BY Akola Thompson

“What says the law? You shall not kill. How does it say it? By killing!”- Victor HugoTHE conversation regarding whether to finally do away with the longstanding but out-of-practice death penalty law has again arisen, and has caused a staggering divide amongst the country’s electorate.

A considerable percentage of the country’s electorate believes the law should remain in place, as it would possibly serve as a deterrent to those thinking of engaging in criminal activities; and there are those, like myself, who believe that death penalty or not, people would still continue to carry out violent crimes and, for the most part, executing them seems like a lazy, inhumane solution to a very complex issue.

While the view of those who support the death penalty can be understood, in a society with a broken judicial system such as Guyana’s, there is too great a chance that a miscarriage of justice could occur and would see innocent persons being killed while criminals who can afford great lawyers and payment of bribes being set free with little more than the proverbial ‘slap on the wrist.’

The death penalty advocates, for the most part, form conclusions based not on facts and statistics, but on assumptions which are aided by their own biases and prejudices. They are largely driven by vengeance, and hold tightly to the maxim “an eye for an eye”, forgetting in the process the rights of every human, be they bad or good.

One of the major problems I have with the death penalty is its pure hypocrisy and false legitimacy. Yes, I do believe a person should be punished for their crimes, but why the state should be allowed to break a law (kill someone) because they broke another is beyond me.

We do not even currently have the capacity to begin implementing the death penalty, if that were decided, as we cannot even charge the non-violent offenders in a reasonable time. For argument sake, however, if the death penalty were again to be restarted, what legal authority or body can the Guyanese people be represented by to ensure that the sentence is not used vindictively and fairly?

Since a death sentence cannot be rescinded by new evidence proving one’s innocence, the people and those sentenced to death should be able to rely on the Government, private and public sectors to ensure that implementation of the death penalty, and sentencing thereto, is not due to some factor outside of the crime. But, again, even those people are prone to their own biases and anger; so how can one ever know whether or not one is being fairly prosecuted? It does not matter how developed the system is and how upright are the bodies formulated to oversee its management, the fact remains that humans, who are and always will be susceptible to failure, will oversee the system.

Aside from that, the argument of death penalty advocates that it constitutes a deterrent can be seen as flawed at best, as a majority of the crimes carried out are ones of passion. So it is highly unlikely that, in the heat of anger and blinded by ignorance, one would stop to consider that one might be put to death for one’s crime.

Even research is not on the side of those wishing for the death penalty law to be kept, as, time and time again, in various studies it has been proven that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime. The General Assembly of the United Nations once stated, “There is no conclusive evidence of the deterrent value of the death penalty” (UNGA Resolution 65/206).

Also, a recent study of the views of high ranking officials in top academic criminological societies, Radelet & Leacock 2009, stated that “88 % of these experts rejected the notion that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder.”

In fact, in several states in the U.S and other countries which do not have the death penalty, the murder rates are actually lower.

There have been, since 1966, successful efforts by the previous administration to amend the law; and this must be commended, as the death penalty is no longer a punishment for murder. Guyana was seemingly slowly preparing to phase it out. Whether this process will continue with this administration is another thing; but, so far, there seems to be very mixed and often vague views from the President and other parliamentarians and officials on the issue, and it is high time they let the Guyanese people know what are their views and plans.