[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 10




INDIA:

Odisha man gets death sentence for rape & murder



A POCSO court in Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district today awarded death penalty to 
a person for raping and murdering a minor girl, last year.

The convict has been identified as Kalia Manna alias Laba.

According to reports, Laba had raped and murdered a minor girl in Gadaharishpur 
village under Erasama police limits in the district on March 21, last year. 
Acting on a complaint lodged by the family members of the deceased, police had 
arrested Laba and forwarded him to court.

Adjudicating the case, the court today pronounced capital punishment for him.

(source: Odisha Sunt Times)








VIETNAM:

Mass killings in Vietnam ‘a cancer of the soul’



Inequality, poverty and a cultural normalization of violence are major factors 
behind increasing incidence of mass killings in Vietnam, experts say.

On September 1, the nation was appalled and aghast as a middle-aged man coolly 
and remorselessly hacked four people to death in public view.

The atrocity occurred in the capital city’s Dan Phuong District and its 
perpetrator was a 53-year-old man driven to murder by a dispute over 0.5 square 
meters of land.

After spending a sleepless night brooding over the dispute regarding land that 
he had inherited with his younger brother, Dong took a knife and went on a 
stabbing spree.

Younger brother Nguyen Van Hai and his daughter were killed on the spot. His 
wife and 1-year-old granddaughter were taken to the hospital and died there. 
His daughter-in-law is in critical condition at present. Only Hai’s son, who 
had met Dong the night before, managed to run away, unscathed physically.

Lieutenant-Colonel Dao Trung Hieu, an expert in criminal psychology at the 
Ministry of Public Security, said Dong’s behavior was driven by his own violent 
temper as well as negative social influences.

In several interviews given to the local media, Hieu said the murders were 
rooted in greed and self-interest in an increasingly materialistic society, 
which is also destroying traditional family values and ties.

Serious degeneration

Massacres, murders and violence of different degrees are occurring in 
Vietnamese society because social ethics is degenerating seriously, he said, 
adding, "Some call it cancer of the soul."

Last year, 31-year-old Ly Dinh Khanh, who had earlier served 3 years in prison 
for child rape, again attempted to rape a neighbor, failed, and went on to kill 
her and 3 other people related to her in northern Cao Bang Province.

In the same year, 18-year-old Nguyen Huu Tinh on February 13 killed 5 people in 
his employer’s family to avenge a scolding he had received.

Hieu laid the blame at a materialistic approach to life that was exacerbated by 
socio-economic issues stemming from it. The gap between the rich and the poor, 
unemployment and other social problems make many people feel frustrated and 
stuck, and they are easily influenced by gangs and other negativities, 
especially through the Internet, he said.

"A person with a good job and income is unlikely to use violence to solve 
conflicts, or kill and rob others," he said.

Robberies and murders (robbers have killed whole families when caught in the 
act) account for many serious killings in the country.

Other major causes include family and romantic conflicts, road rage, mental 
problems and drugs.

On May 25, in Lam Dong Province, 48-year-old Nghiem Thi Nhi killed 3 people (an 
old woman and her 2 grandchildren) for revenge.

On the 15th, 16th and 17th of the same month, in Hanoi and Vinh Phuc Province, 
38-year-old Do Van Binh killed 2 men in a fit of road rage, and went on to kill 
an ex-girlfriend and injured another because of perceived hurt feelings.

Many perpetrators of multiple killings are young people. Hieu said that even 
youth without previous criminal records have acted viciously, showing that they 
are unstable, imbalanced and insecure in life. Young people can also easily 
absorb toxic influences, play violent games and develop the habit of using 
violence to deal with ordinary conflicts.

For this, Hieu said, the educational system and the family as an institution 
are to blame. At school, children are crammed with academic knowledge, but 
barely taught living skills. At home, parents are too wrapped up with making a 
living, and don’t pay attention to their children, and set bad examples of 
indifference and selfishness which children internalize.

The massacres in recent years have happened across the country, from remote 
mountainous provinces in the north such as Lao Cai and Yen Bai, to southern 
metropolises like HCMC and Binh Duong Province, which have "complex growing 
populations" with significant immigration.

Hieu said that financial distress was a particularly important factor in poor 
remote areas where people can feel deeply frustrated and even trivial conflicts 
in daily life may break out into full-blown violence.

He felt that the Vietnamese legal system was strict enough, but whether or not 
citizens choose to obey the laws is another matter.

Hieu’s analysis is shared by some National Assembly legislators. NA 
Representative Luu Binh Nhuong thinks that degenerating morals, coupled with 
drugs and gangs are major drivers of violence.

Drugs are a direct cause as some killers have to intoxicate themselves and 
"boost their morale" for committing their crimes, Nhuong said at an NA meeting. 
He also questioned the idea of treating drug addicts as patients.

Hieu felt there was a need for better management and separation of drug addicts 
and people with mental problems from their families. He said such people pose a 
great risk of causing violence when they live with their families.

Tran Van Do, former Deputy Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, emphasized that 
depression and frustration caused by social and economic stifling was a root 
cause of violence. It makes husbands murder wives, wives murder husbands, 
mothers throw children away, and children kill fathers, he said.

But he also said extreme measures like the capital punishment were not an 
effective way to prevent heinous crimes like multiple murders. He said people 
with problems, mental and otherwise, shouldn’t be treated as bad kids to be 
thrown out of the house, because it would only exacerbate the problem.

Hieu said extreme forms of violence stem from a psychological state in which 
people neither detest ugly, negative things nor feel inspired by good and 
beautiful things. "People feel indifferent and care only about themselves in 
this materialistic society."

(source: vnexpress.net)








BANGLADESH:

The myth of tough punishments and crime prevention



It has been somewhat fashionable in our country to demand tough punishments as 
a prevention tool for crimes that society abhors. In view of the apparently 
increasing rate of rape, some observers have demanded capital punishment for 
perpetrators of rape. Even responsible officials of the law enforcing agencies 
have demanded capital punishment for food adulteration. While both of these 
crimes are grave, these calls for tougher punishments for committing these 
crimes in some way misses the point. Rather surprisingly, at times some legal 
experts have also joined in this simplistic chorus of tougher punishments as an 
effective tool for the reduction of crimes. However, tougher punishments alone 
would have very little role to curb the rate of commission of a crime.

While no systemic study seems to be available, it may be safely said that the 
rate of violent crimes in Bangladesh (though not necessarily all type of 
crimes) is not too high by the global standard. The people’s perception of the 
relatively high rate of violent crimes may be attributable to 2 main reasons. 
One is the apprehension of people that punishment may not be meted out to the 
perpetrators and that perhaps gives impetus to the cry for tough punishments 
even for not so grave offences in some sort of desperation. Secondly, even 
common violent crimes get significant coverage in our mainstream media which 
creates an image that our society is violent-crime prone and tough punishment 
can play an important role in curbing them.

However, this write-up does not argue that punishment would never have any 
bearing on curbing crimes. Too lenient a punishment in the form of a slap on 
the wrist can well be a problem. In other words, the punishment has to have the 
prospect of inflicting some proportionate pain on the perpetrator of the crime. 
For instance, let us assume the food adulteration yields a business a gain of a 
few thousand takas per day. Let us also assume that the chance of that business 
being inspected by the magistrates or Directorate of National Consumer Rights 
Protection and being fined more than once or twice a year is virtually zero, 
and the maximum potential punishment is one hundred thousand takas. In this 
scenario, the business may have an incentive to engage in food adulteration 
than comply with the law. However, a proportionate punishment to render it a 
real punishment and tough punishment is not the same thing. While the former is 
necessary, the latter in itself can be virtually useless.

If the severity of punishment stood in a simple correlation with the rate of 
reduction of crime, then reducing the crime rate could have been a very simple 
task for the lawmakers. The lawmakers of every country could curb the rate of 
crimes by merely imposing severe punishments for a very long list of crimes. In 
the same manner, those countries which have abolished death penalty should 
witness a higher rate of incidents of crimes which does not seem to hold 
factually. In medieval England, even minor offences such as pick-pocketing 
carried severe punishments, and that did not have any real success in reducing 
the crime rate. Since the independence of Bangladesh, the list of crimes 
punishable by tough punishments has not diminished and it does not seem to have 
played any role in reducing the crime rate. Even rape which is not punishable 
by life imprisonment under the Penal Code, 1860, now is punishable by life 
imprisonment under the Repression of Violence against Women and Children Act, 
2000; but it does not seem to have played any role in reducing the number of 
rapes since the introduction of the latter Act. Thus, it is to argue that the 
lack of tough punishments has never been a problem in our criminal justice 
system.

Indeed, tough punishments for a long list of crimes may be a symptom of 
desperation. After all, the question of punishment only comes in when there is 
a conviction after a full-blown trial process. Tough punishment may at times 
make the judges more restrained in convicting an accused because the general 
principle of law is that the stronger punishment a charge carries, the more 
concrete the evidence should be. For prevention of crime, in addition to 
imposing proportionate punishment and ensuring conviction of the offenders, 
another critical point is addressing the root cause/s of the crime and taking 
specific measures to address them. To take one example, according to statistics 
available on the website of Acid Survivors Foundation 
(www.acidsurvivors.org/Statistics), the rate of acid attack in Bangladesh since 
2010, has been on the wane. It is unsure that without taking stringent legal 
and administrative measures on reducing the easy accessibility of acids, the 
severe punishment as imposed by the Acid Attack Prevention Act, 2002 could have 
achieved this.

(source: Opinion; Md. Rizwanul Islam, an Associate Professor, Department of 
Law, North South University----The Daily Star)








MALAYSIA:

Death row inmate in video plea could escape gallows, says lawyer



An inmate who released a video clip from jail pleading with the public to help 
him escape the death penalty may be able to get his sentence commuted to life 
imprisonment, a laywer said.

Syed Iskandar Syed Jaafar Al Mahdzar said B Anand Nambiar could file a review 
in the Federal Court or a judicial review in a high court on grounds that 
keeping him in solitary confinement is a severe punishment.

“He could file a motion in the Federal Court that keeping him on the death row 
for a long time is harsh and an unusual sentence,” Syed Iskandar told FMT.

Last week, FMT reported on a video plea by Anand, 36, maintaining that he was 
innocent of the murder of Heng Pang Kiat on Feb 21, 2002, in Kluang, Johor, 
some 2 decades ago.

Anand, who is an inmate at the Pengkalan Chepa prison in Kelantan, was charged 
alongside 3 others under Section 302 of the Penal Code.

The 4 were sentenced to death by hanging. They were also separately sentenced 
to 20 years’ jail for attempting to murder Heng’s friend, Chong Chiew Nam. The 
Federal Court upheld the decision in 2015.

Syed Iskandar said Anand could also file for a judicial review and seek an 
order of mandamus to order the government to substitute the death penalty to a 
jail term.

He said lawyers from the Kelantan Bar could assist Anand to file the legal 
papers.

Syed Iskandar cited the case of Nigerian Michael Philip Spears, who escaped the 
gallows after the Pardons Board in 2017 commuted his death sentence to natural 
life imprisonment.

Spears, who spent 20 years in jail – the last 16 in solitary confinement – was 
convicted for murder.

The government did not contest the suit in the Federal Court after a Court of 
Appeal in 2016 ordered the Nigerian’s complaint be heard before a High Court 
judge.

Spears’ lawyer, Azreen Ahmad Rastom, then told FMT that the prisons authorities 
informed her that the Pardons Board had substituted the capital punishment to 
life imprisonment.

The Nigerian in his suit filed against the government, argued that his long 
detention and delay in carrying out the hanging was cruel, inhuman and a 
degrading punishment.

Then Court of Appeal judge Varghese George, who delivered the 19-page judgment, 
said being on death row did not deny Spears his constitutional rights

(source: freemalaysiatoday.com)








SYRIA:

Syrian court sentences to death employers of murdered Filipina domestic



A Syrian court sentenced to death the employers of a Filipina househelper after 
they were found guilty of her murder in 2017, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro 
Locsin Jr. said on Monday.

Syrian Mouna Ali Hassoun and her Lebanese husband, Nader Essam Assaf, were 
convicted in January 2018 before the Syrian District Court for the death of 
Joana Demafelis, whose body was found in a freezer in their abandoned apartment 
in Kuwait on Feb. 6, 2017. She was reported missing in September 2016.

“There you go. Judge didn’t buy the defense [of the couple]: ‘That wasn’t from 
Costco... That was our domestic helper... Fancy that. We were wondering why she 
hadn’t shopped for some time. For that matter we hadn’t seen her in a while. 
When we looked in the freezer it was full.’ Death penalty,” Locsin said on 
Twitter.

It was the Department of Foreign Affairs’ (DFA’s) Office of the Undersecretary 
for Migrant Workers’ Affairs (OUMWA) which broke the news on Twitter to which 
Locsin said, “Yup, they’re gonna get it.”

The DFA on Twitter said, it would “continue to provide legal assistance to the 
family until justice is served.”

A Kuwaiti court also sentenced in April 2018 Demafelis’ employers to death by 
hanging.

(source: Manila Times)








SOUTH AFRICA:

ANC MPs don't support call for return of death penalty - Majodina----Speaking 
after the party's parliamentary caucus lekgotla at the weekend, chief whip 
Pemmy Majodina said its MPs were against such an idea.



The African National Congress (ANC) in Parliament doesn't support a call for 
the return of the death penalty.

Some outraged South Africans last week again called for capital punishment for 
cases of femicide amid widespread gender violence protests.

Thousands of people have gone as far as signing a petition.

Speaking after the party's parliamentary caucus lekgotla at the weekend, chief 
whip Pemmy Majodina said its MPs were against such an idea.

"As the ANC lekgotla, we did not entertain this. The Constitution gives us all 
a right to life and if it gives us a right to life and we took the oath as 
Members of Parliament that we are going to abide by the Constitution, we cannot 
willy-nilly stand up and call for the death penalty... we don't want to be 
populist."

(source: Eyewitness News)

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

6 powerful arguments against reinstatement of the death penalty



I refer to the report, “Death penalty on Cabinet agenda - Minister”, The 
Mercury, September 4, in which Siyabongo Mkhwanazi and ANA (African News 
Agency) reported that the government could consider amendments to the law and a 
review on the death penalty to clamp down on violent crimes, including the 
killing of women and children.

He reported further that the Minister of Justice, Ronald Lamola, had said he 
would take proposals to the Cabinet and that a referendum on the death penalty 
“was a matter for discussion”.

With the escalation of violent and savage crime, as has occurred in the past 
week, and murder and abuse of women and children escalating, as well as the 
death of some foreign Africans in xenophobic attacks on their premises and 
shops, many people and communities are calling for capital punishment to be 
reinstated.

It was open to the drafters of the interim Constitution either to totally 
proscribe capital punishment or to sanction it. Instead they chose the 
metaphorical “Solomonic” solution, and elected to allow the Constitutional 
Court to adjudicate on this controversial and problematic issue, giving rise to 
the famous Makwanyane judgment, which found that capital punishment was in 
conflict with important provisions in the Bill of Rights, such as human 
dignity, the right to life and prohibition of cruel and inhuman and degrading 
punishment.

Although the Makwanyane judgment brought to an end capital punishment in South 
Africa, popular sentiment appears to favour the reinstatement of the death 
penalty.

However, as Judge Albie Sachs was at pains to explain in his judgment on the 
Makwanyane case, capital punishment offers an “illusory solution to crime, and 
as such detracts from really effective measures to protect the public”.

The unacceptable incidence of violent crime in South Africa has resulted in 
vociferous demands in the community for the reinstatement of the death penalty 
in our country. There are cogent arguments for and against.

The arguments against the death penalty are:

(1) There is, according to research, no conclusive evidence to prove that the 
death penalty is more of a deterrent than life imprisonment.

(2) The death penalty is an irrevocable punishment. In the US there are about 
12 recorded cases in which people were executed and subsequently it has been 
established that the people concerned were indeed innocent.

(3) The death penalty is a cruel and barbaric punishment that depraves all who 
are involved with it.

(4) In a heterogeneous country like South Africa and the US, it has been 
established that there is invariably a racial bias in the imposition of the 
death penalty.

(5) The death penalty is an arbitrary punishment since it is not imposed with 
any consistency.

(6) The death penalty is morally, philosophically and theologically 
questionable. The great philosophers and theologians of the contemporary world 
have profound reservations about its application.

The most powerful argument in favour of the ultimate penalty is that of 
retribution. When unspeakable crimes are committed, society demands retribution 
- and this can only be satisfied, according to the proponents of the death 
penalty, with the ultimate punishment.

However great the demand for retribution may be, it is submitted that it is 
manifestly outweighed by the six arguments against the reinstatement of the 
death penalty, set out above.

Most informed and perceptive commentators are of the opinion that the 
reinstatement of the death penalty would not magically or instantaneously 
resolve or even reduce the serious crime problem in South Africa. What is 
required is a far more effective and well-resourced criminal justice system and 
a competent police force that is not corrupt in its fight against crime.

(source: Opinion; Devenish is emeritus professor of public law, 
UKZN----iol.co.za)