Yes, Uganda should review death penalty

Oct 04, 2007

I wish to thank The New Vision for the editorial of October 3, “Uganda should review death penalty.” I hope one day The New Vision will hit the streets with a screaming banner, “Uganda abolishes death penalty.” What a day that will be. As you correctly put it, the death sentence is getting o

By Joseph Magala-Nyago

I wish to thank The New Vision for the editorial of October 3, “Uganda should review death penalty.” I hope one day The New Vision will hit the streets with a screaming banner, “Uganda abolishes death penalty.” What a day that will be. As you correctly put it, the death sentence is getting out of fashion because it is a sign of backwardness. Indeed, almost all the states in the US who still have it on their law books have put it on hold.

Within the confines of rational thinking, every action to be taken must have an objective. Again an objective should be analyzed to determine whether it meets the SMART test – that is whether it is Specific (clearly stated), Measurable (its results quantifiable), Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound (within a time frame). Any objective that does not satisfy all the elements of the SMART test is rationally faulty and untenable.

What then are the objectives of the death sentence? These are: to punish the wrongdoer, to act as a deterrent to would be wrongdoers, and to avenge the death of the killer’s victim. However when subjected to the SMART test, none of those objectives holds.

Death penalty as a punishment
Punishment or penalty is defined as “causing one to suffer for an offence.” Suffering may take many forms but death is not one of them. Death is an absolute state of matter. One is either alive or dead. Since suffering is an aftermath of an infliction monitored by the victim, it can only occur along the continuum of life before the absolute. In other words no body suffers death because there is no aftermath. We can only suffer until death. It is a fundamental error, therefore, to refer to the death sentence as either a capital punishment or a Death penalty because the dead don’t suffer and, likewise, they don’t reform. Genesis 4:8-15 is a good reference. To ensure that Cain was duly punished for slaying his brother Abel, the Lord put a mark on him so that no body would kill him. God wanted him to stay alive and suffer for his crime.

As a deterrent
There is no evidence that the death sentence has ever deterred crime. Recently, two young men walked into their former school compound in Colorado, USA, and shot their mates, teachers and all. They then shot themselves dead. They had planned the macabre stint to the letter. They knew all along they would die but they were not deterred.

In Bugolobi flats, Kampala, a hapless housemaid was brutally strangled to death during a robbery. Why? She had recognized her assailant. Wasn’t the assailant aware of the death sentence? Or was the assailant forced to strangle the girl for fear of the death sentence (for aggravated robbery)? Without the death sentence, probably the poor girl would still be alive today. Either way the death sentence, as a deterrent, is an illusion.

As a revenge
Like Shakespeare intimated, “Vengeance is a desire for retaliation by the devil”. Revenge is never an attribute of rational thinking. A life cannot avenge a life. The objective must be to punish the wrongdoer (to make them suffer for their crime). There is nothing being avenged when somebody is sentenced to death for aggravated robbery. It is a life for a TV set.

Bad laws normally do not end up only as absolute miscarriages of justice but they also tend to have a “boomerang effect”. The death sentence is a good example. First, it lets off the wrongdoer scot-free (saved from suffering) and punishes the relatives and friends of the condemned for a crime they did not commit because they are the ones who stay behind to suffer the agony of looking after the estate.

Secondly, where the murderer’s victim left five orphans without any assistance, they may probably grow up into rogues and a menace to society. When the murderer is hanged, he may leave behind his own five orphans. In the end society ends up with a menace of 10 rogues (murderers).

Protecting the innocent
An execution once carried out, cannot be reversed. There is no room for errors but that is not human. Errors are routinely being committed in capital sentencing and, consequently, innocent people are being executed for crimes they didn’t commit. Thomas J. Miller was sentenced to death in Dallas, Texas (USA) in March 1986. Later evidence showed that Miller was not in Dallas when the crime was committed. The execution of Alan Jeffery Bannister in Missouri in October 1997 set off the Alan J. Bannister Foundation to campaign against the death sentence. Bannister went to the gallows pleading his innocence and that by executing him the state was committing a premeditated murder. Indeed the evidence proved later that his victim’s death was an accident.

A study sponsored by the American Federal Government gives the error rate in capital cases of up to 68%. The prosecutors and Judges are humans; they are bound to make errors.

We must come up with appropriate and acceptable punishments commensurate with life and justice in a civilized society. For example, the Government can set up money generating activities where the condemned would be trained (if necessary) to generate income for life such as on farms, in workshops, among others. Such arrangement will have the following benefits:

The condemned will be punished and made to suffer for their crimes. Not only will they have to labour, they will also be left to live with their guilt until death. Being haunted for life by a guilt conscience is the ultimate punishment for any crime.

Outputs from one’s labour will be sold on the open market for one’s maintenance.

Where it may be found later that an innocent person was condemned, the punishment will be revoked with no innocent life lost. This will protect the innocent.

The Constitution
The sacrilegious Article 121(5) of our Constitution that refers to the Advisory Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy will be no more. Mortals should not claim powers of Prerogative of Mercy to life. It is tantamount to playing God.

When the state kills, it does so on behalf and in the name of all the citizens. To those of us who believe in the sanctity of life (and we are many) it is like hiring an assassin. It makes us all accessories before and after the fact.

The death sentence is a primitive and barbaric law. It is attrition to moral conscience and irrevocably demeaning to the human race. It is nothing but murder in disguise. Let us revert to the cardinal rule “Thou shall not kill”. Let Article 22(1) of the Constitution be amended to read thus; “No person shall be deprived of life intentionally.” The exception clause embedded in the Article must be deleted. Our Constitution must leave no room for one human being to kill another human being.

As the former US Attorney General, Ramsey Clerk, said, “We need all the help we can get to overcome this terrible character flaw that arises from our love for violence. We have to stop killing people, whether they are innocent or not.”

Thank you once again for that editorial. It made my day.

The writer is a management consultant and the author of The Rape of The Pearl (1985), a novel on Idi Amin’s Uganda, published by Macmillan, UK

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