| Yawning
Bread. 19 August 2008
Side-stepping the death penalty
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It was impossible to come to any definitive conclusion since every case is unique. However, a recently reported case – this time of drug trafficking – has strengthened my gut feel. The death sentence is also mandatory if someone is found guilty of trafficking. If you are found with more than 15 grams equivalent of heroin, then you are presumed to be trafficking. Below that amount, the case is treated as one of possession with a slightly less draconian sentence.
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Here is the report by the news agency, DPA:
More recently, Singapore masochistically sought worldwide bad press when our ambassador at the UN spoke out stridently against a United Nations resolution calling for a moratorium on capital punishment:
At the height of the controversy over the hanging of Nguyen, for example, Subhas Anandan, one of our top criminal lawyers, spoke out against such a policy. "I am not opposed to the death sentence, but I am not in favour of the mandatory death sentence," he said. It was essential, he argued, that judges in Singapore be allowed to weigh the circumstances of each case when deciding an appropriate sentence. The judge had to be able "to look at the circumstances in which things have been done," said Subhas. "Sometimes the reasons vary, so I think that the judge should be given the discretion whether to impose the death sentence or not." [1]
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The Law Society finally spoke up in 2007.
Take the case of the three men mentioned at the start of this article. The story tells you very clearly that they were caught with 18.4 grams of heroin. Yet the prosecution only charged them with 14.99 grams. Is this the right way to go about it? Can the prosecution change facts just like that? If it is acceptable today to say "14.99" when it was really 18.4, might it be acceptable tomorrow to say "18.4" when it was really 14.99? Are we doing the right thing in the worst possible way? Yet, it would be entirely in character with a government that is paranoid about losing face. They will not easily admit that others have valid arguments, and that they were wrong about being so keen on hanging. Moreover, they will never want to be seen yielding to foreign criticism, being as attached to old-fashioned national sovereignty as any bunch of autocrats. If the price for sticking to their guns rises too high (international condemnation, domestic discontent) they will find roundabout ways to hang fewer people without ever conceding that capital punishment may violate moral norms. Doing the right thing the wrong way, however, has costs, and as this case shows, the whole integrity of the justice system is put at risk when we use administrative discretion so liberally to alter the quantity of heroin involved. Even truth with numbers is thrown overboard. Another observation one can make from this case is the marginalisation of the role of judges. It is virtually the prosecutor who decides on the penalty through varying the grammage. The judge is little more than a rubber stamp. Can it be good to undercut an important institution -– the judiciary -– like this? No doubt the government prefers it this way rather than take up the Law Society's suggestion to do away with mandatory sentences. The prosecutor is part of the executive arm and more firmly under the control of the cabinet than judges, even when the latter are appointed by the government. The message one reads from this is: Potentially independent centres of power cannot be trusted. But what will this mean, in the long run, to the integrity of the
justice system? What's the significance of the increasing use of
administrative discretion? Is rot setting in? © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes
Addenda None
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In the last 18 months or so, I had the growing feeling, looking at murder
cases before the courts, that the prosecution has been bending over
backwards to accommodate pleas of temporary insanity. I wondered whether
they were trying their best to avoid triggering the death sentence, which
is the only sentence specified by law for cases of murder with intent.
