|
“I am a human being and nothing pertaining to human is alien to me,
so said Karl Marx (www.sociologist.com)”
At the dawn of the 21st century, the death penalty is
considered by most civilized nations as a cruel and inhuman
punishment. While international documents have restricted
and in some cases even banned the death penalty, its
application is still not against customary international
law.
Much debate continues as to whether the death penalty
constitutes an appropriate punishment, at least to the most
heinous crimes. In recent years, the debate has been further
fueled by the use of new technologies which have shown that
a large proportion of people sentenced to death are, indeed,
innocent.
This paper will look at the trend towards abolition of
the death penalty as it has emerged over recent decades,
alongside examining both the sides of the debate regarding
death penalty which requires a presentation of the theories
of punishment and finally to arrive at a conclusion as to
whether in the times of the 21st century the
death penalty should still be an adhered to practice or not
it will trace the development of capital punishment as a
human rights issue in the international forum and examine
recent challenges to the death penalty.
The structure that this paper adopts is discussed in short
herein, any paper on death penalty in the current times
would be incomplete without mentioning the Saddam Hussein
execution, hence the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein
is examined only from the perspective of the validity or not
of the sentence of death penalty awarded to Saddam in the
first section. In the next section, the researcher traces
the abolitionist movement in the world and presents
statistically the current stand of the world on the issue of
capital punishment. The next section presents the
jurisprudential analysis of the death penalty and therefore
examines the various theories propounded on this subject
starting from the theories of punishment to the arguments
for and against capital punishment. The researcher finally
goes on to establish that the death penalty intersects with
international law and is challenged by it and therefore
defining the death penalty as a Human Rights issue is
imperative. For the purpose of proving the above
proposition, apart from employing relevant primary sources
in the form of treaty provisions, secondary sources in the
form of treatises and articles, are also used and these are
enumerated in detail in the index of authorities.
Key words: Capital punishment, human right, due
process of law, Saddam’s trial.
|
