1793: Louis XVI is prepared for the guillotine
Ten
arguments against the capital punishment
By Cacildo Marques - Sao Paulo
' 1*
Mistake. In Brazil, Emperor Don Peter II decided no more to sign
death sentence after the “judicial mistake“ of the Baptista
Coqueiro case, which worked like the last straw. Many sentences were
turning out to be then mistaken, but that case had an unusual
repercussion, which led to the Petrine moratorium. It came next the
first constitution of the republican era, which legalized the
decision of the monarch. In the USA, the Human Rights Watch values
that half of the carried out death sentences contains judicial
mistakes.
' 2*
Schizophrenia. Social messed up, who are the main candidates for a
corridor of the capital punishment, commit crimes in many cases
because of being victims of "schizophrenia". When this is
clearly identified, the sentence uses to be commuted on behalf of
psychiatric nosocomial treatment, but the proportion of the sentenced
ones effectively led to the death because of carrying mental problems
is not small at all.
' 3*
Bias. The “procedural bias” feed by social, provincial and
epidermal prejudices is the principal motive for the use of two
pounds and two measures. It is not a novelty for any child the
preference by the more weighed punishment against black, poor and
outsider. If there is little possibility of fair judgement, the
principle of leading the doubt to benefit the guilty needs to lead to
the abolition of extreme penalties.
' 4*
Civilization. One of the criteria so that a country of Europe joins
the European Union is the abolition of the death penalty. Also the
South America extinguished this type of penalty of his codes. The USA
abolished completely the penalty in 1974, but most of the member
States retook the device, in apparently renewed bases, which cannot
be interpreted like correction, but only like insistence in the
institutions of the past, or resistance in adopting a new step of the
"civilization".
' 5*
Inutility. Recognizably, the penalty does not attend to the principal
objective of the institution of the judicial punishment, which is the
dissuasion. Unless a society of very reduced population is being
referred to, with low capacity of demographic replacement, applying
the death penalty on criminals does not inhibit, does not reduce the
appearance of new delinquents. It does not serve to educate, serving,
with bigger chance, to the opposite purpose. So, the case has been of
"teleological inutility".
' 6*
Confusion. The "statistical confusion" is responsible of
deceiving many persons in the defense of the death penalty. Inquiries
do not separate preference for death penalty of preference for mob
justice. The least informed persons, prefer this second method, which
would not be approved in any current jurisprudential system. If it
was possible to release the persons of the information asymmetry,
only those persons who were finding for this other reasons, different
of that what the mistaken mass imagines, what is to clean the city of
the criminals' presence, via mob justice, would defend the death
penalty. The limit situation, which the codes have to admit in all of
the countries, is that of the death in self-defense of the life. The
whole rest is a romantic wish.
' 7* Weakness. Resolving problems eliminating the similar individual is
"delinquent weakness", of the criminal's worst type. He did
not do historical, legal or psychological studies to adopt this way
of acting. The resource is only a result of his mental deformity. If
the slaughter as solution of problem is first of all a resource of
the murderer, this should be the first reason to lead the persons to
question the method.
' 8*
Preference. In the countries in which the death penalty was
abolished, inquiries in the prisons show that most of the sentenced
ones are favorable to the penalty, and, more than this, they show
that the preference for capital punishment among convicts is bigger
than among the free citizens. The delinquents support the capital
punishment not alone because they think that to kill somebody else is
a good solution, but because they think that it is a good solution
that others kill them. In the corridor of the death almost all of
them shudder and ask for clemency, but when they enter the world of
the crime they support the death of two sides, of him himself and of
other. So, applying the death penalty means very often to supply a
criminal with the euthanasia that he wants, satisfying a "morbid
preference", because the suicide would mean to deal with the own
fault and he has not courage for doing this. For him, it is better
different than another kills him and he could die imagining that the
fault is of this other.
' 9*
Cruelty. When the Supreme Court imposed on President Richard Nixon
the abolition of the death penalty in the USA in 1974, it did this
under the argumentation of that the forms of application of the
penalty in the country were wrapping aspects of "cruelty",
being the electric chair an emblem of this perception. Nixon signed
the measure, but, like defender of the capital punishment, he
maintained the possibility open of that the States can restore the
rule, if they were developing methods that did not come to be
classified how cruel. It came then the era of the lethal injection,
an apparently painless method. Once the not algebraic language shuts
in contradiction (Tarski), it is not clear if the cruelty is to
withdraw the life or to provoke the pain. If the idea was only to
obstruct the torture, how will it guarantee that to lead the prisoner
to the expectation of the provoked death, and with marked hour, does
not represent a form of psychological torture as oppressive as for
that of the physical torture? When killing beef cattle, the person
takes care of doing so that the animal does not realize the imminence
of the death, because the unloading of adrenalin would spoil the
meat. It would be the case of not showing the needle of injection nor
to inform the date to the sentenced one, for an improvement in the
methods of the absolutist decisions.
' 10*
Irreversibility. In any type of sentence, except the death penalty,
the citizen can be compensated, be after discovery of mistake, be
after change in the law. In the death penalty, the "irreversibility"
should lead the legislator to call for him himself the responsibility
of the meaning of the absolute act. A great politician of Brazil,
Roberto de Oliveira Campos, was ever claiming the recognition of
being the most liberal of the politicians of the country and also of
being the one who was defending the return of the death penalty with
the best arguments. Now, he was considering himself a
liberal-conservative because he was demanding that the State was
removed of the life of the citizen, in everything what this was
possible. And he died defending the death penalty, without realizing
that this is the supreme and irreversible interference of the State
on the life of the citizen. Thinking in opposite way, the Nobel Prize
Jose Saramago had a great merit in the life, which was this of
"forcing" the moratorium of the penalty in Cuba, when, in
2006, after the execution of three smugglers he broke with the
regime, declaring: "Up to here I arrived."
JAN*2015
