PhotoCredit: MyJewishLearning
Susan Olalusi, Suberu Salamah
God has given us a precious gift called life. While some believe that such a gift can, and should only be retrieved by its giver, others are of the opinion that the gift of life can, and will be taken where the owner violates crucial land laws, and this is known as capital punishment.
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a government-sanctioned practice whereby a person is killed by the state as a punishment for a crime. Some of the capital crimes that warrant a death sentence typically include murder, mass murder, terrorism, treason, and espionage, to name a few.
The laws of several nations, including Nigeria, recognises the death penalty. In fact, Section 33(1) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) provides for the legal basis for the death penalty in Nigeria. However, the number of states that have abolished the use of capital punishment outweighs the number of those still using it. According to Amnesty Internationals in 2022, 112 nations had outlawed the death penalty, compared to 55 that still upheld it.
The question then is: how effective has capital punishment been in reducing these heinous crimes? Since the objective of a punishment is not just to punish an offender but also to deter others from perpetuating similar crimes.
This writer is of the opinion that capital punishment has not effectively reduced the occurrence of capital crimes. Nothing in established research or reliable evidence suggests that the death penalty deters crime (including drug offenses) any more than long-term incarceration. In a 2004 USA report by Amnesty Internationals, the average murder rate for states that used the death penalty was 5.71 per 100,000 of the population, as opposed to 4.02 per 100,000 in states that did not use it. In 2003, in Canada, 27 years after the country abolished the death penalty, the murder rate had fallen by 44 percent since 1975, when capital punishment was still enforced. Thus, the death sentence has been demonstrated to have a brutalizing effect on society, not to make it safer.
Aside from the fact that it does not deter crimes, there is a high possibility of executing an innocent person. Execution is the ultimate, irrevocable punishment. The risk of executing an innocent person can never be eliminated. Since 1973, for example, more than 191 prisoners sent to death row in the USA have later been exonerated or released from death row on grounds of innocence. Others have been executed despite serious doubts about their guilt.
Also, the worst offenders are not singled out by the death penalty. Instead, it chooses a random group based on illogical criteria such as the: victim’s or defendant’s race, the defense attorney’s caliber, or the county where the crime was committed.
In terms of race, research has consistently demonstrated that the likelihood of a death sentence in cases involving the murder of a white person is significantly higher than that of a black person. The death sentence seems to value white lives more than black lives, which is why it is racially divisive. These racial inequities have persisted throughout the death penalty’s history and seem to be largely unabated.
In conclusion, life is a precious gift from God, and no man, state, or nation should be given the power to dictate who deserves to live and who does not. This writer is not condoning the serious crimes/offenses that are given capital punishment. However, alternative punitive measures should be adopted to punish these offenders. Alternative sentences, such as life without parole, eliminate some of the key problems with capital punishment, including the risk of executing an innocent person.