On a cool evening in rural Pakistan, the family of 19-year-old Fazeelat Bibi was visited by a group of young men at their home. Fazeelat’s cousin, Sher Muhammad, accompanied by several other male relative’s had come to ask for Fazeelat’s hand in marriage. With Fazeelat’s older sister having already been married into Muhammad’s family and knowing the struggle she had endured because of it, Fazeelat’s family politely declined the proposal. Soon afterward, Sher and his male relatives began incessantly threatening and intimidating Fazeelat and her family.
This went on for several months until one morning when a group of men, the spurned cousin among them, ambushed Fazeelat, her brother and her elderly father while the three were walking home from their graveyard shift at a nearby brick kiln. The men appeared suddenly from behind some bushes and restrained Fazeelat’s father and brother while two others beat and attempted to strangle Fazeelat with a rope. While her brother and father looked on helplessly, all three begged the men to spare the young woman’s life. Within moments, Sher Muhammad produced a large knife. As he brandished the weapon, Muhammad vowed to teach Fazeelat a lesson by ensuring that no man would ever want to marry her again. And with that, he proceeded to slice off Fazeelat’s nose and a portion of her ear.
The authorities managed to apprehend the men involved, and just last week, a Lahore court operating under of Sharia Law ordered that the men receive the same punishment they inflicted on their victim. In other words, in addition to serving a life sentence in prison and paying fines and compensation amounting to $8300 (USD), each of Fazeelat’s attackers will have his nose and one ear excised.
As someone who is completely unversed in Islamic law, I can’t comment as to whether the ruling is in fact consistent with Sharia. But there seems to be something inherently just about making the criminals suffer the same fate as their victim. On a base, primordial level, it just feels right. It’s as though the court took the sentiments of an angry mob of villagers gathered outside the assailant’s house right after the attack, and summarily doled out a punishment based on the majority opinion of the crowd.
As examples of mob justice go, perhaps there is no better case than that of a young soldier in the Israeli Occupation Forces, by the name of Eden Natan-Zada. On August 4th 2005, Eden boarded a public transit bus headed for the predominately Arab-Israeli town of Shfar’am. Though he had recently gone AWOL from the occupation forces, he was wearing his full military uniform and carrying his army-issued M-16 rifle. When the bus pulled into town, Eden got up and walked toward the door as though he was about to get off. But when he reached the front of the bus, he turned and shot the unsuspecting bus driver and then opened fire on the passengers. When he attempted to reload his weapon, he was quickly restrained and disarmed by onlookers who had gathered outside the bus. When the shooting stopped, Eden had killed four people and wounded twenty-two. All of the dead were Arab citizens of Israel.
What happened after the massacre would become a source of major controversy and would deepen Israel’s entrenched ethnic fissures. With the police on the scene, and the suspect sitting on the ground in handcuffs, the angry mob overpowered the officers and beat Eden to death. While most Israeli Jews denounced the shooting as an act of terrorism, even the more liberal among them called for the mob to be prosecuted for murder. By contrast, Arab-Israeli leaders lobbied the government to refrain from investigating Eden’s killing, essentially claiming that the act was justified by the reprehensible crime that preceded it.
Personally I find it difficult to argue against either side. Though I’m a staunch opponent of capital punishment - or as I like to call it, “state-sanctioned murder” – I do believe that some people deserve to die. Similarly, like most people in the West, I’m opposed to mutilation as a form of judicial punishment, yet I don’t dispute that some crimes are so horrendous that, on a moral level, they warrant maiming by the most primitive and excruciating means available. But every single industrialized, democratic nation on earth has determined after centuries of legal and ethical introspection that execution and maiming are not acceptable forms of punishment. And I agree with them.
There are many reasons to take this position. As trite as it may sound, I truly believe that punishments that are cruel and unusual in nature ultimately erode the moral fabric of a society. But more importantly than that, is the fact that these punishments are irreversible and they will inevitably be exacted upon innocent people. It is universally recognized that for any state to be considered a true democracy, it must afford it’s citizens the right to due process. It is also my personal view that due process means that one should have the right to challenge their conviction at any time should new evidence come to light. And on this test state-inflicted amputation and murder are no better than mob lynching, because once the punishment is carried out, all potential future appeals are rendered void.
In fact, these state-sanctioned versions of mob justice are often much worse than lynching for two reasons. First, the fact that someone must wait for periods that can last decades, all the while knowing when and how the end will come, is tantamount to psychic torture. Secondly, the long waiting periods on death row, which are unavoidable if one hopes to minimize the number of false executions, means that sometimes, the man or woman being executed is no longer the same person that was convicted decades earlier.
In the end, the men believed to be responsible for Eden Natan-Zada’s death were indicted and charged with attempted murder and I believe this was the right decision. Still, had I been in their shoes, I don’t know that I would have acted any differently.
With regards to punishment on innocent people, I think if the percentage is acceptably low, then it's alright. It can cost the government a lot of money to detain and correct criminals. I'd prefer a responsible institution to dole out justice, but if it doesn't exist, I'll settle for mob violence and vigilantism.
Studies have shown that it costs states more to execute someone than life imprisonment, actually. Plus, do you really want to subject even just one person to the ultimate punishment? If an innocent person is wrongly imprisoned, he or she can at least be freed and given restitution. Capital punishment is 100% irreversible, and assAlexsput it, tantamount to state-sanctioned murder.
CP costs more in USA because USA makes it a lengthy and expensive process. But it could be a totally different story in another country.
In China, a large percentage of organ transplants come from executed prisoners. So the country runs a lucrative organ transplant business, the government has a means to curtail organ trafficking (a big problem in china), and the death of one prisoner saves the lives of several ill-patients. These benefits make CP attractive.
For me, I don't feel strongly about the x% of innocent who die provided the percentage is low. I also don't feel so bad about state-sanctioned murder. I'm not looking for a perfect system, just an adequate one.
What?! I definitely feel strongly about innocent people getting railroaded and executed by the state, especially given that marginalized community members will be overrepresented in those innocents. I would much rather a guilty man go free than risk an innocent man going to jail.
As for the organ donor/prison industrial complex thing, I think that's super troubling. That creates a huge incentive to find people guilty and sentence them to death and somehow feel good about it at the end of the day. If a society is determined to have capital punishment, that shit SHOULD take a long time since you're killing a human being!
hey aman, I'm the other way around. I'd rather the innocent person die by mistake than intentionally letting the guilty man go. It's a cost/risk I'm willing to pay, even if it were my own family member or myself. I probably don't place the same value on life as most people. Statistics matter more to me, so I prefer to let numbers answer the question.
I like how when systems go wrong, we fix things with bloody revolutions. It's humanity's natural feedback system. Let China lead the world in executions per capita. (The recent execution in China of a drug smuggler followed a trial that lasted half an hour. ) When people are fed up, we'll hear entertaining stories in the media.
And of course, if I had billions of dollars to spend on proper judicial processes, I would (in which case, CP becomes obsolete). If I don't, well then, some people may die by mistake. Life is only worth as much as you're able to pay.
So they deliberated for half an hour, then killed him and harvested his organs?! That is not cool, man... In fact, it's a little fascist. I would not want to be part of a society that did not value me as an individual.
I mean I'm definitely a socialist in the sense that I believe we all need to sacrifice and work together to build a stable society. But China is never going to develop as a country unless that 'ant colony' mentality changes. Why would any citizen give a shit about a country that doesn't protect them when they need help? I know I wouldn't
By the way I just read in the Guardian that the 'drug smuggler' they executed after half an hour was a mentally ill guy from Briton... How can that kind of thing be sanctioned by a civilized society?
I agree 30 minute deliberation over a life is a bit extreme. I think about all the corruption that's happening in China, the export of tainted toys, the milk scandal, and maybe the card board meat buns....this is a country that's growing faster than it can handle, and as a result, many unscrupulous people are exploiting the opportunity.
With the over abundance of corrupt businessmen and criminals, maybe it's just too costly to give everyone a fair trial. Extreme time calls for extreme measures. For every 50 CEO of milk companies that poison thousands of babies, there might be 1 innocent individual. Maybe you should just take the chance and kill all 51 of them in less than a few hours? (assuming the ratio i've stated is accurate)
Corruption is a big problem in chinese businesses and in the government. Chinese policies are evolving, but i don't see death penalty leaving until the country's growth settles down.
And maybe when a country has 1.3 billion people, the death of a few individuals just don't seem that important
I guess China's attitudes toward life and death have always been a bit blase (that whole Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution thing for example).
But going back to the issue of whether or not it's right for the state to execute someone I think it's a sign of enlightenment when a country decides to abolish its death penalty in favour of life imprisonment. It's easy to fall victim to mass hysteria especially when the crime and the criminal are so horrific, but in the end it won't bring the victim back, won't see a real drop in crime, and pretty much amounts to murder.
I am 100% percent against capital punishment, one innocent life taken is one too many but more so on the premise of the unequal and bias justice system. As a society we like to think that justice is blind and fair but the reality is that the justice system is biased and replicates institutionalism racism through its decisions.
In the United States, a country that touts its democracy, freedom and equality a black man is more likely to be found guilty for killing a white man, than is a white man for killing a black man. And yes I agree STATISTICS do matter. Amnesty International states that more than 700 people have been executed in the USA since 1977. In 80% of these cases the crime involved a white victim, even though blacks and whites are the victim of murder in almost equal numbers. The United Nations has also been alarmed by the “disturbing correlation” between the race of the victim and defendant in capital sentencing in the US, the racial bias exists in the justice system plain and simple
Exactly. And reducing the length of the judicial process further eliminates the chances of this bias getting weeded out...
Unfortunately, when you take all the different facets of governing a country into consideration, how and why they came to be, the constraints leaders work with, ....the ideal solution is practically impossible. We've been quoting stats for US, a first world country, which much of the world is not.
Is that an excuse for why things aren' perfect? Nope. But every time I think about contemporary issues, I ask, "Ok, what policy X must a country sacrifice to get policy Y?" Because compromises are inevitable, I'm reluctant to feel strongly about any given policy or political ideology unless I'm familiar with the details to implement it, how long it will take, and what it will cost me.
I can't judge the way other countries treat their criminals because I don't know the whole story...the cultural constraints, economic constraints, political constraints etc... That translates to somethig like, "What will happen to China if it stops issuing death sentences and gives everyone a thorough impartial trial?" I have absolutely no idea how such a policy will effect anything else in the country.
There's definitely a difference between the actions of the people who killed Natan-Zada and the legal system that's responsible for determining their fate. I'm sure they felt their actions were justified seeing four of their bretheren murdered before them, and I can't say I fault them for what they did either. But the law has to be blind otherwise its efficacy in meting out justice will erode.