Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter
BRINGING BACK hanging in Jamaica will be against an international trend of abolition. Just last week, Iraqi president Jalal Talabani said he would personally refuse to sign any death warrant for his predecessor Saddam Hussein.
Since 1985, three years before Jamaica had its last hanging, 50 countries have abolished the death penalty. A total of 121 countries have ended the death penalty either by law or by practice.
Last week a visiting delegation of parliamentarians from the European Union (EU)-African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Joint Parliamentary Assembly discussed the issue with Prime Minister P.J. Patterson.
Anti-death penalty British Member of the European Parliament Glenys Kinnock denied Jamaica would be penalised or pressured by the EU should it bring back hanging. It was "your choice", she said.
"... I very much hope that Jamaica will go down the road of changing their policy in favour of recognising that as so many countries do," she said.
EU PREREQUISITE
Abolition is a prerequisite for membership of the EU, which lobbies against the use of the death penalty in the United States and worldwide. All 25 member countries have now done so and Turkey last year agreed to abolition in order to join the EU.
And abolition, Mrs. Kinnock reminded, was one of the first changes South African President Nelson Mandela made after he took over from Apartheid in 1994.
China leads the world in executions. Human rights group Amnesty International, which has long lobbied against the death penalty, claimed that of 3,797 executions it counted worldwide in 2004, 3,400 were in China alone.
However recent wrongful executions have prompted the Chinese government to give its Supreme Court powers to review death penalty decisions in the lower courts. The courts, argue many, have been too profligate in their use of the penalty.
Two men, convicted for murder in China in unconnected cases, were earlier this year shown to be innocent - one man was subsequently freed, but the other had already been executed. Proof of their innocence came when their 'victims', their wives, were found alive and well - not murdered.
Meanwhile the United States Supreme Court this year abolished the death penalty for juveniles. The new ruling overturned the 1989 ruling which allowed the execution of prisoners aged 16 and 17 years old. Prior to the ruling 20 states, down from 25 in 1989, permitted the execution of prisoners aged under-18.
The court admitted that ending the country's international isolation on the juvenile death penalty had been a consideration. The US's 59 executions in 2004 were its lowest annual total since 1976, attributed to earlier exemptions to the death penalty (such as for the mentally retarded), exoneration of death row prisoners by DNA evidence and a falling murder rate.
SECURE PRINCIPLE
However, the death penalty as a whole is thought to be secure. According to leading opinion pollsters the Gallup Organisation, public support has remained steady at two-thirds following a high of 80 per cent in 1980 and a low of 42 per cent in 1966. Sixty-six per cent of those polled in 2004 were in favour.
President George W. Bush also holds the record for state executions. He executed death warrants on 152 prisoners in six years while Governor of Texas.
Facts about hanging
86 countries and territories have abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
11 countries have abolished the death penalty, except for exceptional crimes, such as wartime crimes.
24 countries are 'abolitionist in practice', such as Jamaica. The death penalty is still in law but, by policy or practice, they have not executed a prisoner in the last 10 years or more.
75 other countries and territories retain and use the death penalty. However the number of countries executing prisoners in a given year is much lower.
China, Iran, Vietnam and the United States accounted for 97 per cent of all known executions in 2004.
- Source: Amnesty International
