An appeal against the death penalty

By Pak Bui

The first anniversary of the death of young M Kugan Ananthan was marked with solemn and tearful prayers at his family’s house.

Kugan died at the age of 22 on January 22 last year, after having endured a savage beating in police custody.

Only one policeman, V Navindran, ended up as the fall guy, charged with ‘causing grievous hurt’, and not murder. The initial charge preferred by the Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail in the heat of public censure, melted away like ice cream.

Meanwhile, ten other policemen, who had initially been reported as having been involved in Kugan’s torture, escaped scot free.

N Indra, Kugan’s inconsolable mother, said to Malaysiakini, “All eleven must be punished. They must face the death sentence for committing murder, so what happened to my son will not happen to others”.

I cannot pretend to understand the pain and sorrow N Indra has gone through: it is more than a human being can bear to lose a child, especially under such unjust circumstances.

But I remain firmly against the death penalty.

The argument for deterrence

The hope that capital punishment can act as a deterrent has been explored in many societies. England, France and Spain used the death penalty to varying degrees in the twentieth century, though executions have diminished in number over the years in these countries. All European countries have now abolished the death penalty, except for Belarus and Latvia.

The United States still executes the highest number of prisoners in the world, together with China and Saudi Arabia. Here, in this practice of state executions at least, we fail to detect the much-celebrated ‘clash of civilisations’.

The idea of deterrence is that potential murderers might be discouraged from killing, if they know they might be caught and executed. But there is no evidence that imposing the death penalty reduces the number of murders, in any country that has studied its supposed deterrent value.

If the death sentence were to have true deterrent value, we should parade victims on television and show their executions by live telecast, so that all of us in the audience would be under no assumption, that the death penalty awaits us if we murder or sell drugs. Yet Malaysia performs all executions behind closed doors in prisons, far from the public eye.

And the crimes of drug trafficking in Malaysia have increased rather than decreased, despite the death penalty under Section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act. This is because the couriers handling the drugs are expendable, and the drug lords who control the trade are beyond our reach in Indochina.

There is another argument to be considered: the deterrent value can only be effective if there is a high chance that a criminal will actually be arrested for the crime. Given the plummeting reputation of the police and the judicial system, it is safe to say that the chance of getting caught for any particular crime that carries the death penalty in Malaysia is not very high.

We should also examine the likelihood of the deterrence of the death penalty being weighed in someone’s mind, immediately before he commits a crime. People who murder often commit the crime in a fit of passion or jealousy. Any one of us is more likely to be murdered by our spouse than by a random stranger on the street. In such emotional outbursts, the fear of death by hanging may not be strong enough to calm the mind and prevent a murder.

Some killings are also unintentional – the intention may be to inflict pain or vengeance, but the killer may go too far, and not realise the damage he or she is causing. There is a great deal of speculation on the Web that this may have contributed to the deaths of some prisoners in custody in Malaysia.

Could it be that the deaths of Kugan and Teoh Beng Hock were entirely unpremeditated and unplanned, and some captor simply went too far?

I certainly hope and pray for the day that those responsible for the deaths of Kugan and Teoh Beng Hock are brought to justice. I would call for life imprisonment with no chance of parole, but not the death penalty. The criminals would then be unable to repeat their crimes.

A call for abolition

There is also no evidence that abolishing capital punishment leads to increased murders – in fact after capital punishment was removed in 33 nations in Europe by the late 1950s, the number of murders did not increase in those places.

Up to the 19^th century, pickpockets were hanged in England, yet there were a significant number of pickpockets at work in the crowds watching the executions.

And according to Albert Camus in his essay “Reflections on the Guillotine”  (from the book Reflections on Capital Punishment, 1957) out of 250 English prisoners who were hanged at the end of the 19^thcentury, 170 had previously attended one or more public executions.

In these instances, there was no discernible deterrent effect.

Camus also wrote: “The death penalty besmirches our society, and its upholders cannot reasonably defend it…a punishment that penalises without forestalling is indeed called revenge.”

An eye for an eye, and the whole world would go blind.

I often think to myself, or even say out loud, that certain people deserve to die.

Then I remind myself of JRR Tolkein’s quote, “Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. For even the wise cannot see all ends.”

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