Zimbabwe’s Parliament is currently going through the process of public hearings on the Death Penalty bill.
The death penalty is the killing of a person as punishment for a crime. It is sometimes called ‘capital punishment’.
Most people think that the death penalty is no longer part of Zimbabwe’s correctional system.
Zimbabwe carried out its last execution in 2005 but death sentences have continued to be imposed.
This brings the question, how effective is this form of punishment? Is it meant to deter people or its torture? What happens to the occupants of “Death Row”?
Dozens of convicted men are languishing on ‘Death Row’ unsure when they will meet their maker as the country has no executor. It is reported that there are at present at least 63 people on death row nationwide.
In 2016 it was reported that one man had been on ‘Death Row’ for over 24 years. This amounts to cruel and inhuman treatment or punishment prohibited by section 53 of the Constitution’
The death penalty is the most extreme form of punishment that a convicted man (emphasis is made on convicted man as it is only male that can be sentenced to death).
Its execution is final and irrevocable. It puts an end to all personal rights including the right to life which are entitled to a person by the Constitution. In the ordinary meaning of the words, the death sentence is undoubtedly a cruel and inhumane form of punishment.
It is also an inhuman form of punishment for it “……involves, by its very nature, a denial of the executed person’s humanity’ this was emphasised in the case of Furman v Georgia, 408 U.S. 238,290 (1972).
It is dehumanizing in the sense that a convict will be subjected to inhumane treatment and reduced to an animal or a thing that has to be completely eliminated from the society.
The limitation to the right to life is discriminatory as it only applies to men and women are excluded.
Section 48(2d) of the Zimbabwean Constitution as read in pari materia with section 56 which provides for equality and non- discrimination shows that the imposition of the death penalty is discriminatory against men.
In the case of Furman v Georgia (supra) it was held by Douglas J that, “A penalty…..should be considered ‘unusually’ imposed if it is administered arbitrarily or discriminatingly’’.
For the purposes of fairness and equality before the law both men and women must be subjected to the same sentence regarding that the crime may have been committed under the same circumstances.
Therefore applying the view of Douglas J, the death penalty in Zimbabwe is unusually imposed as it is discriminatory.
The death penalty is a peculiar penalty as other sentences preserve rights whilst the executed person loses the right to have rights thus, if a penalty cannot be practiced consistently it must not be administered at all.
The death penalty is an affront to human dignity. It constitutes cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment and in contrary to the right to life. The death penalty has no established deterrent effect and it makes judicial errors irreversible.
There is a risk of mistakenly sentencing an innocent party to death and this is irreversible if the person has been put to death. In Zimbabwe errors have certainly occurred in death sentence cases. No justice system can be perfect and Zimbabwean judges are just likely to make mistakes.
If judges make mistakes in ordinary criminal trials and send innocent people to prison, the prisoners can be released and compensated. But if an innocent party is sentenced to death and hanged, there is no remedy, the injustice cannot be put right.
In conclusion the death penalty should be scrapped off based on the following-
- It is a relic of colonialism.
- There is no moral or practical justification for retaining the death penalty in Zimbabwe- it is dehumanizing.
- It is against customary practice in Zimbabwe.
- It is imposed arbitrarily and is discriminatory against men.
- It has not been shown to deter crime.
- If innocent people are wrongly convicted and hanged, the mistake is irreversible.
