 |
|
Wrongful executions are a common phenomenon, and in a country like Pakistan, they are far more likely. —Reuters
|
George Stinney, a 12-year-old black boy, was electrocuted in South Carolina in 1944 for the murder of two white girls, aged seven and 11. He was the youngest person executed in the United States.
More than 70 years later, a judge threw out the conviction, calling it a "great injustice." The words did nothing to help George, who had already been killed by the state.
More recently, in 2014, the family of a Chinese teenager lived through unimaginable emotions when their already executed son was declared innocent, 18 years after the date of the crime.
Wrongful executions are a common phenomenon. And in a country like Pakistan, where investigation and evidence gathering is still in its embryonic stages, and corruption quite rampant, sometimes the truth of the deceased being innocent never comes to our knowledge, even decades later.
Also read: ATC issues black warrant for Shafqat Hussain, to be executed on March 19
Arguments against death penalty
Those against the death penalty have powerful reasons for not supporting it. Just three of them are:
1
The right to life is one’s supreme and most inalienable right, and any exception to it must be narrow and well-founded.
As Amnesty International (AI) says, the death penalty legitimises an irreversible act of violence by the state and will inevitably claim innocent victims. As long as human justice remains fallible, the risk of executing the innocent can never be eliminated.
According to AI, in USA, 130 people sentenced to death have been found innocent since 1973 and thereafter released from death row.
2
The idea of retribution is against human rights.
Camus and Dostoevsky have argued that retribution in the case of the death penalty was not fair, because the anticipatory suffering of the criminal before execution would probably outweigh the anticipatory suffering of the victim of their crime.
Further, the long periods spent in jail before the actual execution constitutes inhumane and degrading treatment. This concept is now called the “death row phenomenon” in Europe and recognised as “double punishment” by Pakistan’s Shariat Court.
