[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

January 6



IRELAND----book review

How some Irish people escaped the death penalty



Book Title:----Justice, Mercy and Caprice: Clemency and the Death Penalty in 
Ireland

ISBN-13:----9780198798477

Author:----Ian O'Donnell

Publisher:----Oxford University Press

Guideline Price:----70.00 pounds To many, the death penalty may seem like an 
anachronistic punishment, a relic of a past age that in the process of 
civilisation has been confined to the history books. Some may therefore be 
surprised to learn that Ireland's last link with the death penalty was only 
severed in 2015, when the last 2 people to be sentenced to capital punishment 
for the murder of a member of An Garda Siochana, were released from prison, 
having served 30 years following the commutation of their death sentences.

Up until the early 1960s the death penalty was a mandatory sentence for murder, 
and until 1990 it remained as the ultimate penalty for so-called "capital 
offences", which included the murder of on-duty members of the Garda or the 
Prison Service, or the politically motivated murder of foreign dignitaries on 
Irish soil.

However, the practice of the State enacting death as a means of punishment 
effectively ceased after 1954 when Michael Manning, the last person to be 
executed, was hanged in the yard of Mountjoy prison. In 2001, the public voted 
in a referendum to remove all references to the death penalty from the 
Constitution. It did so by a majority of 62 %, although if the turnout was a 
reflection (35 %), it was not an issue on which the public was particularly 
exercised.

In this book, Ian O'Donnell charts Ireland's journey towards the gradual 
abolition of the death penalty. The central focus is on the practice of 
clemency, that is, where a court imposed a death penalty but the State 
intervened to prevent its enactment. From 1923 to 1990, in the period following 
the end of the Civil War to the removal of the death penalty from the statute 
books, 98 men and women were sentenced to death, whose convictions were upheld 
on appeal, but in only 35 of these cases the ultimate penalty was enacted. In 
other words, almost 2/3 of those whom the courts had sentenced to death had 
their sentence commuted. Why was this the case, and what does it reveal about 
attitudes to crime and justice, and society and culture?

Executioners

O'Donnell notes that his interest was piqued on this topic, when he came across 
a letter in the National Archives from the executioner, Thomas Pierrepoint, 
complaining about delays in the reimbursement of his expenses, following a 
futile journey to Dublin from Yorkshire. Pierrepoint, or his nephew Albert, 
travelled from England throughout the 1st half of the 20th century to provide 
their grim service, as it proved impossible to recruit someone locally to the 
task. Patrick Aylward, the person who Pierrepoint was due to hang in 1923, had 
had his sentence commuted by the government at the last minute. Aylward had 
committed a particularly horrific murder - "roasting an infant on a fire", but 
had his sentence commuted to penal servitude to life, following representation 
to the government from the coadjutor Bishop of Ossory. In another quirk of 
religious intervention, Aylward was subsequently released from prison along 
with several other convicted murderers, to mark the Eucharistic Congress held 
in Dublin in 1932.

Clemency

In extensive archival research, including analysis of records held in the 
National Archives, the Central Criminal Courts and closed prisoner files, 
O'Donnell traces the rationales behind the clemency decision-making process in 
the cases of those sentenced to death, whose sentences were commuted. The 
decision to grant clemency involves the intersection of politics in matters of 
law, and as such provides a unique vantage point from which to explore the 
functioning of the State and prevailing attitudes towards crime, punishment and 
morality.

Once a court passed its sentence and any appeals had been heard, it was within 
the Office of the Governor General (up until 1936) and subsequently the 
President's powers to commute the death penalty, but they would only exercise 
this power on the recommendation of the government of the day. What motivated 
the decision to recommend clemency in some cases, but not in others?

O'Donnell's careful analysis of these cases suggests that the exercise of 
clemency was motivated by 1 of 3 factors - justice, mercy or caprice. When 
justice was a motivating factor, there was an attempt to tailor the punishment 
to the individual circumstances. This included cases where the law meant that 
the court's hands were tied in regard to the penalty it could impose, for 
instance where the death penalty was mandatory, as was the case for crimes of 
infanticide prior to the introduction of reforming legislation in the late 
1940s.

The exercise of mercy was when the deserved punishment was softened out of 
compassion for an individual's plight. Capricious clemency was exercised when 
an unexpected turn of events led to a change in direction, such as in the case 
of Patrick Heffernan, who having been convicted of the murder of a young woman 
in 1950, was spared the death penalty following a reversal of the government's 
decision that the law should be allowed to take its course.

Notably, this followed from the attendance of Cahir Davitt, a judge from the 
Court of Criminal Appeal, at a government meeting to argue that Heffernan's 
life should be spared, a clear breach of the doctrine of separation of powers. 
Davitt had no role in Heffernan's trials and was in a minority on the Court of 
Criminal Appeal, which had dismissed his application to appeal. Davitt 
nonetheless arranged to meet with the government to express his views, again, a 
clear breach of the doctrine of separation of powers.

The majority of clemency cases were motivated by justice, in other words, 
through the government providing its own corrective to legislative strictures. 
However, given that the government was ultimately responsible for laws and 
their reform, this was a curious form of achieving what was just.

Gender is a significant thread throughout this book. The last woman to be 
executed by the State was Annie Walsh in 1925, who was convicted of murdering 
her husband with a hatchet. Thereafter any woman sentenced to death had their 
sentence commuted. For many, this was because their crime involved killing an 
unwanted child, an action that often reflected the moral strictures of the 
time.

However, the decision to grant clemency was sometimes double edged. Having been 
spared the hangman's noose, some were subsequently coercively confined for 
years, in an institution such as a Magdalene laundry. In analysing the factors 
that led to the exercise of clemency and its aftermath, O'Donnell's extensive 
research sheds light on the exercise of State power in Ireland and the potent 
mix of politics, chivalry, morality and deference over time.

(source: Nicola Carr is associate professor in criminology at University of 
Nottingham----Irish Times)








VIETNAM:

Vietnam spots 3 big drug trafficking cases in one day



Vietnam's police on Friday uncovered 3 drug trafficking cases and arrested 3 
people, Vietnam News Agency reported.

Police in Ho Chi Minh City solved 2 drug trafficking cases and arrested 2 
people for illegal trading and stockpiling of ecstasy, heroin and ketamine.

The arrested were Nguyen Van Toan, born in 1977, and Nguyen Thi Ngoc Ha, born 
in 1981, and both reside in Ho Chi Minh City.

Toan was caught red-handed with 13,000 ecstasy pills and 0.5 kg of ketamine 
wrapped as coffee packs. According to the police, he bought the drug from 
Cambodia to sell in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Ha was nabbed with 2 cakes of heroin weighing 700 grams. Searching 
her house in Go Vap district and workshop in southern Binh Duong province, 
police seized 10 kg of heroin.

Also on Friday, border guards in central Ha Tinh province caught red-handed 
Nguyen Nhu Ba, born in 1975 in central Nghe An province, for transporting 8,000 
tablets of synthetic drugs. Ba said he was hired to transport the drug from the 
border area.

According to the Vietnamese law, those convicted of smuggling over 600 grams of 
heroin or more than 2.5 kg of methamphetamine are punishable by death. Making 
or trading 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal drugs also faces 
death penalty.

(source: xinhuanet.com)








SRI LANKA:

Man gets death sentence for 18g of heroin



A suspect found guilty for the possession and distribution of heroin has been 
sentenced to death by the Colombo High Court Wednesday. The suspect in question 
was arrested by the Police Narcotics Bureau in the Rajagiriya area in 2010 with 
18.2 grams of heroin.

Giving the suspect the death penalty, Colombo High Court Judge Gihan Kulatunga 
said that the charges have been proven without a reasonable doubt.

(source: adaderana.lk)








IRAN----execution

Iran Executes 19-Year-Old Charged as Juvenile in Violation of 2 International 
Treaties



Ignoring pleas by international organizations and in violation of 2 
international treaties, Iran executed 19-year-old Amirhossein Pourjafar, who 
was sentenced to death as a juvenile, on January 4, 2018, in Tehran.

Pourjafar was 16 when he was charged with raping and murdering a 6-year-old 
girl.

According to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 
and Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is illegal to execute someone for 
crimes committed under the age of 18. Iran is party to both treaties but 
remains one among a handful of countries still putting juveniles to death.

"The efforts made by Amirhossein's family and myself to convince the family of 
[the victim] Setayesh Farahbakhsh to pardon him did not bear results and the 
Judiciary Chief [Sadegh Larijani] ordered the death sentence to be carried 
out," attorney Mojtaba Farahbakhsh told the Center for Human Rights in Iran 
(CHRI) on January 3, 2017.

Born in December 1999, Pourjafar was accused of raping and murdering the Afghan 
girl on April 10, 2016, in the outskirts of the city of Varamin south of 
Tehran. The victim's body was disfigured with acid.

According to his lawyer, the teenager confessed and was given two death 
sentences for rape and murder by Branch 7 of the Tehran Criminal Court in 
December 2016. The verdict was upheld by Branch 32 of the Supreme Court on 
January 9, 2017.

Farahbakhsh told CHRI that the official medical examiner concluded that 
Pourjafar was mature enough to understand the gravity of the crimes when he 
allegedly committed them.

According to Article 91 of Iran's Islamic Penal Code, "If mature people under 
18-years-old do not realize the nature of the crime committed or its 
prohibition, or if there is uncertainty about their full mental development, 
according to their age" they can be spared the death penalty.

"When the Islamic Penal Code was ratified, there was widespread publicity over 
claims by judicial authorities that the execution of juvenile offenders would 
be stopped," human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh told CHRI in August 2017.

"However, we see these executions are on the rise," she added.

(source: Iran Human Rights)








EGYPT:

Shocked at executions in Egypt, UN rights office raises concerns over due 
process guarantees



The United Nations human rights wing on Friday expressed deep shock that 20 
people were reported to have been executed in Egypt since last week, amid 
concerns that due process and fair trial guarantees did not appear to have been 
followed.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), 
on 2 January, 5 men who had been sentenced to death by an Egyptian military 
court were hanged in Alexandria, 4 of whom had been convicted for an explosion 
near a stadium in Kafr al-Sheikh on 15 April 2015 that killed 3 military 
recruits and injured 2 others.

"We understand the defendants were tried by military judges on the basis of 
legislation that refers cases of destruction of public property to military 
courts and in view of the victims being from the Egyptian Military Academy," 
OHCHR spokesperson Liz Throssell told reporters on Friday at the regular news 
briefing in Geneva.

On 26 December, 15 men convicted on terrorism charges were reportedly executed, 
found guilty by a military court of killing soldiers in Sinai in 2013.

"Civilians should only be tried in military or special courts in exceptional 
cases," she continued.

Further, Ms. Throssell said it is important that all necessary measures are 
taken to ensure that such trials take place under conditions which genuinely 
afford the full guarantees stipulated in Article 14 of the International 
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Egypt is a State party.

Noting that these include a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent 
and impartial tribunal, she expressed concern that this did not appear to have 
been followed as military courts typically deny defendants' rights accorded by 
civilian courts.

"In cases of capital punishment, trials must meet the highest standards of 
fairness and due process. Reports also indicated that the prisoners who were 
executed may have been subjected to initial enforced disappearance and torture 
before being tried," she asserted.

Despite security challenges facing Egypt, particularly in Sinai, Ms. Throssell 
maintained, "executions should not be used as a means to combat terrorism."

As such, she said the UN human rights office called on the Egyptian authorities 
to reconsider the use of death penalty cases in accordance with their 
international human rights obligations and to take all necessary measures to 
ensure that violations of due process and fair trial are not repeated.

(source: un.org)








INDIA:

U'khand HC for death sentence to those who rape minors



The Uttarakhand High Court has suggested that the state government bring in a 
law which imposes death penalty for raping minors, so that it acts as a strong 
deterrent against such offences.

A division bench of justices Rajiv Sharma and Alok Singh yesterday made the 
observation, while upholding the death sentence of a man, who was convicted by 
a lower court last year for raping and killing an eight-year-old in June 2016.

Citing steady rise in crime against children in recent years, the bench 
observed that it is the state government which can bring an appropriate 
legislation to impose death penalties on convicts, who are found guilty of 
raping minors aged 15 or below.

The high court underlined the need for a strong deterrent as it is coming 
across a number of cases, where the victims aged 15 or below are being raped 
and murdered.

It quoted a recent report by the National Crime Records Bureau titled 'Crime 
Against Children (States & UTs)', which said 676 such cases were registered in 
the state in 2016, compared to 635 in 2015 and 489 in 2014.

(source: Press Trust of India)