[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 20




IRAN:

"Hands Off Cain" urges Italy to raise the issue of death penalty in Iran at UN 
Human Rights Council in Geneva


In an open letter to Italian Foreign Minister on September 14, the "Hands Off 
Cain" community has asked Paolo Gentiloni to raise the issue of death penalty 
in Iran during the current session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

According to "Hands Off Cain", following Italy's decision to strengthen its 
political and economic ties with Iran and during the days when Mohammad Javad 
Larijani, Secretary General of the Iranian regime's Human Rights Council, is at 
the top of a delegation staying in Rome to participate in a seminar on 
comparing criminal justice systems, it is essential that Italy, as a leading 
country in fight against the death penalty, show a powerful figure and put 
international pressure on Iran to end the death penalty.

The "Hands Off Cain" community continues: "It is quite possible in Iran to be 
sent to the gallows for blasphemy, apostasy, non-violent crimes or for totally 
political reasons."

In their letter, the "Hands Off Cain" community asks the Italian Foreign 
Minister to boost the pressures on the Iranian regime and to discuss the sharp 
deterioration of human rights violations and the use of mass executions by the 
Iranian regime during the current session of the UN Human Rights Council which 
is underway in Geneva.

(source: NCR-Iran)






KENYA:

Ol Kalou residents want defilers, drug traffickers handed death sentences


Nyandarua residents have proposed that defilement be made a capital offense 
punishable by death.

They also want death penalty resulting from treason, robbery with violence, 
attempted robbery with violence, administering of oath purported to bind a 
person to commit a capital offence be abolished.

Residents spoke during a public debate on capital offences and punishment.

The debate was convened by the Power of Mercy Advisory Committee at the ACK 
hall in Ol Kalou on Friday.

Residents said defilement and rape tops the list of crimes in Nyandarua county.

"Defilement of minors and raping people living with disability has become an 
issue of concern in Nyandarua. The culprits need to be killed for us to be 
safe," resident Jackline Apeta said.

Githunguri assistant chief Pascal Gathima said defiling minors is equivalent to 
killing the nation's future.

(source: the-star.co.ke)






PHILIPPINES:

Death penalty call for accused Australian child sex predator Peter Scully in 
Philippines


Prosecutors in the Philippines have revealed they will call for the death 
penalty to be re-introduced in the case of alleged Australian child sex 
predator and 'dark web' mastermind Peter Scully.

Chief prosecutor Jaime Umpa told Fairfax Media that the 52 year-old Scully's 
deeds were the most shocking cases of child abuse and trafficking officials had 
seen.

Prosecutors allege that Scully directed a video involving torture and horrific 
injuries to an 18-month-old baby and participated in many debased acts against 
children. Prosecutors said he was for several years the mastermind of a 
worldwide syndicate selling extreme videos of child sex and torture.

On Tuesday, Scully was led handcuffed into a court in the southern Philippines 
to face the first 6 of 75 charges that could see him become the 1st person to 
received the death penalty in the Philippines in more than a decade. During the 
hearing he laughed and joked with his co-accused.

While naked and masked, 1 of Scully's 2 Philippine girlfriends is alleged to 
have inflicted the pain on the baby girl in a video called "Daisy's 
Destruction" that Scully is alleged to have sold to internet clients for up to 
$10,000.

In it, the baby girl is tied by her feet upside down while she is sexually 
assaulted.The girlfriend also allegedly bashed the baby,who survived and has 
been returned to the care of her parents, but remains deeply traumatized and 
becomes hysterical when memory of her abuse is triggered.

Prosecutors will allege another 11-year-old girl whose body was found in a 
shallow grave under a house rented by Scully was repeatedly sexually abused by 
him and then strangled.

8 other girl victims aged up to 13 at the time of the alleged offences are 
being held in witness protection while Scully pleads not guilty in court 
hearings that are expected to take years to be completed in the Philippines' 
log-jammed judicial system.

Scully has decided to contest the charges - putting his alleged victims through 
the ordeal of testifying in court - despite repeatedly telling Philippine media 
last year he was "remorseful" for what he had done to children.

Wearing a yellow prison T-shirt and runners, Scully looked tense and ignored 
questions from Fairfax Media as he was led into a special court set up in 
Cagayan de Oro's city hall on Tuesday.

Prosecutors allege that Scully was the white male person, whose face was 
pixilated or hidden, captured in videos forcing children to commit depraved 
acts. Many of the investigators, journalists and officials who have watched the 
videos have been brought to tears.

"They were the most devastating thing I have ever seen," said Ruby Malanog, who 
is 1 of 2 lawyers prosecuting Scully.

"I cried when I was watching them ... in fact I feel like crying just now while 
talking about it," she said. "It was hard to believe what I was seeing ... that 
somebody could do those things to children."

On the eve of Tuesday's hearing Mr Umpa, the chief prosecutor of northern 
Mindanao region, called for the reintroduction of the death penalty in the 
Philippines so that Scully, a Melbourne businessman, could be executed.

"If I had my choice it would be death for Scully. I want it to happen," Mr Umpa 
told Fairfax Media in Cagayan de Oro, a city of 1 million people where Scully 
allegedly lured impoverished children from shopping malls.

"We have to send a strong message to others that if they come to the 
Philippines and torture and abuse our children in this way they will be 
investigated with the full force of the law and executed," he said.

Mr Umpa said unless the death penalty was reintroduced prosecutors would push 
in the first hearings for Scully to be given the maximum sentence of life 
imprisonment for human trafficking and 10 years for each of the5 sexual abuse 
charges, meaning Scully could be jailed for up to 100 years.

But under current Philippine procedures, he would be released after serving 30 
years and then deported to Australia.

"We don't believe this is sufficient for these crimes that were committed," Mr 
Umpa said.

Scully showed no emotion and looked away when Fairfax Media told him about the 
call which came only days after tough-talking Philippine president Rodrigo 
Duterte reiterated that he wants the death penalty returned for "heinous" 
crimes, including rape and murder. The country abolished it in 2006 following 
fierce opposition from the Catholic church, the religion of 80 % of Filipinos.

Mr Duterte, who was swept into office at May elections pledging to wipe out 
crime, has overseen a bloody crackdown on illegal drug pushers that has left 
more than 3500 Filipinos dead. Scully, who arrived in the Philippines in 2011 
after fleeing fraud and deception charges in Melbourne, has been portraying 
himself as victim while on remand in Cagayan de Oro City jail, telling his 
lawyers that he was sexually abused by a priest when he was growing up in 
Victoria.

He was arrested last year on human trafficking charges. Jail warden Ferdiand 
Pontillo told Fairfax Media that Scully complains about conditions in a 
chronically overcrowded facility, wanting to be pampered with luxury food and a 
mobile telephone so he can make international calls. "He wants the same 
conditions as there are in Australian jails but this is not Australia," he 
said.

Scully refused to comment to Fairfax Media at the jail built to accommodate 350 
prisoners, but which now has 1840. Scully's sister , who lives in Australia, 
has complained to the jail about the conditions he is being held under.

The first 6 charges that Scully will face relate to the alleged abduction and 
sexual abuse of 2 teenage girls in Cagayan de Oro in September 2014.

Prosecutors will allege the girls were lured to a house on the promise of food 
by one of Scully's girlfriends where they were given alcohol before they were 
raped by Scully and forced to commit sex acts in front of cameras.

When the girls tried to escape Scully forced them to dig a grave under the 
house where they were told they would be buried, Ms Malanog, the prosecutor, 
told Fairfax Media before the hearing began. When the girls escaped after 5 
days they ran terrified to their parent's home, Ms Malanog said.

Mr Umpa said Scully faces a further 69 charges filed by the Department of 
Justice in Manila that relate to his alleged business making videos for 
so-called "dark web" clients, a reference to websites where server information, 
including IP addresss are hidden.

A murder charge has been absorbed into a human trafficking charge. Scully's 
activities in the Philippines have been linked to Melbourne university student 
Matthew David Graham, who was sentenced to 15 years jail in the Victorian 
County Court in March this year.

A judge described Graham as being involved in a "twisted and evil life" in "the 
dark shadows of the cyber world".

(source: Sydney Morning Herald)






INDIA:

Supreme Court Judge Expresses Reservations about Sentencing Policy


Justice Ranjan Gogoi of the Supreme Court, in line to become Chief Justice of 
India in October 2018, has expressed serious reservations about the sentencing 
policy followed by judges.

"For the same offence, the sentence awarded could be 6 months or 6 years. It is 
all rule of thumb", he observed, while hearing the review petition of B.A. 
Umesh, a death-row convict, who was sentenced for the offence of rape and 
murder.

Umesh's death sentence was confirmed and his review petition dismissed by the 
Supreme Court in 2011. His mercy petition was rejected by the president on May 
12, 2013. Subsequently, his plea for open court hearing of his review petition 
was granted by the Supreme Court. Currently lodged in Belgaum Central Prison, 
Karnataka, he has already completed nearly 17 years in prison.

On Monday, the counsel for the registrar general of the Karnataka high court, 
Anitha Shenoy, submitted before the bench headed by Justice Gogoi, and also 
comprising Justices Prafulla C. Pant and A.M. Khanwilkar, that Umesh deserved 
no mercy because he was convicted on the basis of unimpeachable evidence, and 
as many as 8 judges, including the trial court judge, have found his offence 
the 'rarest of rare'.

After the trial court verdict went against Umesh, 2 high court judges differed 
over his sentence, while agreeing that his offence was rarest of rare. The 
judge who was reluctant to impose the death sentence on him, reasoned that life 
sentence would be harsher than death.

The case was then decided by the 3rd judge, who confirmed his death sentence. 
Subsequently, 2 Supreme Court judges also confirmed his death sentence. The 
same 2 judges also rejected his review petition in their chambers.

Justice Gogoi told the counsel that the offences of rape and murder do occur 
and, therefore, they cannot constitute rarest of rare offences, simply because 
they are committed by the same accused in succession. 'Would we need something 
more to make the offence a rarest of rare offence?', he asked the counsel.

Justice Gogoi then asked the counsel to respond to the 2 mitigating 
circumstances in Umesh's favour: he was just 29 at the time of commission of 
the offence, and he spared the life of the 7-year old boy of the deceased, who 
was a witness to the crime.

Put in this context, Justice Gogoi expressed his dissatisfaction with the 
court's sentencing policy, and asked the counsel to examine the sentencing 
policy followed in other countries. "I suggest this not for the purposes of 
deciding this case, but may be one can write an article. Perhaps other 
countries too face the same problem like us. How do you interpret the words 
"may extend to" and "shall not be less than" used while prescribing the 
sentence for some offences?," he asked.

When the counsel said 29 years cannot be construed as a young age, and 
therefore, a mitigating factor, Justice Gogoi responded by saying being young 
cannot be equated with the age of a juvenile either.

While the counsel laid stress on Umesh's incapacity for reform because of his 
repetitive offences, Justice Gogoi appeared to favour the idea proposed by a 
previous bench that mitigating circumstances in favour of the convict must be 
nil, before the rarest of rare test is applied.

While the bench has reserved its verdict in this case, Justice Gogoi's 
observations on sentencing policy assume significance, especially in the 
context of the recent trend among Supreme Court judges to quantify the life 
sentence as an alternative to the death sentence.

As Umesh has already completed about 17 years imprisonment, he will be eligible 
for remission if Justice Gogoi's bench merely confirms his life sentence, and 
sets aside his death sentence. In order to keep him in prison for a few more 
years, the bench has to quantify his life sentence, and declare it beyond the 
remission powers of the state government. While life sentence means the entire 
remaining life of the convict, the quantification will apply to the period when 
the state government cannot exercise its remission powers, even after the 
statutory period of 14 years.

The trend, which was first started in the Swami Shraddhananda case in 2008, by 
a 3-Judge bench, was confirmed by a 5-Judge Constitution bench in Sriharan 
@Murugan last year.

On September 16, another 3-judge bench found this sentencing policy innovative, 
and followed it while altering the death sentence of a convict, sentenced for 
rape and murder of a child, to imprisonment for 25 years without remission.

Justice Gogoi bench's judgment in Umesh's case is expected to carry this debate 
on quantifying the life sentence - as an alternative to the death penalty - 
further.

(source: thewire.in)

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

Court cites reasons for death penalty in acid attack case


"A strong message needs to be sent to the miscreants of such crimes against 
women that such crimes shall not be tolerated," recorded a special women???s 
court last week, after it awarded the death penalty to the convict in a May 
2013 acid attack case.

"This crime is 1st of its kind in India," Judge Anju S Shende, said on her last 
day at the City Civil and Sessions Court. "If the rising trend towards such 
crime is not checked at its inception, it will have monstrous effects on 
society, and soon it will spread widely." In a landmark verdict, the court, on 
September 6, convicted 26-year-old Ankur Lal Panwar for throwing acid on Preeti 
Rathi on May 2, 2013, at Bandra Terminus, with the intention of causing burns 
and committing murder. Ms Rathi, who hailed from Delhi and had arrived in 
Mumbai to begin her career as a nurse, died of her injuries on June 1, 2013. 
Her post mortem report recorded multiple organ failure due to the corrosion 
caused by the acid.

In a 150-page order, the court said, "Without a shadow of doubt, this (crime) 
falls in the category of the rarest of the rare case. The incident is extremely 
gruesome, revolting, and horrifying. This court is not in the knowledge of any 
case in which a crime of this nature has been committed and the accused is 
sentenced, till date. Therefore, deterrent punishment is the need of the hour. 
Being fully aware of the nature of the death penalty, the court has reached the 
conclusion to award the death sentence to the accused."

Drawing a parallel with rape, the court said, "The height of brutality in acid 
attacks was more than those in cases of rape. Rape destroys the soul of the 
victim. But she can be kept in isolation, without disclosing her identity, and 
can be rehabilitated. But for an acid (attack) victim, she has to move around 
with a destroyed body." The court then ordered, "The accused is to be hanged by 
neck, till he is dead, subject to the confirmation of the Bombay High Court."

While organisations working for acid attack victims are cheering the judgment, 
women s rights lawyers say that the death penalty does not necessarily act as a 
deterrent.

Senior counsel Gayatri Singh, who had represented an acid attack victim at 
Bombay High Court, said, "The death penalty doesn't help at all. This is like 
an eye for an eye; how would it help in solving our societal problems. I am not 
saying that wrong was not done to the woman, but instead of taking a 
retributive approach, you should have a more rehabilitative approach. You need 
to punish the person, but death penalty is not a solution."

Flavia Agnes, a women's rights lawyer, told The Hindu , "Time and again it has 
been proved that the death penalty does not act as deterrent. It is like 
private vengeance. So many countries have eliminated the death penalty, and we 
just keep on increasing its ambit. In this case, the woman died, but in the 
Shakti Mills rape case, they gave the death penalty. That's even more 
terrible." On the other side, a volunteer who works with acid attack victims 
told The Hindu on condition of anonymity, "It's important to look from the 
victim's point of view. When you do that you realise that death penalty is 
important. Acid attack victims undergo grievous hurt, and that does not go away 
by mere counselling. The convict will be awarded the death penalty only after 
confirmation from the High Court, so let's wait until then. But I can tell you 
that acid attack victims will be delighted if capital punishment is confirmed."

(source: The Hindu)