Hanging is not the solution
BECAUSE OUR emboldened murderers are killing citizens with impunity, many want to see the reinstitution of Jamaican’s form of capital punishment, hanging. Although we are sick and tired of the vicious and macabre killings, of the constant fear of being brutally slaughtered hanging over all of us like the sword of Damocles, and we want the killers to fear the consequences of their actions, hanging is not the answer.
Capital punishment is an oxymoron because punishment is meant to teach someone a lesson, but no one can learn anything once he/she is dead. Everyone dies anyway, and death by hanging is one of the quickest and easiest ways to die. Ruthless killers are accustomed to living with death all around them; they do not expect to have long lives. Because they do not value their own lives, they do not value our lives.
Consequently, killers are very willing to risk their lives (that have been made worthless by the circumstances of their upbringing and existence), for the fleeting excitement of taking the lives of others, and for the brief pleasures that blood money brings.
Evidentially and evidently, the death penalty does not deter crime any more than long prison terms deter crime. The best deterrent against crimes, and especially serious crimes, is being apprehended and t hen imprisoned for a very long time. If the offender is found to be irredeemable, in other words, incapable of being reformed and eventually reintegrated into civil society, the term of imprisonment should be life without the possibility of parole.
VAUNTED REASON
Since one much vaunted reason for capital punishment is to protect society against the threat of murders by criminal entities and render them incapable of killing again, a life sentence without the possibility of parole would serve the same purpose.
Because of this reality, up until the end of 2022, of the 193 member states of the United Nations, and the two observer states, 111 countries have abolished capital punishment. But seven of those have retained capital punishment only for special circumstances like war crimes. As of this year, only 28 per cent (54 member states) still retain capital punishment not only in law, but also in practice. The countries that still carry out capital punishment reserve it for certain types of murder, terrorism, espionage, treason, war crimes and military justice.
Since the vicarious experience of being judicially killed (by the state) does not deter others from committing murder, and since killing someone who has killed someone only makes killing an accepted form of dealing with a serious problem, it encourages others to kill the source of their problems. Hence, when judicial killing is promulgated as a form of justice, people are inclined to dispense their brand of ‘justice’ by illegally killing someone. That, in turn, will beget judicial killing, which will beget illegal killing, and so on and so on.
People do not readily admit (read, confess) that they want to see murderers hanged just for the satisfaction of seeing them get what they deserve … dangling at the end of a rope. But has anyone given much thought to who will be dangling at the end of our rope? Generally, it is believed that about 4 per cent of people are wrongfully sentenced to death. That figure does not sound too bad until it applies to you or to someone with whom you are very familiar. Is getting rid of our problems worth the risk of mistakenly getting rid of innocent people?
OUTCOME OF TRIALS
It is erroneously believed that the outcome of most trials has a lot to do with ‘truth’. In reality, the outcome of most trials has a lot to do with proper representation. If someone poor is accused of murder, the representation that he/she receives is vastly different from the representation that a rich and powerful person will receive. Poor people cannot afford to hire teams of topanaris lawyers (at a cost of tens of millions), who are backed and supported by an entire staff of paralegals and investigators. Their legal teams will find it easier to acquire exculpatory evidence, or research similar cases and mine for loopholes and technicalities that can get their client off the hook. Poor people in that same situation will get their necks stretched.
Additionally, I can confidently say that popular people, celebrities, politicians, upper-class citizens, members of certain ‘societies’, and members of some social groups will never receive capital punishment for anything that they do. The trials of the rich and famous always drag on and on and on until memories fade and the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred. They get bail and are able to earn the money to pay for their expensive representation, while fabricating the image of being a good citizen before the trial begins.
If we are not going to hang the rich, famous, powerful, influential, wellconnected, and popular citizens, then we don’t have the right to hang anybody.
I am not into coddling killers or finding excuses for their crimes against humanity; however, judges and most jurors will never be able to appreciate the aggression, the hate, the violence, the abuse, and the horrors that most of our killers are subjected to as children. Society created the monsters that we fear; but it is focused on killing the products of its mistakes rather than solving our problems with major social intervention.