[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 21




GREAT BRITAIN:

An A-Z guide to the history of executions----For centuries, capital punishment 
was part of everyday life, as shown by this alphabetical guide to a very 
British way of death. Writing for BBC History Revealed, historian Gavin 
Mortimer explores…



A … is for ASPHYXIATION

Hanging was the preferred method of execution in England from early Anglo- 
Saxon times, but it was neither efficient nor painless. Deaths were drawn out, 
with the condemned hanging until they suffocated. Over time, the method 
evolved, and in 1783 ‘new drop’ gallows were first used at London’s Newgate 
Prison, whereby the condemned – often many at a time – fell through a trapdoor. 
Around a century later came the ‘long drop’, where the prisoner’s height and 
weight were used to determine the length and rate of drop, to ensure a swift 
death from a broken neck rather than asphyxiation.

B … is for BODY SNATCHERS

A lucrative profession for criminals in 17th- and 18th-century Britain was body 
snatching. Freshly interred corpses would be dug up from cemeteries and sold, 
in most cases, to medical schools for anatomical study. Oddly, the snatching 
itself was not illegal, but dissecting a body was. That changed with the 
Anatomy Act of 1832, prompted by the trial of William Burke and his execution 
in 1829. He and his partner, William Hare, progressed from removing corpses to 
committing murder in their attempt to ensure a supply to sell to Edinburgh 
physician Robert Knox. Burke was hanged in front of 25,000 people. His corpse, 
fittingly, was dissected.

C … is for CODE

By the 19th century, some 222 crimes were defined as capital offences, 
including murder, robbery and impersonating a Chelsea pensioner. Even maiming a 
cow or being out at night with a blackened face was punishable by death, with 
the age, sex and mental health of the offender being deemed an irrelevance. So 
harsh was the penal code that it became known as the ‘Bloody Code’, and it 
wasn’t until 1861 that Parliament passed a bill de-capitalising minor crimes. 
After then, only four offences carried the death penalty: murder, arson in a 
royal dockyard, high treason and piracy with violence.

D… is for DORCHESTER

The English town takes an unexpectedly prominent part in the history of 
executions. It was there that Elizabeth Martha Brown became the last woman 
publicly executed in Dorset when she met her end in 1856. Her husband John had 
struck out at her and she retaliated by burying an axe in his head. Brown was 
hanged on 9 August in front of a few thousand onlookers. In the crowd was the 
16-year-old Thomas Hardy, who drew on the experience when writing his classic 
novel, Tess of the d’Urbervilles. He later recalled: “I saw they had put a 
cloth over the face [and] how, as the cloth got wet, her features came through 
it. That was extraordinary.” Brown’s remains are believed to be among those of 
50 executed prisoners found under the former Dorchester Prison, and which may 
be reinterred in Poundbury Cemetery.

E… is for EXECUTIONER

The pioneer of the ‘long drop’ in the 1870s was William Marwood, an executioner 
who was far more humane than his predecessor. The notorious William Calcraft 
had executed more than 450 people over the course of 45 years in the job and 
was reputed to enjoy seeing them suffer, sometimes prolonging their death 
throes to excite the crowd. The most prolific British executioner of the 20th 
century was Albert Pierrepoint, whose father and uncle were also hangmen. As 
many as 600 were despatched by him, including hundreds convicted of war crimes. 
He considered his work as “sacred” and the “supreme mercy”.

F… is for FINAL WORDS

Facing imminent death affected the condemned in different. ways. Some confessed 
their sins and asked for forgiveness; others maintained their innocence. James 
MacLaine, the ‘gentleman highwayman’, murmured only “Oh, Jesus” as he stood on 
the gallows in 1750. Others may have been eager for the end to be as swift as 
possible, such as the famous Elizabethan explorer Sir Walter Raleigh, who urged 
the executioner wielding the axe to “Strike, man, strike!”. As for the 
highwayman Isaac Atkinson, hanged in 1640, he addressed the crowd: “Gentlemen, 
there’s nothing like a merry life, and a short one.”

G … is for GIBBETING

While a gibbet can refer to the actual scaffold used for an execution, 
gibbeting was the grisly act of publicly displaying. the dead in human-shaped 
cages to serve as a warning. Even more gruesomely, prisoners could be encased 
alive in an iron gibbet and suspended from a beam to die of starvation and/or 
exposure. Gibbeting, also known as ‘hanging in chains’, was around since 
medieval times, but reached a peak in the mid-18th century. It was a fate that 
befell the pirate Captain William Kidd, whose body was displayed over the !ames 
at Tilbury Point in 1701 to make sailors think twice about turning to piracy.

H … is for HEART THROB

A native of Normandy, Claude Du Vall arrived in England in 1660 to enjoy the 
fun of the Restoration period. He became a highwayman to fund his high living, 
robbing without compunction, but always with a flash of a charming smile for 
his female victims. His “conquests among the ladies” were legendary and he 
became something of a celebrity. When he was caught and imprisoned, Du Vall 
continued to entertain admirers in his cell before his execution in front of a 
large crowd in 1670. “Men he made stand, and women he made fall” ran the 
inscription on his gravestone in Covent Garden, London. “The second Conqueror 
of the Norman race.”

I … is for IMPALEMENT

Beginning with William Wallace in 1305, the heads of executed traitors would be 
impaled on iron spikes above the main gateways of London Bridge. In 1661, a 
German visitor to the capital counted 20 heads on display, although that was an 
exceptionally high number and a result of the fallout from the British Civil 
Wars. In the 18th century, the impaled heads were put on display at Temple Bar, 
close to the London Embankment. A brisk trade emerged in renting “spy-glasses 
at a halfpenny a look” so sightseers could study the heads in greater detail.

J … is for JOHN LEE

John ‘Babbacombe’ Lee became known as the ‘man they couldn’t hang’. Convicted 
of murder in Devon, the 20-yearold was sentenced to death despite a lack of 
hard evidence pointing to his guilt. But when he mounted the gallows on 23 
February 1885, the executioner pulled the trapdoor lever and nothing happened. 
He tried again and then a third time, and still the trapdoor jammed – although 
it worked perfectly when Lee wasn’t standing on it. Having been returned to his 
cell, Lee’s fate gained so much publicity that his sentence was commuted to 
life imprisonment. He was released in 1907 and was thought to have emigrated to 
the US, where he died in 1945.

K … is for KNAVESMIRE

Few criminals have been as romanticised as much as Dick Turpin, but far from 
being a gallant highwayman, he was a horse thief, house-breaker and smuggler, 
assaulting anyone who crossed his path. He turned to highway robbery when his 
gang broke up and was caught in 1739, with murder added to his charge sheet. 
Turpin went to his death in “an undaunted manner”, bowing to the crowd as he 
mounted the gallows at Knavesmire, site of the present-day York Racecourse.

L … is for LADIES

Although it is true to say that significantly more men have been executed than 
women, there have been some notable examples. Alice Arden was burned in 1551 
for organising the death of her husband, while Mary Carleton’s 1673 crime was 
befriending and robbing wealthy gentlemen. In 1809, Margaret Barrington was 
hanged for fabricating a certificate in the hope of receiving a soldier’s pay. 
The last woman executed in Britain was Ruth Ellis. Condemned for shooting her 
abusive lover, the 28-year-old hostess was hanged in 1955. The widespread call 
for her reprieve, followed by revulsion, led to a growing argument to abolish 
the death penalty in the UK, which was finally achieved in 1969.

M … is for MARTYRS

In 1563, the preacher John Foxe published his Book of Martyrs, detailing the 
hundreds of Protestants burned at the stake for their beliefs. Arguably the 
most famous was !omas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the 
Reformation, who was martyred in 1556 in Oxford. He was one of an estimated 300 
heretics burned on Mary I’s orders. Her successor, Elizabeth I, had numerous 
Catholics executed for transgressing anti-Roman Catholic decrees and for 
plotting against her.

N … is for NEWGATE

One of the most notorious buildings in London for 700 years, Newgate Prison was 
located next to the Old Bailey law courts until its demolition in 1904. It 
replaced Tyburn as the site of the capital’s gallows in 1783 and public 
executions drew large crowds until the practice was stopped in 1868, after 
which the condemned were hanged inside Newgate’s forbidding walls and buried 
under flagstones. The last of 1,169 prisoners hanged there was George Woolfe, 
convicted in 1902 of murdering his girlfriend.

O … is for OLIVER CROMWELL

Charles I never imagined he would be executed, because of his unshakeable 
belief that only God could decide the fate of a king. But his Parliamentarian 
enemies insisted he should be tried for treason after the Civil War ended. 
Oliver Cromwell, a politician who had become a brilliant officer in the 
Roundhead army, was one of the most determined that Charles should pay the 
ultimate cost and his signature was one of 59 on the death warrant. After his 
conviction, Charles was beheaded on January 30 1649 outside Banqueting House in 
Whitehall, the last English monarch to be executed.

P … is for PIECEMEAL

In medieval times, the most fiendish villains were executed by ‘piecemeal’. 
This was the fate of the notorious outlaw Thomas Dun at Bedford in 1100. A 
contemporary account describes how Dun was alive when the executioner first 
“chop[ped] off his hands at the wrists, then cut off his arms at the elbows… 
next his feet were cut off beneath the ankles, his legs chopped off at the 
knees, and his thighs cut off about five inches from his trunk”. The head was 
then severed and the pieces hung up around Bedfordshire as a warning to other 
outlaws.

Q … is for QUART OF ALE

The gallows on the banks of the Thames witnessed the death of hundreds of 
nefarious seamen from Elizabethean times to the 18th century, most of whom had 
been convicted of mutiny or piracy. On the day of their death, the prisoners 
were transported in a cart across London Bridge from their cells in Marshalsea 
Prison. Admiralty tradition held that the condemned were allowed a quart of ale 
at a riverside tavern before they arrived at the scaffold in Wapping. The 
hanging of pirates drew a good crowd, with the wealthier spectators chartering 
boats in the Thames for a front-row view. Because of the nature of their 
crimes, pirates were hanged with a shortened rope to ensure a slower death from 
strangulation.

R … is for ROBERT PEEL

Twice serving as Prime Minister, Robert Peel was known as a law-reforming Home 
Secretary in the 1820s, most famous for creating the Metropolitan Police. But 
he also campaigned for a more efficient application of state punishment, in 
particular the eradication of certain capital crimes, such as shoplifting, 
letter stealing, forgery and burglary. In addition, the practice of leaving 
corpses in gibbet irons was abolished by the Hanging in Chains Act of 1834. 
Often described as a humane politician, in fact Peel was motivated more by a 
need to reduce the bureaucracy of capital punishment.

S … is for SAWNEY BEAN

Scotland’s worst serial killer or a myth as enduring as that of the Loch Ness 
Monster? Legend has it that Bean was born in 1530 in Galloway and grew into a 
wicked psychopath who, aided by his children, robbed, killed and ate dozens of 
travellers. Finally apprehended, Bean and his sons were executed by having 
their hands and feet cut off and being left to bleed to death; his wife and 
daughters were burned at the stake. Bean’s exploits weren’t publicised until 
150 years after his death and some believe the story to be were more fiction 
than fact.

T … is for TYBURN

Situated at what today is the corner of Connaught Square, just north of Marble 
Arch, Tyburn served as the capital’s hanging spot for centuries. !e first 
recorded execution there was of William Longbeard in 1196 and the last was John 
Austen in 1783. The condemned were usually executed on a Monday, having been 
transported two-and-a-half miles from Newgate Prison to Tyburn in a cart. Once 
the prisoner was under the gallows, the noose was fastened around his neck and 
the horses kicked to bolt forward. It wasn’t unusual for friends of the 
prisoner to pull on his legs as he thrashed to hasten death.

U … is for UNDER PRESSURE

When executions were switched from Tyburn to Newgate they were carried out in 
the ‘condemned yard’, formerly known as the ‘press-yard’. !is derived its name 
from an old practice inflicted upon prisoners who refused to enter a plea at 
the Old Bailey. A board was placed on their horizontal body and weights were 
placed on top to put them ‘under pressure’. Usually this persuaded them to 
enter a plea, but sometimes they refused and were crushed to death.

V… is for VOCABULARY

A public execution was considered a family day out and these acquired a 
vocabulary of their own: people would talk of going to the ‘collar day’ or the 
‘hanging fair’, to watch the condemned ‘dance the Paddington frisk’ or do the 
‘Newgate Jig’ at the end of the rope. Vendors would arrive with souvenir carts 
and refreshments, while entertainment would be provided by minstrels and 
jugglers. !e novelist William Thackeray was among 40,000 people present to see 
the execution of an infamous murderer in 1840, writing of the presence of 
“quiet, fat, family parties of simple honest tradesmen and their wives”.

W … is for WITCHCRAFT

Britain began executing witches in 1563 and continued until parliamentary acts 
outlawed the practice in 1736. During that time, hundreds, possibly thousands, 
of ‘witches’ were burned or hanged. Most were old women convicted on absurdly 
weak evidence. Having a cat, or even a hairy lip, could lead one to the stake, 
after a confession had been tortured out of the accused. Puritans were largely 
responsible for the slaughter, which they later exported to North America, 
notably in Salem in the 1690s.

X … is for X–RATED

Every condemned prisoner hoped for a swift execution, but it didn’t always go 
according to plan. The politician Lord William Russell, convicted of plotting 
against King Charles II in 1683, paid his executioner toensure a quick death, 
but the axeman required four blows to do the job. After the first, Russell 
reportedly cried out: “You dog, did I give you 10 guineas to use me so 
inhumanely?”. Two years later, the Duke of Monmouth’s head wouldn’tbudge after 
five axe blows, so the beheading was finished with a knife. The executioner on 
both occasions was Jack Ketch.

Y … is for YOUNGEST

It is believed that the youngest criminal to be hanged was John Dean, convicted 
of burning down 2 houses in Windsor in February 1629. He was said to be either 
8 or 9 years of age when he went to the gallows. The youngest girl to be 
executed was 11-year-old Alice Glaston, but the crime she committed in 
Shropshire in 1546 wasn’t recorded. A small number of young teenagers were 
hanged in the 18th century, but gradually public opinion turned strongly 
against the practice. There is no record of any child under the age of 14 going 
to the gallows in the 19th century, although 14-year-old John Bell was hanged 
at Maidstone in 1831 for killing 2 boys. The Children’s Act of 1908 set 16 as 
the minimum age for execution, but no one under 18 was hanged in the 20th 
century.

Z … is for ZACHARY HOWARD

A wealthy landowner who fought for the Royalist army in the Civil War, Zachary 
Howard was left penniless by the Parliamentarians’ victory. So he became a 
highway robber with a difference; he targeted only known supporters of Oliver 
Cromwell. When Howard was finally caught and sentenced to death in 1652, 
Cromwell insisted on attending his execution in the hope of watching Howard beg 
for his life. Instead he received a smile and a curse.

(source: Gavin Mortimer is a bestselling writer, historian and television 
consultant----historyextra.com)








BANGLADESH:

Convicts languish in jails as death references pile up



Inzamul Huq, a student of class at Tongi in Gazipur district, was kidnapped on 
October 17, 2007, and was killed the same day. The additional district and 
session judge court of Gazipur sentenced three persons in connection with the 
killing. After the court order, the jail authorities kept th6e convicted 
persons in the condemned cell. Since the court order, the convicted persons 
have been languishing in the condemned cell, but the death references are yet 
to be disposed of by the High Court (HC). Like them, 1,715 other convicts are 
languishing in condemned cells across the country because hundreds of death 
reference cases are awaiting disposal by the HC.

Sources said although death reference cases have been increasing in recent 
years, the authorities concerned have not increased the number of HC benches 
for quick disposal of the cases.

The HC usually disposes of death reference cases serially year by year. As per 
the system, the court is at present disposing of the death reference cases of 
2014.

The convicts are sent to the condemned cells soon after being sentenced to 
death by lower courts. The convicts then face the agony of uncertainty over 
their fate till the disposal of the death references and their appeals, a 
Supreme Court (SC) official said, requesting anonymity.

According to SC sources, 737 death reference cases are now pending before the 
HC for disposal. This figure of death references are higher compared to the 
last 16 years.

A total of 32 death references are now pending before the Appellate Division 
for final approval, the sources added.

Considering the immense suffering of prisoners convicted by trial courts, 
former chief justice Surendra Kumar Sinha had assigned four HC benches to 
expedite the trial proceedings of death references. But now only three benches 
dispose of death reference cases due to lack of sufficient number of HC judges.

A former law minister emphasised the need for increasing the number of High 
Court benches for dealing with death references cases, considering its 
importance for death row convicts.

He said there are some important death references pending before the HC for 
disposal. All these cases should be disposed of quickly. The death reference 
cases should be heard continuously once the hearing begins. New judges should 
also be appointed to increase the number of HC benches to deal with death 
references, he added.

According to HC sources, 117 death-row convicts had filed appeals against their 
death penalties before the HC in 2011, while 100 and 315 condemned convicts had 
moved the court seeking acquittal orders in 2012 and 2013, respectively. As 
many as 205 such convicts had appealed against their death sentences in 2014, 
while the same number of appellants had moved the HC in 2015.

The sources also said 477 death reference cases were pending before the HC in 
2015 and the HC benches disposed of 58 cases.

In 2016, the number of such cases was 580 and the HC benches disposed of only 
45 cases. In 2017, a total of 706 death reference cases were pending before the 
HC for disposal and the HC benches disposed of 66 death reference cases, while 
it was 711 in 2018 and the HC benches disposed of 83 death reference cases.

Till July this year, the number of death reference cases stood at 737, while 
the HC benches disposed of 59 death reference cases by this time, sources 
added.

Sources also said the 737 pending death reference cases deal with over 1,715 
convicts.

According to the sources, the authorities have started working on completing 
the “paper books” of all the pending cases of 2014. A “paper book” contains all 
documents, including case details, charge-sheet and seizure list, testimonies 
of witnesses and cross examinations as well as the trial court’s verdict. After 
completion of the necessary work, the Chief Justice assigns an HC bench for 
disposal of the matter.

Former National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) chairman Mizanur Rahman said 
long delays in disposal of cases violated human rights. “A large number of 
prisoners convicted by trial courts are suffering mentally due to uncertainty 
over their fate. The cases should be taken care of as quickly as possible so 
that the litigants get justice in time,” he added.

Former Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) president advocate Khandaker Mahbub 
Hossain,said crime had increased in recent years and that was why the lower 
courts awarded death penalty in sensitive cases. He also said more HC benches 
with skilled judges were needed to dispose of the death reference cases 
considering their importance.

(source: theindependentbd.com)








MALAYSIA:

Country's biggest drug bust: 12 tonnes of cocaine worth RM2.4bil seized in 
Penang



In the biggest drug haul ever seen in Malaysia, police seized 12 tonnes of 
cocaine worth RM2.4bil here.

The cocaine, which was mixed with 60 tonnes of charcoal, is believed to be from 
an international drug syndicate using Penang as a transit point.

Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Abdul Hamid Bador said this was the biggest 
haul in local history, which was a huge cause for concern.

"The operation was carried out under Ops Eagle which was launched on Sept 10 
here.

"The drugs were found in three containers filled with 60 sacks of coal at the 
Butterworth port on Sept 10.

"The containers are believed to have arrived at the port on Aug 16. They used 
advanced technology to make sure the drugs cannot be detected.

"Even the canine unit could not detect the drugs.

"Normal drug detecting technology would not be able detect it. (But) our 
chemistry department has advanced technology that was able to detect the 
cocaine among the coal.

"The cocaine is valued at RM200,000 per kilo," he said at a press conference 
held at the Bayan Baru police station here.

IGP Abdul Hamid said a 29-year-old suspect believed to be in charge of 
arrangements (for the shipment) has been remanded for 14 days, which ends on 
Sept 23.

"The case is being investigated under section 39B Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, 
which carries the death penalty.

This drug bust surpassed the previous record on Aug 20 this year when police 
seized 500kg of ketamin and over 3.23 tonnes of cocaine worth over half a 
billion ringgit in Shah Alam.

(source: thestar.com.my)








SINGAPORE:

Court reserves judgment on Prosecution’s appeal against man who escaped gallows



3 appeals had arose from a single decision of the High Court, following a joint 
trial of 2 accused persons, which sees one of them being sent to the gallows 
for drug trafficking and the other spending 10 years behind bars for abetment 
of drug possession.

In a first, five lawyers had also been assigned to represent 40-year-old 
warehouse assistant Moad Fadzir bin Mustaffa in his appeal against his 
conviction and death sentence.

The Court of Appeal – comprising Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Judge of Appeal 
Judith Prakash and Judge of Appeal Tay Yong Kwang – heard the 3 appeals 
together in succession on Friday (20th September) for nearly three hours, and 
reserved judgment in two of them – Moad’s appeal as well as the Prosecution’s 
appeal, seeking to have 50-year-old Zuraimy bin Musa convicted of the original 
capital charge and sent to the gallows as well.

The offence in question took place on the night of 11th April 2016, when Moad 
and Zuraimy went to Toa Payoh in a car. There, an Indian man threw a white 
plastic bag through the front window onto Moad’s lap. In return, Moad handed 
the Indian man a bundle of cash, while Zuraimy tied the plastic bag and placed 
it in Moad’s sling bag.

Both men were subsequently arrested separately by officers from the Central 
Narcotics Bureau. The officers retrieved the white plastic bag from Moad’s 
sling bag, which was analysed and found to contain not less than 36.93g of 
diamorphine.

After a trial lasting 8 days, Justice Choo Han Teck delivered his judgment in 
February this year, finding Moad guilty of drug trafficking and sentenced him 
to death. In respect of Zuraimy, Justice Choo reduced his charge to one of 
abetment of drug possession and handed him the maximum sentence of 10 years’ 
imprisonment.

Moad, whose defence team was led by Mr Peter Fernando, made the argument that 
his contemporaneous statement recorded after his arrest, should not have been 
admitted as it was involuntary made. The contemporaneous statements formed a 
key plank of the Prosecution’s case against both Moad and Zuraimy.

Mr Fernando pointed that the investigating officer (“IO”) recording the 
statement had told Moad that he would call up Moad’s mother for an interview. 
In Moad’s mind, this appeared to be a “threat” to him that his mother would be 
arrested.

CJ Menon and Justice Prakash thought that, given that drug apparatus had been 
found in Moad’s flat where his mother was also residing in at that point, it 
would have been reasonable for the IO to take that course of action so as to 
identify who might have been involved in the drug transactions.

Mr Fernando further argued that the statements could not be relied on to find 
that Moad had actual knowledge that the white plastic bag contained 
diamorphine, as Moad was under the effects of cough mixture and sleeping pills 
when the statements were recorded. There were claims at certain points that 
Moad had instead consumed diamorphine or methamphetamine which led to his state 
of dopiness.

In this connection, Moad was diagnosed with mild oploid drug withdrawal a few 
days after his arrest. There were also several factors which, as Mr Fernando 
suggested, pointed to improprieties in the recording of the statement, such as 
the IO taking 1 hour to record 20 simple answers from Moad in response to his 
20 questions, the fact that Moad was left in the car alone for 25 minutes after 
the first statement was recorded, and that the IO had made a note at the end of 
the statement that Moad was in a normal state of condition.

This last factor aroused CJ Menon’s concern as he had never come across any 
case where an investigating officer had included such observations when 
recording statements.

Mr Fernando also raised the point that, in the event that the statements were 
admissible and accepted as facts, Moad was merely keeping the drugs for Zuraimy 
and intended to return it to him, and therefore should have been guilty of drug 
possession simpliciter.

In this regard, Moad had claimed that one “Abang” told him to pick up one “Lan” 
and go to Toa Payoh to collect the drugs. Moad claimed that Zuraimy was “Lan”, 
but he eventually claimed that “Abang” was Zuraimy when faced with the phone 
records at trial. Justice Choo had concluded that this was an attempt by Moad 
to shield Zuraimy.

Both the Prosecution and Moad had attempted to rely on this fact to bolster 
their respective cases, but CJ Menon thought that it did not make sense, given 
that Moad had already implicated Zuraimy in his contemporaneous statement but 
maintained that “Abang” was a different person then.

The Prosecution made very brief oral arguments in their appeal for Zuraimy to 
be convicted of the original capital charge, that Zuraimy actually knew the 
nature and quantity of the drugs which Moad was found in possession of, which 
made it sufficient for there to be a common intention between them.

In their written submissions, the Prosecution had also raised a point of law 
that the presumption of trafficking could be relied on against Zuraimy, given 
that he was deemed to be in possession of the drugs by virtue of his consent 
under section 18(4) of the Misuse of Drugs Act which, according to the 
Prosecution, was not a presumption unlike the presumptions of possession and 
knowledge under sections 18(1) and 18(2) of the MDA respectively.

In response, Mr Eugene Thuraisingam argued that there was no finding that 
Zuraimy actually knew the nature and quantity of the drugs. All that Justice 
Choo had said was that Zuraimy “may have known the quantity and the nature of 
the drugs”, and even if so, there was no evidence that Zuraimy knew that Moad 
obtained the drugs for the purposes of trafficking.

Zuraimy’s appeal focused only on the maximum sentence of 10 years’ 
imprisonment, which was argued by Mr Chooi Jing Yen. Justice Choo had imposed 
the maximum sentence in view of Zuraimy’s antecedents (the present offence was 
committed a year after his release from prison for drug offences) and the huge 
amount of drugs involved.

CJ Menon pointed out that in the context of drug possession, it may not be 
entirely apposite to rely on the principle that the maximum punishment should 
be reserved for the worst type of cases; given that the drugs involved has 
crossed the threshold of capital punishment for drug trafficking.

(source: theonlinecitizen.com)








INDIA:

Do we need death penalty in India? Many judges agree, find 
researchers----Project 39A, a part of National Law University, Delhi, recently 
organised a panel discussion on ‘Judicial Attitudes to Death Penalty in India 
and Bangladesh’ in Bengaluru.



The global discourse has been moving away from death penalty for years – 
according to Amnesty International, there was a 31% decline in the number of 
executions recorded worldwide from 2017 to 2018; and by last year end, 142 
countries had abolished capital punishment in law or practice, and 106, for all 
crimes. However, India is not yet in that list.

On Thursday, Project 39A, a part of National Law University, Delhi, organised a 
panel discussion on ‘Judicial Attitudes to Death Penalty in India and 
Bangladesh’ in Bengaluru. The initiative describes itself as being named after 
section 39A of the Indian Constitution that “furthers the intertwined values of 
equal justice and equal opportunity by removing economic and social barriers”; 
and provides free legal aid to those on death row in India.

The panel discussion was based on studies conducted by interviewing former 
judges in India and Bangladesh as well as research carried out by the UK-based 
Death Penalty Project on public opinion on death penalty. It was found in both 
the Bangladesh and India that most judges favoured retention of capital 
punishment because they believed it was a deterrent, despite lack of empirical 
evidence to support the same.

What the studies found

60 former Supreme Court judges were interviewed for the study in India, while 
30 retired district and sessions court judges were interviewed in Bangladesh.

“While all judges recognised the crisis in the criminal justice system, they 
should high confidence in death penalty for deterrence,” said Dr Anup 
Surendranath, Assistant Professor at NLU.

The “crisis” here refers to rampant custodial torture of the accused, 
malpractices like planting of evidence by investigating authorities, and how 
the poor and underprivileged are often the ones who get trapped in the system.

“The Bangladeshi judges we interviewed expressed frustration with the criminal 
justice system – especially with police and public prosecutors where they said 
corruption was rampant,” Dr Muhammad Mahbubur Rahman, a professor in the 
Department of Law, Dhaka University said.

Experts said that this disproved Marshall’s hypothesis, developed by Thurgood 
Marshall, an associate justice who was in the United States Supreme Court from 
1961 to 1991. He said that people’s support for death penalty had to do with 
their lack of knowledge about it. “However, here we had people who knew the 
criminal justice system in and out, and yet were favouring capital punishment,” 
Dr Anup observed.

Some judges even justified the use of custodial torture of the accused by 
police and investigating officials – the same proportion in India and 
Bangladesh incidentally, pointed out Professor Carolyn. In Bangladesh, six of 
the 30 judges interviewed justified it; in India, the number was 12 out of 60 
judges.

Life and death depend on judge’s discretion

The studies also found that whether an accused will get death penalty will 
depend entirely on the judge’s discretion. For instance, Dr Rahman revealed 
that of the 237 death sentences given by 28 of the 30 judges interviewed, 1 
single judge awarded 100 of the death penalties. “61% of the death penalties 
were given by just 3 judges,” he noted. Findings were similar in India.

This is in violation of the principle that death penalty should only be given 
in the rarest of rare cases. Referring to Bachan Singh v State of Punjab case 
here, where Supreme Court said that life imprisonment should be the norm, and 
death, an exception, the panellists argued that India was seeing a breakdown of 
the rarest of rare doctrine.

The doctrine lays down mitigating and aggravating factors for awarding death. 
Circumstances that would mitigate death penalty are factors like extreme 
emotional and mental disturbance of the accused, the accused being very young 
or very old, the possibility of him/her being rehabilitated and so on.

However, panellist Supreme Court Justice (retd.) V Gopala Gowda noted that 
instead of the above factors, it is the background of the judge, his/her 
mindset and personal inclinations are what influence their decision to award 
death in a case. “Without knowledge of human rights discourses, it is left to 
their discretion,” he said.

Public opinion on death penalty

Carolyn Hoyle, professor of criminology at Oxford University; further pointed 
out that while public opinion should not have a bearing on the decision to give 
a death sentence, it has been found that many judges refer to the “collective 
conscience” of the people to justify it.

Death Penalty Project co-founder Saul Lehrfreund shared that in their dialogue 
with retentionist countries, many governments had justified death penalty on 
grounds that the public was in favour of it. Unlike the judges though, 
Marshall’s hypothesis was found to apply in public opinion surveys taken by the 
UK-based organisation in several retentionist countries.

“In China, out of the 4,500 people surveyed, only 3% said they had a lot of 
interest in death penalty. In Malaysia, of the 1500 people interviewed, only 6% 
claimed to be well-informed on the issue,” Saul said. “Public support for death 
penalty is predicated on the assumption that there aren’t any wrongful 
convictions and that the system works.”

Per Marshall’s hypothesis, public opinion in favour of death penalty was found 
to reduce significantly when people were made aware of the flaws in the 
criminal justice system, and that innocent people could be sent to the gallows 
in wrongful convictions, surveys showed. “In China, the opinion in favour of 
death penalty reduced from 58% to 25% when they were given this information. In 
Malaysia, it dropped from 91% to 33%, and in Trinidad, from 89% to 35%,” Saul 
said.

When a question was raised in the audience on whether abolishing death penalty 
would impinge on victim rights, the panellists agreed that people had been 
found to accept the next severe punishment - life imprisonment - fairly easily 
when countries have done away with capital punishment. “We cannot retain victim 
rights by taking away accused rights. It’s a false dichotomy,” Professor 
Carolyn said.

(source: The News Minute)