At the risk of trivializing a matter of life and death, one is compelled to tell a story of an arrogant young man. This young man had a girlfriend who happened to be an army officer. On account of the officer, the young man formed the habit of threatening his perceived enemies with military action. Unknown to him, his boasts would later boomerang against him. One day he angered the young lady and suffered the beating of his life. He told her that if she tried to leave her for another man he would ask his uncle who was a magistrate to pronounce death penalty against her. The girl knocked out some teeth from his wide mouth! Death penalty can actually cause an innocent man to run into serious trouble.

But on a more serious note, during the locust years of military rule in Nigeria when drug and armed robbery convicts were publicly executed, the executions attracted large crowds of spectators. Often we saw pickpockets and thieves plying their nefarious trade among the crowd even as the convicts were being shot by soldiers. The fact that their senior colleagues were being shot on the stakes did not deter them from stealing. This raises the question: can death penalty deter criminals from committing crime?

Death penalty, also referred to as capital punishment, has historical antecedents. As far back as the 7th Century BC, capital punishment for murder, treason, arson, and rape was widely employed in ancient Greece under the laws of Draco from whose name the term ‘draconian law’ found its way into the English lexicon. Plato attempted to modify this law by arguing that it should be used only for perpetual criminals found to be unrepentant and incorrigible. It was recorded that the Romans also used it for a wide range of offences, though citizens were exempted for a short time during the republic. The Romans had a curious punishment for parricides (murder of a parent): the condemned was submersed in water in a sack, which also contained a dog, a rooster, a viper and an ape. The most notorious death execution in 399 BC was when the Greek philosopher Socrates was required to drink poison for heresy and corruption of youth, as it was then alleged.

It also has been sanctioned at one time or another by most of the world’s major religions. Followers of Judaism and Christianity, for example, have claimed to find justification for capital punishment in the biblical passage “Whosoever sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” (Genesis 9:6). Yet capital punishment has been prescribed for many crimes not involving loss of life, including adultery and blasphemy. The ancient legal principle Lex talionis—“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life”—which appears in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, was invoked in some societies to ensure that capital punishment was not disproportionately applied. The first death sentence historically recorded occurred in Egypt in 16th Century BC. The alleged convict was accused of magic, and ordered to take his own life. If, for example, a drug pusher from Nigeria is caught in Singapore, he is a dead meat! Let no one be deceived, some countries don’t suffer fools gladly.

Capital punishment can take various forms, some of which have been found to be quite bizarre and ineffective. At a time in old England, burning was the punishment for women’s high treason and men were executed by hanging. For the upper classes, beheading was preferred. One could be burned for marrying a Jew. Those who would not confess after committing a crime were subjected to the penalty of what was known then as ‘pressing’. The executioner placed heavy weights on the victim’s chest. On the first day he gave the victim a small quantity of bread, on the second day a small drink of bad water, and so on until he confessed or died. Under the reign of Henry VIII, the numbers of those put to death are estimated as high as 72,000. Boiling to death was another penalty approved in 1531, and there are records to show some people boiled for up to two hours before death took them. When a woman was burned, the executioner tied a rope around her neck when she was tied to the stake. When the flames reached her she could be strangled from outside the ring of fire. However, this often failed and many were literally burnt alive.

In the United States, some states were more severe in exerting capital punishment. For example, by 1837, North Carolina prescribed death for the crimes of murder, rape, statutory rape, slave-stealing, stealing bank notes, highway robbery, burglary, arson, castration, buggery, sodomy, bestiality, duelling where death occurs, hiding a slave with intent to free him, taking a free Negro out of state to sell him, bigamy, inciting slaves to rebel, circulating seditious literature among slaves, accessory to murder, robbery, burglary, arson, or mayhem and others. However, North Carolina did not have a state penitentiary and many said suitable alternatives could be found to capital punishment.

The first reforms of the death penalty occurred between 1776 and 1800. Thomas Jefferson and four others, authorized to undertake a complete revision of Virginia’s laws, proposed a law that recommended the death penalty for only treason and murder. After a stormy debate, the legislature defeated the bill by one vote.

In the US, it was observed that trying to abolish capital punishment state-by-state proved difficult. So death penalty abolitionists turned much of their efforts to the courts. They finally succeeded on June 29, 1972 in the case involving Furman v. Georgia. In nine separate opinions, but with a majority of 5-4, the US Supreme Court ruled that the way capital punishment laws were written, including discriminatory sentencing guidelines, capital punishment was cruel and unusual and violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. This effectively ended capital punishment in the United States.

But that was not the end of the matter. Advocates of capital punishment began proposing new capital statutes which they believed would end discrimination in capital sentencing, therefore satisfying a majority of the Court. Added to this was the argument that the cost of executions was too expensive for the state. By early 1975, thirty states had again passed death penalty laws and nearly two hundred prisoners were on death row. In Gregg v. Georgia (1976), the Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s newly passed death penalty and said that the death penalty was not always cruel. Death row executions could again begin. Another form of execution was soon found. Oklahoma passed the first death penalty by lethal injection law, based on economics as much as humanitarian reasons. The old electric chair that had not been used in eleven years required expensive repairs. Estimates of over $200,000 were given to build a gas chamber, while lethal injection would cost no more than ten to fifteen dollars per event, which was far cheaper.

African societies and governments have also had their fair share of experiences. In some communities in Nigeria, if a person committed suicide, he would be thrown away into an evil forest. Only recently, the Edo State House of Assembly passed a bill that prescribes the death penalty for kidnappers and mandates the confiscation and demolition of properties used in the commission of kidnapping. The House was convinced that the death penalty would deter kidnappers who demand ransoms from their victims and sometimes kill them. They emphasized that the Governor should sign death warrants for persons sentenced to death and he should do so without leniency. What they did not tell the Governor was whether the convict should be electrocuted, hanged, beaten, boiled, or stoned to death. But perhaps, that is a matter for the courts.

In the 1990s many African countries, including Angola, Djibouti, Mozambique, and Namibia, abolished capital punishment, though most African countries retained it. In South Africa, which formerly had one of the world’s highest execution rates, capital punishment was outlawed in 1995.

In 1971 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that, in order to guarantee the right to life provided for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it was necessary to restrict the number of offences for which the death penalty could be imposed, with a view towards abolishing it altogether.

On Crimes and Punishment, published in English in 1767 by the Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria, whose exposition on abolishing capital punishment was the most influential of the time, had an especially strong impact. He theorized that there was no justification for the taking of life by the state. He said that the death penalty was “a war of a whole nation against a citizen, whose destruction they consider as necessary, or useful to the general good”. His essay conceded that the only time a death penalty was necessary was when one’s death could insure the security of a nation. This of course would be rare and may occur only in cases of absolute anarchy or when a nation was on the verge of losing its liberty. He said that the history of death penalty had not prevented determined men from injuring society and that death was only a “momentary spectacle, and therefore a less efficacious method of deterring others, than the continued example of a man deprived of his liberty”. In other words, don’t kill them; lock them up forever.

There have been a number of popular arguments for and against death penalty, one of which borders on the morality of the act. Supporters of the death penalty believe that those who commit murder, because they have taken the life of another, have forfeited their own right to life. Furthermore, they believe, capital punishment is a just form of retribution, expressing and reinforcing the moral indignation not only of the victim’s relatives but of law-abiding citizens in general. By contrast, some opponents of capital punishment argue that, by legitimizing the act of killing that the law itself seeks to repress, capital punishment is counterproductive in the moral message it conveys. They are of the view that when death penalty is used for lesser crimes, it is immoral because it is disproportionate to the harm done. Simply put, a man cannot be sentenced to death for stealing a cow, for instance, or for kissing another man’s wife! Abolitionists also claim that capital punishment violates the condemned person’s right to life and is fundamentally inhuman and degrading.

Like the Edo State House of Assembly, proponents of capital punishment argue that it has a deterrent effect on violent offenders for whom the threat of imprisonment is not a sufficient restraint. This may be true to some extent because experience has shown that some criminals love going to jail once in a while for reasons best known to them. Such criminals are called ‘jail birds’. Opponents of death penalty, however, point to research that generally has demonstrated that the death penalty is not a more effective deterrent than the alternative sanction of life or long-term imprisonment. Placing a convict in confinement for life is worse than killing the convict.

There are also questions as to whether capital punishment can be administered in a manner consistent with justice and equity. Those who support capital punishment believe that it is possible to fashion laws and procedures that ensure that only those who are really deserving of death are executed. By contrast, opponents maintain that the historical application of capital punishment shows that any attempt to single out certain kinds of crime as deserving of death will inevitably be discriminatory. Simply put, they argue that crime is crime. Why prescribe death penalty in one breath for a poor kidnapper who, out of desperation, kidnaps someone and demands for ransom without the intention of killing his victim, and in another breath, free a corrupt official found to have embezzled billions at the expense of the masses? If a man decides to ‘snatch’ his neighbour’s wife, and another man decides to ‘kidnap’ the wife, what difference does it make? Both men are wife snatchers and should be subjected to the same penalty. At any rate, there is also the risk that some people might be executed for crimes they did not commit.

In conclusion, it is clear that the debate on the efficacy or otherwise of capital punishment would continue far into the future. As for kidnappers, they are already aware that their days are numbered. What is clear for now is that mankind must continue to strive to build a crime-free society by upholding the principles of justice and equity for all.

*Anthony-Spinks is of the Delta State Public Procurement Commission. He writes from Asaba.