[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

May 9




INDONESIA:

Bali 9 lawyer calls for death penalty discussion a year on from executions


The Indonesian lawyer for Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran says it is time for 
activists fighting to end the death penalty in the country to engage with the 
Islamic community about the cause.

Indonesian lawyer Dr Todung Mulya Lubis and Australian barrister Julian McMahon 
led the long legal fight against the executions of the Bali 9 duo, who were 
shot by a firing squad on the prison island of Nusakambangan in April last 
year.

Speaking just over a week after the 1-year anniversary of their deaths, Dr 
Mulya said it was time to start a dialogue with the Islamic community around 
executions.

"It was taken for granted by those death penalty activists that you cannot 
converse with them, as they are extremists. But I think it's time for us to do 
that," he told the ASEAN Literary Festival yesterday in Jakarta.

When he began campaigning against the death penalty in Indonesia in 1979 he 
said he was accused of being anti-Islamic and anti-Pancasila (the 5 moral 
principles said to make up Indonesian life and society).

"Every label was put on me ... But I'm pleased to know there are more and more 
people now talking about the death penalty."

Mr McMahon said while it was common for the 21st century to be described as 
something belonging to Asia, economic growth and leadership was not enough.

"In that context you have to think of society as a whole, and that includes 
crime and punishment.

"There is no evidence that shows that executions have any value in terms of 
being a deterrent," he added.

The comments come after Indonesia's Attorney-General HM Prasetyo flagged that 
executions in the country were likely to resume this year.

While there has been no announcement as to when this will happen, Security 
Minister Luhut Panjaitan has said he did not want to see a repeat of the 
"drama" like what occurred in the lead up to the Australians' executions, 
during which there was intense foreign media attention and diplomatic pressure 
on Indonesia, as well as strident international appeals and pleas from family 
members.

He has said that the law stipulated Indonesia only needed to give three days' 
notice as to when an execution was going to take place.

(source: tvnz.co.nz)

***********

Death-row convicts moved to Nusakambangan ahead of executions


Several death-row inmates have reportedly been moved to Nusakambangan prison 
island in Cilacap, Central Java, signaling that their executions will be held 
in the near future.

3 death-row convicts from Tembesi prison in Batam were quietly transferred to 
Nusakambangan prison on Sunday evening. They are inmates whose verdicts were 
final and binding.

Using official prison authority vessel KM Pengayoman, the three inmates from 
Batam were taken across from the Wijayapura Quay in Cilacap to "execution 
island" at around 8 p.m. local time. They are Agus Hadi, 53; Pudjo, 42; and 
Suryanto, 53.

"They are death-row inmates from the Batam Class II Penitentiary," Abdul Aris, 
warden of Batu prison in Nusakambangan, told journalists on Sunday. They were 
convicted for drug-trafficking charges, he went on.

Abdul further explained that the 3 Batam inmates were put together with several 
other death-row convicts in Batu prison. There were 59 death-row convicts 
waiting for their executions in Nusakambangan, he added.

Last port of call - Police and security officers secure areas around the 
Wijayapura Quay in Cilacap, Central Java, ahead of the 2nd round of executions 
of drug convicts in April 2015.

Law and Human Rights Ministry Central Java chapter head of correctional 
institution division Molyanto confirmed the transfer of the 3 death row inmates 
from Batam to Nusakambangan.

However, he could not yet confirm whether they would be executed in the 
upcoming round of executions, the third under President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's 
administration.

"Nusakambangan today received three drug inmates who have received the death 
penalty. Concerning whether they are on the list of convicts to be executed, we 
still don't know," Molyanto told journalists on Sunday.

Earlier, Attorney General M Prasetyo confirmed the execution of drug-related 
death row inmates whose verdicts were final and binding would be carried out 
soon, saying that all preparations had been made and it was now just a matter 
of time, he said.

Prasetyo further said that the 3rd round of executions would be conducted on 
Nusakambangan, the same location as the previous executions of 14 drug convicts 
in January and April 2015.

(source: The Jakara Post)






PAPUA NEW GUINEA:

PNG appeal to stave off death penalty


Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court has deferred a ruling until next month in a 
case in which a lawyer asked the court to convert a death penalty for his 
client to a 30-year jail sentence.

The case follows the killing of a woman in Milne Bay 11 years ago when two men, 
Sedoki Lota and Fred Abanko, beheaded her after allegations she practised 
sorcery.

The Post Courier reports that both men were convicted of wilful murder in 2007 
and Justice Mark Sevua sentenced them to be hanged by the neck.

The judge and Abanko have since died.

Lota's lawyer's grounds of appeal are that Justice Sevua had erred in 
exercising the court's discretion by giving a sentence that was too harsh and 
out of proportion to the crime.

(source: Radio New Zealand)






INDIA:

Youngest prisoner on death row now cleared of charges


At 33, he has spent half his life now in jails, on trial in various cases. In 5 
of those alleged to have been committed by him when still a minor, he was 
sentenced to death. He has been acquitted in all since, but remains the 
youngest prisoner to have served time on death row as per the Death Penalty 
India Report released last week.

Lawyer Hashmath Pasha says the resident of Kurubarahalli village in Kolar 
district, who was one of the first members of the notorious Dandupalya gang 
arrested by police, was named as accused in 48 cases, including theft, dacoity, 
murder and rape.

Apart from the cases where he was given death, he has been acquitted in all 
cases but 3. In 2 of those cases, he is serving life imprisonment, while in 1 
case of murder, he has been sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for 10 years. He 
is lodged in Hindalaga jail in Belagavi.

The gang, whose members are related to each other, has been linked to criminal 
activities since the 1930s. The 33-year-old lost parents when very young, and 
his sisters are married to alleged members of the gang.

A police report on the gang accuses it of 74 murders, including of 40 women. At 
its height at the time of the 1999 arrests, the gang was said to have more than 
30 members, including women and children. They were known to stab, behead 
people they robbed, and often to rape them.

"The 33-year-old was arrested in 1999, when aged around 18 according to police. 
The cases registered against him were reported from 1996. It shows he was a 
minor then," Pasha says.

In 2015, Pasha approached the Civil Court in Bengaluru praying that his client 
be considered a minor in criminal cases linked to him. A school headmaster, C M 
Naryanaswamy, testified that as per their records, the accused was born on 
August 16, 1982. The court is yet to pronounce its verdict on this.

While police insist he never enrolled in school and is illiterate, retired DSP 
Chalapathy, who carried out arrests of the Dandupalya gang in 1999 agrees he 
was around 18 when held. "We arrested him on December 9, 1999, for a dacoity 
and murder," he says.

Police say he admitted to a theft and dacoity at the time, but admit that 
perhaps he was not aware his gang had murdered 2 persons during the dacoity. 
They also admit that information provided by him had helped them arrest other 
members of the gang.

(source: Indian Express)

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

New report on death-row prisoners poses questions to the political and judicial 
establishment


The 1st comprehensive report on death-row prisoners by the National Law 
University, which identified 385 prisoners and received access to 373 of them, 
reveals certain infirmities that would question the basis upon which death 
penalties are awarded. Confirming studies in other countries that the death 
penalty is more likely to be imposed on poorer victims, the NLU report says 
that 74.1 % of those on death row hail from economically vulnerable groups. The 
implications of this are immense: what it tells us is the quality of legal help 
that they could afford, the most crucial factor that would have ensured that 
these prisoners were spared the gallows. The report also notes that 61 % of the 
prisoners had not completed secondary school, which explains socio-economic 
status and their inability to study case files and court documents to build a 
better defence case for themselves. More damningly, the report notes that of 
191 of the prisoners who spoke about legal assistance, 68 % said they had never 
met their lawyers at the high court level and 44 % did not even know the names 
of the lawyers representing them in the Supreme Court. Interface between the 
lawyer and the client is key to a successful defence, and the lawyer gathering 
a better understanding of the case.

Even the role of the State's legal aid services has been questioned by the 
death-row prisoners who complained that these lawyers extorted money from them. 
As many as 185 of these prisoners said there was no lawyer available to them 
while in police custody, and 169 prisoners said there were no lawyers to 
represent them when first produced before a magistrate. This essentially brings 
out the class distinctions between a rich and a poor person and the latter's 
disadvantages. Even the role of the lower judiciary becomes suspect in this 
scenario as the Supreme Court has repeatedly asserted, that even a terrorist 
like Ajmal Kasab, deserves to get legal representation, without which the 
entire judicial process becomes vitiated. The report will energise proponents 
for abolition of the death penalty and their argument that life imprisonment in 
jail for the duration of the convict's natural life is a more humane, but 
equally severe punishment. The study also tells us that 25 % of the prisoners 
were Dalits or Adivasis, 34 % were OBC's, 20 % belonged to religious minorities 
and 24 % belonged to the general category. While this would broadly correlate 
with the share of these communities in the larger population, the conjunction 
of backward caste and lower class identities cannot be rejected outright. Last 
year, the Law Commission had recommended a gradual phase-out of the death 
penalty and retaining it only for terror cases. But the NLU report also reveals 
that it is in terror cases that the judicial process has been most vitiated. 
The disposal of terror cases, on average, takes over 8 years at the trial 
stage, and six years at the appeal process. In contrast, death row prisoners in 
other cases spent an average of 3 years in jail during the trial stage and 2 
years during the appellate stage. But that is where the inhumanity also begins. 
The researchers found that 1,810 death penalties were awarded by trial courts 
between 2000 and 2015. But just 5 % of all death penalties were confirmed by 
higher courts. In the last 12 years, just three executions have taken place 
which indicates that the political executive is even less disposed towards 
death penalties than the higher judiciary. This raises the question of why 
prisoners have to be put through death row where they are kept in solitary 
confinement and not allowed to work and even tortured. It is time that the high 
court and Supreme Court pull their weight and tell trial court judges to be 
more circumspect when awarding punishments. It is time, again, for Parliament 
and the Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of the death penalty.

(suorce: Daily News & Analysis)

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

Poverty and the death row


Opposition to the death penalty is often rooted in arguments about its 
irreversibility, its essential cruelty, the possibility of error and the false 
sense of justice in doing unto convicted murderers what they had done to their 
victims. In the Indian context, politics surrounding the prisoners' ethnic 
origin or linguistic affinity is often the basis for pleas for clemency. Rarely 
is a more compelling reason invoked: the possibility of an offender's economic 
background, educational level, social status or religious identity working 
against his interests in legal proceedings. A report released on Friday by the 
National Law University, Delhi, on the working of the death penalty in India 
provides validation and proof for something that those familiar with 
administration of justice knew all along: that most of those sentenced to death 
in the country are poor and uneducated; and many belong to religious 
minorities. In addition, a revealing number is that as many as 241 out of 385 
death row convicts were 1st-time offenders. Some may have been juveniles when 
they committed capital offences, but lacked the documentation to prove their 
age. Against the salutary principle that those too young and too old be spared 
the death sentence, 54 death row convicts whose age was available were between 
18 and 21 at the time of the offence, and 7 had crossed 60 years of age. An 
average prisoner awaiting execution is likely to be from a religious minority, 
a Dalit caste, a backward class, or from an economically vulnerable family, and 
is unlikely to have finished secondary schooling.

The late President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, had once said a study by his office 
into the background of convicts seeking mercy showed "a social and economic 
bias". He digressed from his prepared text during a public lecture to ask, "Why 
are so many poor people on death row?" The link between socio-economic standing 
and access to competent legal counsel and effective representation is quite 
strong. A question of concern that arises is whether these statistics indicate 
systemic bias or institutionalised prejudice. It is not uncommon that legal 
grounds unavailable to the vulnerable are invoked in favour of the influential. 
A recent instance is that of four prisoners from a political party who were 
sentenced to death for burning a bus during a protest and killing 3 women 
students. The court, while commuting their sentence, invoked the ???doctrine of 
diminished responsibility??? and reasoned that those gripped by mob frenzy were 
not fully cognisant of the situation around them. While invoking any ground to 
commute a death sentence to life is welcome, the impression is inescapable that 
such relief often comes at a very late stage and only to those with the means 
to pursue legal remedies till the very end. When a judicial system that is seen 
as favouring the influential resorts to capital punishment, it will be 
vulnerable to the charge of socio-economic bias. Law and society, therefore, 
will be better served if the death penalty itself is abolished. These 
statistics must reinforce the larger moral argument against the state taking 
the life of a human being - any human being - as punishment.

(source: Editorial, The HIndu)

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

Man gets death penalty for killing minor boy


A local court on Saturday awarded death sentence to one Manish Kumar alias 
Nepali Mandal (25) after finding him guilty of kidnapping and subsequently 
killing a 10-year-old boy on April 9, 2012. They even allowed the boy to talk 
to his parents before killing him," said the APP. The court held Manish guilty 
of kidnapping the boy, committing unnatural sex with him, plucking his eyes and 
concealing the body after murder. The police arrested Manish and recovered the 
body of Aditya Kumar from a drain. "After abduction, the kidnappers demanded Rs 
50,000 as ransom from the parents of Aditya for his safe release.

A local court on Saturday awarded death sentence to one Manish Kumar alias 
Nepali Mandal (25) after finding him guilty of kidnapping and subsequently 
killing a 10-year-old boy on April 9, 2012. The court also slapped a fine of 
25,000 on Manish. Rs The judgement was delivered by the court of ADJ-V Jyoti 
Swaroop Shrivatava which termed the case as "rarest of rare". The court held 
Manish guilty of kidnapping the boy, committing unnatural sex with him, 
plucking his eyes and concealing the body after murder. Additional public 
prosecutor (APP) Shushil Kumar Sinha said Manish had kidnapped Aditya Rajkamal, 
son of Raju Mandal, a resident of Jamalpur, in broad daylight with the help his 
2 friends - Amit Jha and Manoj Kumar - who are still absconding. "After 
abduction, the kidnappers demanded Rs 50,000 as ransom from the parents of 
Aditya for his safe release.

They even allowed the boy to talk to his parents before killing him," said the 
APP. The parents, instead of paying ransom to the kidnappers, brought the 
matter to the notice of the police. The police arrested Manish and recovered 
the body of Aditya Kumar from a drain. The news of Aditya's murder spread like 
wildfire in Jamalpur and the entire town rose against the crime by holding 
protest rallies and demonstrations.

(source: nyoooz.com)

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

Hijackers to get death penalty


India finally has a stringent anti-hijacking law in place that provides for 
death penalty for accused even if those killed in such an act are ground 
handling staff and airport personnel.

In the previous bill, hijackers could be tried for death penalty only in the 
event of death of hostages.

To make the anti-hijacking law much tougher, it was decided to repeal the 
Anti-Hijacking Act 1982 and replace it with a new one that would include death 
sentence as a punishment.

The Anti-Hijacking Act, 1982, was last amended in 1994.

After the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight IC-814 in December, 1999, it was 
felt necessary for providing the award of death penalty to perpetrators of the 
act of hijacking. The incident of 9/11, where aircrafts were used as weapons, 
also created the need to further amend the existing Act.

The new Bill provides death punishment for the offence of the hijacking, where 
such offence results in the death of a hostage or of a security personnel; or 
with imprisonment for life and the moveable and immoveable property of such 
persons shall also be liable to be confiscated.

The amendments in the Anti-Hijacking Bill, 2014 were cleared by the Cabinet In 
July 2015 and passed by Rajya Sabha last week.

The new law provides for death penalty even if ground handling staff and 
airport personnel are killed during such acts. In the earlier Bill, hijackers 
could be tried for death penalty only in the event of death of hostages, such 
as flight crew, passengers and security personnel.

(source: Defence Aviation Post)