed the death penalty for all unlawful killings. As far 
back as our records go, laws reserved the ultimate punishment for intentional 
and malicious killings and usually imposed a lesser punishment for negligent 
killings and those resulting from a "heat of passion." The 31 American states 
with capital punishment today are even more selective, reserving the death 
penalty for the most heinous murders, such as multiple murders, rape murders, 
torture murders, and the murders of the very young and the very old.

A close analysis of the 43 murderers executed in 2012 reveals the true 
depravity of the crimes and the criminals that merit the death penalty in the 
United States today. Here are 9 of the cases (space does not allow a complete 
listing):

-- David Alan Gore, who, with his cousin, cruised central Florida in the 1970s 
and 1980s, abducting, raping, and murdering at least half a dozen teenage girls 
(and the mother of one of them). In his last murder, the 17-year-old girl, 
repeatedly raped by Gore, had managed to free herself and then ran naked from 
the house where she was being held. Gore chase down the girl, dragged her back 
towards the house, and shoot her twice in the head in the driveway in full view 
of 15-year-old boy who was bicycling past the scene.

-- Edwin Hart Turner, who during a robbery shot and killed an unresisting 
convenience store clerk pleading for his life and then shortly thereafter 
robbed a customer at a gas station and shot and killed him while he was on the 
ground also pleading for his life.

-- Robert Brian Waterhouse, who early one morning left a bar with a 
29-year-old woman and later beat her with a hard instrument, raped her, and 
sexually assaulted her with a large object. She was alive throughout this 
assault. He then dragged his victim into the water where she died of drowning. 
She was discovered completely naked and her injuries were so severe that she 
was unrecognizable. 14 years before, Waterhouse had broken into a home and 
killed a 77-year-old woman, for which he served 8 years before being paroled.

-- Timothy Shaun Stemple, who murdered his wife to collect her life insurance 
by beating her in the head with a baseball bat, driving a truck over her head, 
beating her again, driving the truck over her chest, and then driving over her 
at 60 miles per hour, killing her. While awaiting trial Stemple tried to get 
other inmates to arrange the death of several witnesses in his case.

-- Henry Curtis Jackson, who, in an attempt to steal money from his mother's 
home, murdered a 2-year-old girl, a 2-year-old boy, a 3-year-old boy, and a 
5-year-old girl. He injured 2 other older girls and stabbed a 1-year-old girl, 
leaving her unable to walk.

-- Daniel Wayne Cook, who, with an accomplice, killed a 26-year-old man after 
beating, torturing, and sodomizing him over a 6-7 hour period. A few hours 
later the offenders sodomized and strangled to death a 16-year-old boy.

-- Robert Wayne Harris, who in retaliation for his firing from a car wash, 
murdered the manager and 4 other employees by shooting them in the back of the 
head at close range while they were kneeling on the floor. Another survived but 
was left with permanent disabilities. When he was being interviewed by police 
about this crime, he volunteered that he had previously abducted and murdered a 
woman and he led police to her remains in a field.

-- Richard Dale Stokley, who with an accomplice abducted 2 13-year-old girls 
from a campsite, drove them to a remote area, raped them, stabbed them in the 
eye, killed them by stomping on their necks, and then threw the naked bodies 
down an abandoned mineshaft.

-- Manuel Pardo, Jr., who killed 7 men and 2 women in 5 separate incidents 
over a 4-month period.

Altogether, the 43 offenders executed in 2012 killed a total of 70 individuals 
and injured another 12 during the capital crimes for which they were executed. 
We also know that eight of the 43 (19%) had previously killed at least 1 other 
person, and several had killed more than 1. And many of those who had not (as 
far as we know) killed in the past had previously committed other very serious 
crimes. Altogether, at least 2/3 of those executed in 2012 had previously 
committed a homicide, sexual assault, robbery, felony assault, or kidnapping.

As these facts and a wealth of other data show, we reserve the death penalty in 
the United States for the most heinous murders and the most brutal and 
conscienceless murderers. This is not, as some critics argue, a kind of 
state-run lottery that randomly chooses an unlucky few for the ultimate penalty 
from among all those convicted of murder. Rather, the capital punishment system 
is a filter that selects the worst of the worst. Here is one particularly 
telling statistic: of the murders that resulted in the 43 executions in 2012, 
more than 1/3 involved the rape of the murder victim or of another person 
either by the executed offender or his accomplice. Yet, among all homicides in 
the United States in recent decades, only about 1% involved a sexual assault. 
In nearly all of the 31 American states that currently have the death penalty, 
legislators have identified rape murder as especially heinous and thus 
potentially deserving a death sentence. Indeed, before someone can be executed 
in the United States legislators must agree that the kind of murder committed 
potentially merits death and prosecutors and juries must agree that this 
particular murderer deserves to die for his crime(s).

Put another way, to sentence killers like those described above to less than 
death would fail to do justice because the penalty - presumably a long period 
in prison - would be grossly disproportionate to the heinousness of the crime. 
Prosecutors, jurors, and the loved ones of murder victims understand this 
essential point. As the mother of the murder victim of one of those executed in 
2012 said to the sentencing jury, "I would beg this court and this jury to see 
that justice is done. And justice to us is no less than the death penalty." 
Even offenders themselves sometimes recognize that justice demands their death, 
as 3 of those executed in 2012 fully acknowledged. One who killed 2 men after a 
minor traffic accident said, "I killed 2 people. I've always accepted 
responsibility for the taking of their lives. . . . I believe in justice and I 
believe that the victims, their hatred, their anger, they need to have 
justice." Another who killed a 63-year-old prison guard during an escape 
attempt pleaded guilty and waived all appeals, resulting in his execution just 
1 year after sentencing. In a letter he wrote a week before his execution he 
commended the prosecutor and affirmed the justice of his punishment: "I do not 
want or desire to die, instead I deserve to die; this I have always stated." In 
concluding he wrote, "It's not about me or any future killers, it is about 
ensuring that in contested cases that the victims and their families get their 
intended and needed swift justice." And " who abducted, raped, and murdered a 
9-year-old girl told a federal court, "I killed the little girl. It's just that 
the punishment be concluded. I believe it's a good thing, that the death 
penalty does inhibit further criminal acts." He added, "I killed. I deserve to 
be killed."

We have focused here on the retributive purpose of the death penalty because, 
again, according to Catholic doctrine retribution is the "primary aim" of 
punishment. In By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed we also show that capital 
punishment has various practical benefits, such as protecting prison guards and 
other inmates from the most dangerous offenders, and protecting members of the 
community by giving "lifers" who escape from prison strong reasons not to kill 
while on the run. We also argue that capital punishment almost certainly deters 
at least some potential murderers, and gives murderers a strong incentive to 
plea bargain to very long prison sentences, which likely saves lives by 
increasing the deterrent and incapacitative effect of long prison sentences 
over shorter ones. (We also refute the common charges that the capital 
punishment system in the United States results in the execution of the innocent 
and discriminates against minorities and the poor.)

But make no mistake: retributive punishment in and of itself makes the world a 
safer place and upholds the common good:

-- It powerfully reinforces society's condemnation of the crime of murder, 
making it less likely that those growing up in a community with the death 
penalty would even consider killing someone in the first place.

-- It anchors the entire schedule of punishments for serious crimes to the 
principle of just deserts, ensuring the survival of retributive punishment as a 
key element in the criminal justice system and thus shoring up the schedule of 
punishments against powerful modern tendencies toward ever greater leniency in 
criminal punishment.

-- It reassures the families and other loved ones of the victims of grave 
crimes that they live in a society that is just, and that shows respect for the 
lives of victims by inflicting on their killers a penalty that is truly 
proportionate to the gravity of the offense.

-- It encourages repentance insofar as it makes offenders aware of the extreme 
gravity of their crimes and also of the shortness of the time remaining to them 
to get themselves right with God and to ask forgiveness from the families of 
their victims.

-- Perhaps most importantly, in its supreme gravity it promotes belief in and 
respect for the majesty of the moral order and for the system of human law that 
both derives from and supports that moral order.

For well over a millennium the popes of the Catholic Church exercised civil 
authority over a large swath of territory in central Italy called the Papal 
States. In that capacity they frequently authorized the death penalty for 
murderers and others. Although we do not have data for how often they did so 
before the 19th century, we know that between 1796 and 1865, 6 popes authorized 
a total of 516 executions, 4/5 for murder.

This papal endorsement of capital punishment, though rather recent in the 
history of the Church, is largely ignored in Catholic debates over the death 
penalty, as is the striking fact that from 1929 to 1969 the criminal code of 
the Vatican City itself included the death penalty for the attempted 
assassination of the pope. The many dozens of popes who approved executions in 
the Papal States and the representatives of the Church responsible for the 
Vatican City criminal code understood a truth that too many in the modern 
Church have forgotten: that justice demands the death penalty for the most 
heinous crimes and that if "the punishment is carried out not in hatred but 
with good judgment, not inconsiderately but after mature deliberation," it 
promotes public safety and serves the larger common good.

ENDNOTES:

1 The Baltimore Catechism is available from many online sources. The death 
penalty is addressed in the 3rd volume of the catechism, which is for older 
students. See www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson33.htm, accessed June 4, 2015.

2 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 
1997), sec. 2266, p. 546.

(source: The Catholic World Report)






INDONESIA:

What explains Indonesia's enthusiasm for the death penalty?


For many years, Indonesia was classified as a "low-application state" in its 
use of the death penalty. But recently there seems to have been a surge in 
enthusiasm for capital punishment, with public officials lining up to declare 
their support. The death penalty has been offered as a solution to a range of 
problems, from narcotics crime, to sexual abuse, and corruption. Last month, 
for example, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo urged police to chase, capture, and 
strike down drug dealers. "If the law allowed it, [I'd tell you to] blast 
them," he said. Earlier this year, he signed a presidential regulation 
authorising the death penalty for child sex offenders. Following her boss's 
lead, Health Minister Nila Moeloek said the suspects in the recent fake vaccine 
manufacturing scandal deserved execution.

What explains the recent popularity of the death penalty? Are officials just 
responding to public demands? Does public enthusiasm for the death penalty 
reflect frustration with the weak rule of law in Indonesia?

The embrace of capital punishment in Indonesia is a symptom of a growing 
environment of penal populism in the country. Penal populism describes a 
situation where politicians promise to solve the nation???s troubles by 
punishing crime, rather than by pursuing social justice. Penal populists rely 
on, and generate, fear of crime, suggesting it is a growing threat to society. 
They blame an impotent justice system and accuse it of being too lenient on 
criminals. In response, they call for more severe punishments against 
perpetrators, exploiting what they see as the public???s appetite for harsh law 
and order policies. This might make them popular but it only serves to 
perpetuate problems in the justice sector.

For populists, the cause of crime, including drug abuse, is always the 
individual perpetrator. The social conditions that contributed to the offending 
behaviour are never part of the picture. Users and dealers are considered the 
sole cause of the drug problem and deserve to be punished accordingly. But 
because populists focus on individual offenders, the public can become blind to 
deep-seated challenges in society. No crime can be divorced from its social 
context, including factors such as race, gender, class and education. There is 
no point blaming individual offenders for drug crimes while washing our hands 
of the structural issues that contributed to the problem. The shortcut 
solutions offered by penal populism - such as the death penalty - are not only 
oppressive, but they ultimately have little impact on the causes of crime.

Penal populists work hand-in-hand with the media. The media help whip up fear 
about the levels of crime in society, and advocate harsh punitive measures in 
response. The media largely endorsed the government framing of the 2015 
executions as a matter of national pride and sovereignty, and ignored analysis 
debunking State Narcotics Agency (BNN) figures on levels of drug abuse. The 
simplistic presentation of the drug issue influenced how the public and other 
decision makers responded.

It is not hard to see how the courts might believe that by delivering harsh 
punishments they are strengthening the rule of law. Every time judges deliver a 
death penalty verdict they are applauded in the media. Politicians, including 
the president, endorse their decisions and even suggest extending the 
punishment to other crimes. But they are not strengthening the rule of law, 
they are doing the opposite. Judges end up undermining their own profession by 
allowing myths, public anger and disillusionment with the criminal justice 
establishment to affect their sentencing decisions.

The rise of penal populism, which exploits public anger, is threatening the 
independence of judiciary. Under Soeharto???s New Order the greatest threat to 
judicial independence was intervention by the executive. But now, in the 
democratic era, the threat comes from the media, public pressure and mass 
demonstrations, sometimes accompanied by violence. Judicial corruption cannot 
be ignored either, of course, but there is growing evidence suggesting judges 
fear backlash when they make decisions that conflict with public sentiment, 
greatly compromising their independence. A 2015 Judicial Commission survey, for 
example, found that 3/4 of district-level judges in Medan had been threatened 
or intimidated.

Issues like the absence of checks and balances within the criminal justice 
system, the lack of access to justice, or poor quality of legal aid available 
for suspects are of little interest to penal populists. Yes, populists mention 
the criminal justice system, but only to blame it for not delivering 
sufficiently punitive punishments. There is no attempt to inform the public 
about the challenges facing the system, or have a rational debate about how 
they might be addressed. Jokowi is guilty of this, too. He makes no attempt to 
discuss the challenges of addressing drug abuse, preferring to propose shooting 
dealers in the street. When law enforcement is driven not by evidence but by 
public outrage or anxiety, the result is an increase in miscarriages of 
justice, as well as torture and arbitrary arrest and detention by law 
enforcement officials.

As in other countries, the cases most vulnerable to being exploited by penal 
populists, and resulting in such miscarriages of justice, are those involving 
terrorism, sexual or narcotics crimes. The Jakarta International School (JIS) 
case, for example, demonstrates the powerful impact of public pressure on 
investigators and the courts, which worked together to punish individuals 
accused of sexual crimes against children. Confessions were extracted under 
torture, one suspect died in police detention under highly suspicious 
circumstances, and a Canadian teacher and Indonesian teaching assistant were 
imprisoned based on very weak and questionable evidence.

Similarly, a study by the Community Legal Aid Foundation (LBH Masyarakat) in 
2011 found that torture and mistreatment in police custody was routine in 
narcotics cases. Many people accused of narcotics crimes were not told about 
their right to legal aid, and those who were informed of this right were often 
warned that they would face heavier sentencing demands if they sought 
assistance.

Civil society and legal aid organisations are not above engaging in the 
rhetoric of penal populism. This has particularly been the case with 
corruption. Although civil society organisations frame their populism in terms 
of "monitoring the courts", and do so with the intention of ensuring a fair 
result, there have been occasions where the tone of protests has been 
threatening. At a time when politicians are only too happy to engage in penal 
populism, civil society organisations need more than ever to avoid a populist 
approach and discipline themselves to offer a more nuanced and detailed picture 
of the challenges facing the criminal justice system.

The government also needs to change its approach. Jokowi may well be frustrated 
with judicial corruption. But if the president is sceptical about the justice 
sector - falling just short of endorsing extra-judicial killings - what about 
the public? Should they then resort to vigilante justice? By focusing on harsh 
punishments, penal populists weaken the justice system, because they allow weak 
and corrupt courts to carry on with little imperative to change. They are a 
major threat to the justice sector reform project.

Exploiting high levels of public ignorance about crime and punishment might not 
be ethical but it is easy. Offering rational and evidence-based arguments is 
much more difficult, and not usually popular, especially in an unbalanced media 
environment. But when the government is not doing so, it is up to civil society 
groups to provide clear and accurate information about the complexities of 
crime and punishment.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(source: Nurkholis Hidayat is a master of laws student at the University of 
Melbourne. He is an Indonesian human rights lawyer and previously served as a 
director of the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta), and national advisor 
for legal aid and criminal justice for the Australia Indonesia Partnership for 
Justice (AIPJ)----Coconuts)






TURKEY:

Some 90% of Turks Demand Death Penalty for Coup Perpetrators - Aktay


About 90 % of Turkish citizens are demanding the harshest punishment for those 
involved in a recent military coup attempt, forcing the Turkish leadership to 
consider the reinstatement of death penalty in the country, the deputy chair of 
Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) told Sputnik on Thursday.

"Practically 90

of the country's population demand the harshest punishment for coup 
participants, and this has to be a death penalty. They demand this at all 
rallies. The public pressure forces us to make a choice," Aktay stressed.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim have 
already stated that they do not rule out the possibility of reintroducing 
capital punishment for thousands of people arrested after a failed military 
coup last Friday.

(source: Sputnik News)

***************************

The death penalty in Turkey: On the way back?


President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's suggestion that Turkey might reinstate the 
death penalty to punish those involved in last week's failed coup bid has 
alarmed European leaders.

Turkey completely abolished the death penalty in 2004 as part of its efforts to 
join the European Union, which makes its removal an non-negotiable 
pre-condition for membership.

No judicial executions have taken place in the country since left-wing militant 
Hidir Aslan was hanged on Oct. 25, 1984 in the wake of the 1980 military coup.

But might capital punishment be on the way back?

The death penalty was used with relative frequency for serious crimes after the 
foundation of modern Turkey in 1923. But its most notorious use came after the 
military coup of 1960 which resulted in the rounding-up of members of the 
government.

Then prime minister Adnan Menderes, foreign minister Fatin Rustu Zorlu and 
finance minister Hasan Polatkan were all executed on the prison island of 
Imrali in September 1961.

Erdogan frequently invokes the execution of Menderes, one of his political 
heroes, as an example of injustice.

In 1972, young leftist activists Deniz Gezmis, Yusuf Aslan and Huseyin Inan 
were executed in 1972. They remain heroes for the Turkish socialist movement to 
this day. Another wave of executions followed the 1980 coup.

Levon Ekmekjian, a Lebanese Armenian, was executed in 1983 in Ankara after 
being found guilty of carrying out a deadly assault on the capital's 
international airport on behalf of an Armenian militant group.

Parliament voted to abolish the death penalty during peace time in 2002, with 
full abolition for all crimes following in 2004. But even before the abolition, 
it had observed a de-facto moratorium since the 1980s.

The abolition led the 1999 death sentence against to Kurdish separatist leader 
Abdullah Ocalan - and those of all others on death row - to be commuted to life 
behind bars.

Ocalan had appealed his sentence at the European Court of Human Rights. He 
remains behind bars in Imrali, an island in the Sea of Marmara off Istanbul. In 
1991, all death sentences handed down in Turkey before April of that year were 
commuted to between 10 and 20 years in jail, depending on the nature of their 
crimes, according to Amnesty International.

Erdogan has stressed any decision to reinstate capital punishment would have to 
come from parliament. But he has said he would approve any decision the 
legislature took on the matter.

Thousands of Erdogan's supporters have taken to the streets in recent days to 
condemn the coup plotters and loudly backed calls for the reinstatement of 
capital punishment.

This is not the first time in recent years that there has been popular pressure 
for capital punishment to return. The attempted rape and brutal murder of 
Ozgecan Aslan in 2015 prompted calls, including from cabinet ministers, for the 
death penalty for the 3 men found guilty.

In 2012, Erdogan, at the time prime minister, also hinted at its reinstatement, 
again due to popular support, to deal with cases of terrorism. Opponents 
denounced it as a political tactic.

(source: Saudi Gazette)






GUYANA:

Guyana govt "not in a rush" to hold death penalty consultations


A day after a top international human rights activist called on Guyana to 
repeal the death penalty for terrorism and other offences for which there is 
capital punishment, government on Thursday ruled out consultations any time 
soon to do so.

Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman, who chaired the post-cabinet 
press conference, said from all indications government was "not in a rush" to 
abolish the death penalty and any such decision would taken after 
consultations.

Asked when such consultations would be held, Trotman said "we are not in a 
position to say that we will be entering into consultations to add to the 
penalties or to remove them. We don't feel the impetus right now."

At the same time, he noted that there has been a 20-year old moratorium on the 
death penalty in Guyana.

He explained that Guyana's anti-terrorism legislation provides for the death 
penalty in keeping with requirements by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) 
and to ensure that the country is not blacklisted.

Trotman noted that "there is a strong clamour" in several European countries 
such as France, Belgium, Germany and Turkey for the reinstitution of the death 
penalty amid several deadly terrorist attacks.

He observed that a number of the countries that have been advocating for the 
removal of the death penalty have been bombing targets and killing innocents 
and hostiles raising questions whether "this was not a form of the death 
penalty being advanced by some of the very countries that are asking to remove 
from your books the death penalty."

The Guyana government's position on Thursday appeared to be a rebuff of 
Commissioner with the International Commission against the Death Penalty, 
Justice Navi Pillay's call on Wednesday for this country to review its 
Terrorism Act that has 12 provisions for the death penalty.

"You don't pass a law just because something terrible has happened. Law is not 
done emotionally. The rule of law follows international standards and Guyana is 
very much a part of the international community, has passed many international 
treaties and so they are bound to pass laws that are certain and definite and 
not responding each time to terrorism acts committed here, France or wherever," 
she told a news conference at the Marriott Hotel.

Pillay was at the time addressing a news conference ahead of a judicial 
colloquium with Guyanese judges and magistrates at the Marriott Hotel in 
Georgetown.

She said the de facto moratorium on the death penalty in Guyana was sufficient 
and it was time that lawmakers abolish punishment by death altogether.

Less than 10 years ago, Guyana amended its law that only allowed for the death 
penalty for persons convicted of killing members of the security services and 
magistrates and judges in the line of their duty.

However, a High Court Judge last month handed down the death sentence on a man 
who was found guilty of the murder of 2 brothers several years ago.

(source: Demerara Waves)