Death penalty — a fatal, inhuman practice that discriminates against the poor

We celebrate today the 15th World Day against the Death Penalty. As of today, 105 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes. In the past 25 years, 60 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes and the number of states that carry out executions has fallen by nearly half.

But it is still not enough: the world’s most populated countries — China, India, United States of America and Indonesia still retain capital punishment along with countries like North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, Malaysia and Singapore.

Around half of the world’s population, who live in these countries, is not guaranteed the right to life, as prescribed in Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Hundreds of executions are carried out every year and thousands are under sentence of death.

Worryingly, the death penalty has been carried out arbitrarily and in a manner that discriminates against the poor and the marginalized sections of society including minority groups and migrant workers.

When I was the Governor of New Mexico, I changed my mind from being a believer of capital punishment as I saw this discriminatory aspect of the death penalty. Besides, there is always the possibility of executing an innocent and so I abolished the death penalty in New Mexico in 2009. My convictions have only strengthened as 159 persons facing capital punishment in the USA have been reportedly found to be innocent since 1973.

In the USA, most persons facing the death penalty even today cannot afford their own attorney at trial and most court-appointed attorneys are overworked, underpaid or lacked the experience necessary to defend capital punishment trials.

Moreover, prosecutors tended to seek the death penalty more often when the victim was white than when the victim was African-American or of another racial or ethnic origin. These factors have contributed to the arbitrariness of the death penalty. By doing so, the death penalty violates the right to equal dignity and this discrimination condemns them to further marginalization.

This discrimination against the poor and minority communities occurs not just in USA but in practically every country applying the death penalty. Because of their limited economic means, because of their lack of knowledge of the legal systems and their rights, because of poor legal defense support, because of systemic bias that they face from law enforcement authorities, they are under greater risk of being sentenced to death.

In India, almost 75 per cent of the persons sentenced to death, and in Malaysia, nearly 90 per cent, reportedly belonged to economically vulnerable groups. In Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan hundreds are executed every year, most of whom are poor or from minority communities; in addition, there are concerns that these three countries carry out executions of those who were juveniles when they allegedly committed the crimes for which they faced the death penalty.

In China, the number of executions carried out is a state secret and reportedly, those executed, feared to be in the thousands, include those belonging marginalized communities including unskilled workers who have little means of defense.

In Indonesia, 13 of the 16 persons executed in the last two years were foreign nationals and there were questions of fair trials in several of these cases.

From my experiences and beliefs, that are shared by my fellow Commissioners of the International Commission against the Death Penalty (ICDP), the death penalty is not the solution to end criminality. It is usually counterproductive as it worsens poverty, discrimination and inequalities, perpetrating the circle of violence.

The right to life is a universal human right and the death penalty has no place in the 21st century.

I am inspired today on the World Day against the Death Penalty, when I see that more than half the countries in the world have abolished capital punishment because they have recognized that modern justice systems can protect the public from crime without the irrevocable and cruel nature of the death penalty and the constant risk of executing an innocent person.

These nations have recognized that state killing is wrong and fails to deter crime more effectively than other punishments. Today, I join the ICDP and the abolitionist movement in committing ourselves to achieve a world free of the death penalty, a world free of this discriminatory practice that is based on vengeance and bias that only enhances the ever-present risk of wrongful convictions.

Source: The Hill, Bill Richardson, October 10, 2017. Bill Richardson is the former Democratic governor of New Mexico. He was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the secretary of energy, both during the Clinton administration. He also served in the House of Representatives. As a diplomat and special envoy, Richardson has received four Nobel Peace Prize nominations and has successfully won the release of hostages and American servicemen in North Korea, Cuba, Iraq and the Sudan.

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde