Civil Rights Movement opposes death penalty

“The return of executions will diminish and degrade us all,” says the Civil Rights Movement (CRM), in an urgent plea against the resumption of judicial hangings. The State has an obligation to calmly weigh the pros and cons of such an important issue. The responsibility of political leaders is to lead, to guide.

Citing a unanimous eleven-judge decision of the highest Court of South Africa, CRM says that punishment should be commensurate with the offence but it does not have to be equivalent or identical. “The State does not have to engage in the cold and calculated killing of murderers in order to express its moral outrage at their conduct.”

The greatest deterrent to crime, this South African case held, is not the death penalty but “the likelihood that offenders will be apprehended, convicted and punished. It is that which is lacking in our criminal justice system”.

CRM stresses the irreversible nature of the death penalty, and the danger of executing the innocent. The integrity and reliability of the police investigation is crucial, for it is here that the evidence emerges on which a man may be convicted. This is why no system of last-stage review by distinguished judges is an adequate safeguard.

“Can we say?” asks CRM, “that our investigative, law enforcement and legal system is such that there is no real possibility of innocent people being convicted and scapegoats being hanged?” There is special danger in “high profile” cases where there is public outrage, and consequent pressure on the police for quick arrests. The poor and the disadvantaged are the most likely victims of miscarriages of justice.

The cruel nature of many murders, and appalling suffering of the victim’s relatives, is recognised. But to end a particular individual’s life at a particular place, date and time, as a deliberate and predetermined act of the State, is in turn extreme cruelty. Murders should be categorised, with varying minimum sentences. A parole system should review remissions, and where appropriate the victim’s relatives should have the right to be heard.

A procedure set up in the UK in 1997 to investigate alleged miscarriages of justice had, by end July 2009, resulted in 280 convictions being quashed. In some instances the accused had been hanged, others would have been if not for the abolition of the death penalty. In a separate document CRM summarises ten such sample cases.