This is the last entry you can comment on for the month of March.
What do you
think about how India’s law is worded? Can
capital punishment ever be justified, even for the most heinous crimes? Is it inevitable that who gets executed is
influenced by racism, nationalism and other biases?
ReplyDeleteHuman rights organizations all over the world have been advocating for worldwide abolition of death penalty for some time now. While I can understand some arguments that support capital punishment, there are factors that undermine it to the level of it being completely unfair and inhumane, making people no better than the criminals they are trying to punish themselves. In my opinion, the question whether capital punishment is adequately justified is irrelevant when it is in its actual operation discriminatory. I agree with the point of Justice Bhagwati that death penalty strikes mostly against the poor, as the affluent communities are more likely to escape the punishment.
India’s law states that death penalty is an exception, the rarest of rare, represented by no more than a vague statement opened to interpretation of its true meaning. Hence, if capital punishment is on the table, the prosecution will need solid arguments and evidence to enforce death penalty, just as the one accused of the crime will need a very good defense team of lawyers to strike back with good counterarguments. While everyone is entitled to a lawyer provided by the state, state lawyers juggle many cases at the same time, making it hard for them to really focus on each individual case for a longer period – as death penalty sentences can be dragged for years, if one’s defense team is successful in advocating for their client. Indeed, when people have money to hire their own private lawyers, they have bigger chances of escaping such punishment.
Moreover, racial prejudicial discrimination is also a very sad, yet still a real factor sneaking its way into the legal courts of India and other countries all over the world. You would think that when it comes to the rarest of rare cases of receiving capital punishment, the court would make sure that race, religion, or misrepresentation would not be the deciding factor when sentencing someone to die. I am not defending those accused of committing a crime against punishment, but I am defending the right for everyone to be treated fairly. I would rather see criminals getting appropriate representation and be treated with decency than innocent people getting executed because of a weak legal representation and discrimination, like in the case of India’s Dhananjoy Chatterjee.
I dare say that while in some cases law can be straightforward, in other cases it is opened to be scrutinized and its meaning used for personal gain, usually by people with ill intentions. I would just hope that such thing would not be possible and looked past when human lives are at stake.
In this case, equality should come before the law and death penalty should not be enforced if one side comes into the court already disadvantaged, although in its essence such punishment may be justified. If India, or other countries, keep capital punishment as an option, they ought to make absolutely sure that it is not carried out due to a person’s color, religion, or a disadvantageous social background.
The problem of capital punishment is one of the most important ones as it decides whether some people die or live. In most cases, the capital punishment is well substantiated with enough evidence. However, mistakes do occur everywhere even if they are honest accidents. As presumably in the case of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who was most likely innocent. Nonetheless, taking an innocent man’s life is the most severe mistake anyone can make. Additionally, as stated by Justice Bhagwati : “Death penalty in its actual operation is discriminatory”. The capital punishment is only for the poor as the rich can always pay their way out to a less severe sentence.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the capital punishment could in specific circumstances prove to be a better solution than other alternatives. For example, if there would be a person who’s whole life purpose is to murder and reek havoc it might be too risky for others to keep him in restrains while still treating them with basic human respect for the entirety of their life. Moreover, other safer variations such as sending this person to a mental hospital might be on par with the capital punishment moral wise. In mental hospitals dangerous patients need to be on high doses of multiple different drugs to keep them from being dangerous. This treatment usually shortens the life of a patient and it might completely wipe their mind, leaving only a husk of a person left. Additionally, these types of treatments cost the government a lot of money. In conclusion, the abolition of capital punishment is mostly dependent on how much are we willing to sacrifice to get justice to those who deserve it.