EDITORIAL: TO KILL OR NOT TO KILL

THAT is the question reopened by the Bar Council over this country's
continuing inclusion on the steadily diminishing list of nations with
the death penalty.

That list now stands at 76, of which 25 or so have not executed anyone
for at least 10 years and may be moving towards joining the 122
countries without the death penalty.

Some 40 of these have done away with capital punishment in the past 15
years alone, a global trend that has left just four countries
accounting for 97 per cent of all judicial executions - China, Iran,
Vietnam and the United States.

In the process, the death penalty has become tainted as an indicator
of a certain social primitivism; an institutionalised savagery that
does not speak well of a mature or advancing society.

In Malaysia, proponents of the noose continue to draw from deep, dark
wells: the death penalty is upheld as pure eye-for-eye justice for
murderers; due retribution for rapists, kidnappers and traitors; a
deterrent to prospective bad hats; or simply as an awful punitive
weapon to keep at hand, to help maintain discipline and order in
class, as it were.

A strong case could be made for the death penalty for illegal firearms
possession having helped spare this country the civil-war zone perils
faced by so many others, but death for drug trafficking has done
little to stanch the dadah scourge. Different mindsets are involved;
the nihilism inherent in drug abuse gives the prospect of death a
different flavour.

Opponents of the death penalty tend to be few and far between in this
country. Their arguments for compassion and respect for human rights
and the sanctity of life butt the hard heads of a polity preferring
simple and straightforward solutions over delicate philosophical conundrums.

If there is a middle path on the way forward, it could be in reviewing
the crimes meriting mandatory death sentences or, preferably,
restoring judicial discretion, especially as regards the dadah-related
offences that account for most executions here.

Declaring a mandatory death sentence for dadah was a statement of
national disgust, but it has had the effect of tying the system's
hands while doing little to solve the problem. It may therefore be too
high a price to pay. Such is the cost-benefit analysis that should
inform this debate - especially if the death penalty is to be regarded
as a measure of a society's respect for life.