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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
Capital punishmentor thedeath penalty is the execution of a person byjudicial processas a punishment for an offense. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known ascapital crimesorcapital offences. The termcapitaloriginates fromLatin capitalis, literally "regarding the head". Hence, a capital crime was originally one punished by thesevering of the head.
Capital punishment has been practiced in virtually every society, and thus can be considered to be acultural universalor close to it, excluding those withstate religiousproscriptions against it. It is a matter of active controversy in various countries and states. Today, most countries are considered byAmnesty International as abolitionists, which allowed a vote on anonbinding resolution to the UN to promote the abolition of the death penalty. But more than 60% of the worldwide population live in countries where executions take place insofar as the fourmost populous countries in the world(the People's Republic of China, India, United States and Indonesia) apply the death penalty and are unlikely to abolish it at any time soon.
It is argued that capital punishment brutalizes human nature. Brutality like many other concepts is to be understood in a particular context. Capital punishment is reaction against certain types of brutalities committed by human beings. So far from brutalizing human nature it seeks to remind people to get rid of their brutal tendencies and there is no evidence suggests that it does not succeed in this mission. The most important aspect of death sentence is that it puts fear in the minds of potential murderers. In this way capital punishment helps in inculcating values to have highest regard for the lives of innocent and law abiding citizens.
People may consider that someone who takes another person's life should be punished in kind. These people quote passages such as the "an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" concept from the Old Testament of the Judeo-Christian bible.
The law commission of India has supported the element of retributive inherent in capital punishment albeit in a somewhat subtle form. It came to this conclusion on the basis of following points:
Basically every human being dreads death.
Death stands as a totally different level of penalty from imprisonment or any other punishment. The difference is one of quality and not merely of degree.
It is difficult to keep a track of conduct of prisoners released from jail as it requires study that prolongs over a long time.
Whether any other punishment can have these advantages is a matter of doubt.
However, we cannot totally ignore the disadvantages of capital punishment. When death penalty is used it is impossible to correct cases of injustice afterwards should evidence come to light which shows individual was wrongly convicted
The abolitionists hold that capital punishment cannot be justified in terms of retributive purposes in a contemporary civilized world. One popular argument of the abolitionists is that the poor people are at a greater risk of capital punishment and rich persons are always able to avoid it with the help of their wealth.
It is said that sometimes the courts are reluctant to find a person guilty of a capital offence due to severity of the punishment involved and this has a bearing on the constitutional rights of the accused.
The question of constitutionality of capital sentence has also come in several cases such as Bacchan Singh v State of Punjab. The main contention advanced before the court is that capital punishment is violative of article 19 of the constitution because the freedoms guaranteed therein cannot be enjoyed without basic right to life and that it defiles dignity of the individual.
India being a party to Stockholm Declaration of 1977 was committed to abolish capital punishment. However it is seen that various attempts made by India to abolish or restrict capital punishment have not met with much success.
In the aftermath of World War II, the United Nations General Assembly adopted theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights. This 1948 doctrine proclaimed a "right to life" in an absolute fashion, any limitations being only implicit. Knowing that international abolition of the death penalty was not yet a realistic goal in the years following the Universal Declaration, the United Nations shifted its focus to limiting the scope of the death penalty to protect juveniles, pregnant women, and the elderly.
A unique facet of the modern debate about capital punishment is the characterization of the death penalty as a human rights issue, rather than a debate about the proper punishment of criminals. The human rights focus on the death penalty has continued, especially in settings of dramatic political change. When people view capital punishment as a human rights issue, countries that are becoming more democratic have been eager to abolish the death penalty, which they associate with the former regime and its abuses of power
In April 1999, the United Nations Human Rights Commission passed the Resolution Supporting Worldwide Moratorium On Executions. The resolution calls on countries which have not abolished the death penalty to restrict its use of the death penalty.
Presently, more than half of the countries in the international community have abolished the death penalty completely, de facto, or for ordinary crimes. However, over 78 countries retain the death penalty, including China, Iran, the United States, and Vietnam all of which rank among the highest for international executions.
As human beings we do not have any authority to take other persons life. On one hand where our society recognizes even protection and ethical treatment for animals how can the same society on the hand be so inhuman to its own race. Law, according to me must kill the crime and not the criminals. An extreme measure such as a capital punishment should only be taken when the society feels that its better to kill a person so as to prevent him from killing the society but this should be done only in the rarest of rare cases where the definition of "rare" needs a considerable interpretation.
