[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

June 24



NAMIBIA:

'Bring back the death penalty'


The family of 20-year-old Janet !Haoses who died under horrific circumstances 
allegedly at the hands of her boyfriend in Otjomuise want government to amend 
the constitution to bring back the death penalty.

A relative Claudia Namises, who attended the suspect David Soreseb's 1st court 
appearance in Katutura yesterday, wants the death penalty to be brought back 
"because a woman or child is killed every day by men".

But before Namises made her suggestion for the reintroduction of the death 
penalty a 33-year-old woman died Wednesday evening after she was hacked with an 
axe on the head, allegedly by her boyfriend in Grootfontein, in another case of 
savage domestic violence against a woman.

The incident occurred at approximately 20h00 in Blikkiesdorp informal 
settlement.

Namibian Police Force (NamPol) Otjozondjupa Regional Public Relations Officer, 
Warrant Officer Maureen Mbeha, yesterday confirmed the latest incident to 
Nampa. The deceased has been identified as Alexandrina Kashova Shikusho.

The suspect in the Otjomuise case, Soreseb, was denied bail and his case was 
postponed to September 26 for further investigation and to enable him to apply 
for legal aid, because of the seriousness of the charge.

Namises queried: "Until when will we ask for stiffer sentences? We really want 
our president to look into the constitution to be amended. We can't be dying 
like flies. We can't march to courts every day." Namises also invited President 
Hage Geingob to attend court proceedings to see how devastating it is for the 
victim's family.

However, Namises told Soreseb after court proceedings to pray to God as he has 
caused untold misery to the family - to which the suspect replied in the 
affirmative.

Soreseb appeared for murdering his girlfriend !Haoses who he had seemingly 
strangled with electric wire and stabbed several times with a knife. Soreseb 
had also tied the victim legs while committing these acts. It is further 
alleged !Haoses was bludgeoned with a hammer.

Another family member Elizabeth !Haoses-Gawanas stared at Soreseb being 
escorted away by the police after court proceedings and said she felt pity for 
him, despite the hideous crime he committed.

Nonetheless, !Haoses-Gawanas said the family didn't want him to get bail. "He 
hurt us badly. Our hearts are broken."

Only a handful of family members were present in court. The deceased's mother, 
said to be devastated beyond measure, was also not in court.

Public Prosecutor Fillemon Nyau objected to bail being granted to Soreseb, 
stating that the charge is a serious offence and that the accused might not 
stand trial as he is suicidal.

He also said the State objects to bail because it is feared the accused might 
interfere with investigations and intimidate witnesses. It is also not in the 
interest of the public and administration of justice, Nyau added.

Nyau said the matter enjoyed media coverage hence the accused's safety is also 
a concern to the State as community members might take the law into their own 
hands.

Nyau requested that as threats have been made against Soreseb, he be 
transferred from Katutura police holding cells to Hosea Kutako holding cells 
for his own safety.

Magistrate Michelle Bernedine Kubersky presided.

(source: New Era)






CAMEROON:

Gov't under pressure as National Assembly adopts controversial penal code


Lawyers marched in North west Cameroon on Thursday to protest the adoption of a 
revised controversial penal code heavily criticised by the opposition and the 
civil society.

Controversy surrounds section 127 which critics say gives immunity to members 
of government while in office.

"My attachment to human and Republican values will not let me remain silent in 
the face of several unconstitutional provisions which are in debate for 
adoption at this time in Yaounde. Because the immunity of ministers (Section 
127) is contrary to good governance and the transparency of public finances. 
Imprisoning citizens because they owe 2 months of rents is a dispute which can 
be resolved by civil remedies instead of inserting drastic sanction in our 
penal code," Joshua Osih, Member of parliament and vice-president of Cameroon's 
opposition party, the Social Democratic Front, argued.

The minister of justice defended the section by arguing that government 
ministers have to enjoy this favour since they carry out instructions of the 
Head of state.

Legal experts have also been speaking out about the issues raised by the 
revised penal code bill.

"I would like to be categorical that it is a false alarm to assert that the 
bill currently before parliament confers immunity on members of government. 
Everyone with a reasonable command of the English language would not contend 
that the bill merely does provide that, where any law may confer immunity on "a 
member of government", inter alia, any judicial, legal or investigating police 
officer who conducts themselves contrary to the law so conferring immunity 
shall be punished. Much as there are sections of the bill we can make issue 
with, or even take exception to, the claim that the bill confers immunity on 
members of government is wholly fallacious or misconstrued," outspoken Supreme 
Court judge, Ayah Paul Abine wrote on his facebook page after comparing the 
controversial section 127 with that of 1967.

Opposition members of parliament have also decried the fact that the bill on 
the penal code gives the green light for judges to imprison tenants who owe up 
to 2 months of rents.

The government has also been under increasing pressure to remove the death 
penalty.

Other areas of discord between the government and critics of the bill on the 
penal code are related to bride price, homosexuality and adultery.

The amendment will open the way for the prosecution of adulterous husbands, who 
just like wives found guilty of adultery could spend 6 years in jail and pay 
fines ranging from 25.000FCFA to 100.000FCFA.

Unless the government decides otherwise, if adopted by the senate, the penal 
code will be signed into law by the president of the Republic.

The ruling Cameroon's People's Democratic Movement enjoys a comfortable 
majority in the senate where government bills usually sail through with 
relative ease.

The Cameroon Bar Association has called on the government to withdraw the bill 
and submit for national dialogue.

(source: Africa News)






JAPAN:

Capital punishment for a minor


The Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the death sentence given in a lay 
judge trial to a 24-year-old man for murders he committed when he was a minor 
raises questions about the lay judge trial system and capital punishment. These 
include whether the lay judges correctly understood the spirit of the Juvenile 
Law in sentencing the defendant to death. It was the 1st death sentence handed 
down on a minor in a lay judge trial.

The murders took place in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, in 2010 when Yutaro 
Chiba was 18 - meaning he fell under the purview of the Juvenile Law. Chiba was 
convicted of entering his ex-girlfriend's house and stabbing to death the 
girl's sister and a female friend of the girl with a butcher knife, seriously 
injuring a male friend of the sister and abducting the girl. Prosecutors said 
Chiba killed the victims because they were trying to separate him and his 
former girlfriend.

Since Chiba pleaded no contest to the key facts presented by the prosecution, 
the severity of punishment was the main issue in the trial, which was handled 
by a team of three professional and 6 lay judges, at the Sendai District Court. 
In its November 2010 ruling, the court said that in view of the heinousness of 
his crimes, the fact that Chiba was a minor at the time did not constitute 
sufficient reason to avoid capital punishment. The decision was upheld in 2014 
in an appellate trial handled solely by professional judges at the Sendai High 
Court.

The district court trial lasted 11 days. 5 hearings were held and the judges 
spent two days deciding on the penalty. During the trial, Chiba's lawyers 
argued that he was mentally immature, that his crimes were not premeditated and 
that a doctor's record of his examination pointed to the possibility that he 
could be rehabilitated. A legitimate question is whether the judges had enough 
time to examine the family environment of the accused and whatever reflection 
he had over his crimes. It must be asked whether the judges had fully 
considered and discussed the prospect of his rectification, in view of the 
Juvenile Law's main principle of helping problem youths achieve rehabilitation.

Chiba's family was fatherless. Under the Juvenile Law, a family court can send 
a minor to prosecutors if its judges deem such a move is appropriate. But the 
law also says that in examining the behavior of a minor and his or her personal 
history and family environment, a family court should use the expertise of 
medicine, psychology, pedagogy and other branches of learning. Regarding a 
crime committed by a minor who is under the age of 18, a court cannot hand down 
a death sentence.

The Supreme Court and the Justice Ministry should consider whether lay judge 
trials, whose durations tend to be short, are suitable for handling serious 
crimes committed by minors. They also should think about whether it is 
appropriate to have lay judges participate in trials that may result in giving 
the death penalty because experience shows that handing down such a sentence 
puts an enormous psychological burden on lay judges.

In 1983, the Supreme Court adopted a criterion comprising nine factors for 
sentencing someone to death, which said in a nutshell that a court can hand 
down the death penalty only when it is unavoidable in view of the gravity of 
the crimes of the accused. Under this criterion, the age of defendants when 
they commit their crimes was considered a key factor in trials involving 
minors. But this trend changed when the Supreme Court in 2006 remanded the case 
involving the 1999 murder in Hikari, Yamaguchi Prefecture, of a 23-year-old 
woman and her baby daughter by a boy - who had just turned 18 - to the 
Hiroshima High Court. The Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for him in 
2012.

The judges in the Sendai trial are likely to have followed the trend set by the 
top court's handling of the Hikari case. In supporting the lower court rulings, 
the Supreme Court's First Petty Bench in a 5-0 ruling pointed out that in view 
of the serious nature of the crimes - that 2 people were murdered out of the 
accused's selfish motive - his criminal responsibility was extremely heavy even 
though he was a minor when he committed the murders and had no prior record.

The tendency to impose tougher punishment on crimes committed by minors appears 
to have set in. Through revisions of the Juvenile Law, the minimum age at which 
minors can face criminal punishment has been lowered from 16 years of age to 14 
and the upper limit for a fixed prison term was raised from 15 years to 20. The 
Supreme Court and the Justice Ministry should rouse public discussions on 
whether imposing stricter punishment, including hanging, on minors will really 
contribute to reducing crimes by providing concrete data as well as information 
on how other countries cope with crimes by minors.

(source: Editorial, The Japan Times)






UNITED NATIONS:

UN drugs agency report ignores global drug execution crisis


A new report by the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) fails to mention the 
use of the death penalty for drug crimes, despite a surge in executions of 
alleged drug offenders in countries where the UN agency funds counter-narcotics 
police.

UNODC unveiled its 2016 World Drug Report yesterday (23 June 2016) and warned 
that the number of drug users has risen worldwide. However, the 174-page 
document included no reference to the increased number of death sentences and 
executions in countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, says the human 
rights organisation Reprieve.

While the UNODC's report lamented the number of deaths from drugs overdoses, it 
made no reference to the 638 alleged drug offenders who were hanged in Iran 
last year, up from 367 in 2014. UNODC recently announced a new $20 million 
funding deal for Iranian drug operations, which will support law enforcement 
training and equipment that has previously been linked to arrests and 
executions.

Earlier this year, 56 countries, including all 28 EU member states, signed a 
statement condemning the failure of a UNODC-administered summit to address the 
death penalty for drug crimes.

The statement also appeared to warn the UNODC over its human rights record, 
noting the need to "prevent criminal justice or other forms of international 
assistance resulting in a death sentence being applied, and to hold 
international agencies to account for compliance with this and all other human 
rights obligations."

Maya Foa, Director of Reprieve's Death Penalty Team, said: "The UN's World Drug 
Report completely ignores the global resurgence in the death penalty for drug 
crimes, which has seen states like Iran and Saudi Arabia execute hundreds of 
alleged drug offenders.

"This seems all too convenient an omission given that the body which authored 
the report, the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime, continues to fund Iranian and 
Pakistani drug raids which routinely send drug mules to death row."

She concluded: "Instead of whitewashing the world's drug executions crisis, 
UNODC should face up to its human rights responsibilities, and freeze its 
support for drug police in countries which apply the death penalty for 
narcotics offenses."

(source: ekklesia.co.uk)


BAHAMAS:

Mcweeney Says He Doubts Political Will To Ensure Death Penalty Is Carried Out


CONSTITUTIONAL Commission Chairman Sean McWeeney said yesterday that he doubts 
political leaders would be able to amass the political will needed to have the 
death penalty carried out despite widespread public support.

Mr McWeeney, QC, pointed to a significant philosophical divide among 
high-ranking Bahamians that cut across party lines as he contemplated the 
viability of calls for the government to enforce hangings.

He maintained that the only chance legislators had in ensuring capital 
punishment laws were enforced is to amend the Constitution.

"We recommended it might be worth the effort to amend the Constitution with the 
view to tying the hands of Privy Council," he said.

"That will be done by basically specifying the kinds of cases that would be 
worst of the worst rather than leaving to Privy Council to decided what is 
worst. I think philosophically the Privy Council is opposed to the death 
penalty and they will keep moving the goal post on you.

"The only hope you have is putting it in the Constitution specifying the 
criteria."

"They (the Privy Council) have demonstrated such intellectual ingenuity," he 
said, "they are in effect making social policy for The Bahamas and it stems 
from a deeply rooted philosophical objection to capital punishment. They think 
it's primitive and that they have a duty to bring us to new enlightenment."

His comments follow pronouncements by Opposition Leader Dr Hubert Minnis that 
the necks of "murderous scumbags" in the country must be "popped". Dr Minnis 
renewed his full support for capital punishment as he castigated the Christie 
administration for failing "miserably" in its obligation to keep Bahamians 
safe.

Mr McWeeney said he personally believes that capital punishment would have a 
deterrent effect in a small society like the Bahamas, if only impacting crimes 
committed by reoffenders.

He said: "I think a part of the problem is that both within government and the 
FNM there are a number of persons, high ranking persons, who also have 
philosophical objections to capital punishment. Unlike the issue of gender 
equality this is a true conscience vote. I don???t think you'll see the whip 
applied on this matter because there are politicians who are against capital 
punishment on moral grounds, and that also may be an impediment to getting the 
political will together.

"I know there are members in both camps that have a very deep opposition. There 
is no question if you do a referendum you would get 90 % support for it."

The last person executed in the Bahamas was David Mitchell in January 2000.

He was convicted of stabbing 2 German tourists to death.

Mitchell's execution was controversial because it was carried out while he had 
an appeal pending before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

International criticism of the move was followed by a moratorium on capital 
punishment, which lasted until the Privy Council's decision in the case of Maxo 
Tido.

In June 2011, the high court overturned Tido's death sentence in connection 
with the killing of 16-year-old Donnell Connover, whose body was found off 
Cowpen Road, battered and bruised and her skull crushed. There was additional 
evidence that parts of her body were burned after her death.

But the Privy Council concluded that the murder was not an example of the 
"worst of the worst".

Several months later, Parliament passed legislation to define the types of 
murder constituting the "worst of the worst" guidelines set out by the London 
court.

However, Mr McWeeney explained that the amendments to the Penal Code were 
inferior in the scope of the Privy Council.

During the 2016 Legal Year Opening Ceremony, Chief Justice Sir Hartman Longley 
declared that "the death penalty is virtually dead."

Sir Hartman said it would take a massacre similar to the Charlie Hebdo attack 
in Paris for the death penalty to be imposed in the Bahamas.

In the Paris attack, 12 people were killed after gunmen burst into the 
satirical magazine's office.

Yesterday, Mr McWeeney said: "It's a difficult situation to deal with because 
when the Privy Council sits on Bahamian cases it's doing so as a Bahamian 
court, it's constitutionally our final court. The problem is because of the 
composition of the Privy Council they will inevitably be influenced by whatever 
the prevailing social policies are in Britain and the First World.

"But even if we were to move to the Caribbean Court of Justice there is nothing 
in their jurisprudence which would suggest that they would do so, that may be a 
false hope.

"It's good to talk about it," he said, "(but) the only chance you have of 
reinstating it is by constitutionalising it."

(asource: tribune242.com)