India | Execution can never be right... even for the worst of crimes

Last week saw the hangings of the 4 men in Delhi who gang-raped a 23-year-old student on a bus in 2012. (The unnamed woman later died of her injuries.)

The case shocked the world and sparked a revolution about female safety within India (although women there are still raped at the rate of 1 every 20 minutes.

The family of the victim expressed their relief that the executions were finally happening after many delays, which is understandable.

But is the death penalty ever the answer?

It was the first time in 5 years that capital punishment has been carried out in India.

People either think that the death penalty is morally wrong, or they don’t.

To my mind, the hangings in India are as fundamentally unethical as a lethal injection in a US jail.

I say that, while feeling nothing but disgust and outrage at what those men did, and my heart breaks for the young woman and her family.

I understand why people think that, for certain crimes, the death penalty is justified.

However, there can’t be a sliding ethical scale for the death penalty.

The dial must stay stuck, or it’s meaningless.

I would argue that it could never be justified, even for appalling crimes.

And that’s because executions echo and amplify the barbarity of any act. However horrific the crime may be, retaliatory executions shame and reduce us.

RELATED | Justice Verma committee, Law commission opposed death penalty to Nirbhaya case convict

RELATED |‘Cruel and inhumane’ — European Union condemns hanging of Nirbhaya convicts

RELATED | Nirbhaya case: International Commission of Jurists condemns execution of convicts, urges govt. to abolish death penalty

RELATED | Hanging of Nirbhaya convicts a ‘dark stain’ on India’s human rights record: Amnesty India

Source: The Guardian, Opinion, March 22, 2020

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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

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