Zimbabwe to abolish death sentence

Dear editor,

This is a step in the right direction. This issue of abolishing death penalty is a bone of contention in most jurisdictions. Some jurisdictions which pursue Sharia law, will not even have time to debate on this issue. While on those countries that have embraced the concept/law of human rights have abolished it (eg UK). But not all of them have abolished it. For example, the USA which pride itself of being the custodian of the human rights laws.

Thus because this issue is very subjective. Law is meant to prohibit people from engaging in crime and upon being found guilty, that person is sentenced to prison in order to rehabilitate them.

So, the fact that the aim of punishing a person found guilty and send them to jail, is to rehabilitate them, conflicts with the death penalty. You cannot rehabilitate and then kill a rehabilitated person, unless if the courts would sentence that individual to death penalty and carry out the execution immediately, That could be somewhat fair better for those people.

However, that could also result in many innocent people being wrongly hanged for crimes which they did not commit. So, a person is given a chance to appeal that sentence or appeal on grounds that there was an error of law. In most cases the investigators would have omitted to do something important which might help exculpate the accused.
For example, failure to carry out DNA or evidence might be tainted.Upon that the prosecution may rely on circumstantial evidence.

So, this may lead to innocent people to be hanged for crimes which they would not have committed. So, the justice department allows further investigations to be carried out if the accused did not plead guilty.

This can be a protracted process so much that others can spend twenty years behind bars. Some end up being pardoned, while the unfortunate ones get hanged. So, in my opinion, there should be a threshold that involves law with exceptions. For example, those that have killed people like Jindu who killed many people, must be hanged, whilst those where there is a chance to be rehabilitated be spared from the death penalty. In any case it can depend on the facts of the case. Having mentioned this, my opinion is that in Asia they must desist from hanging people for crimes that do not deserve. For example, they hang a person for being found in possession of drugs or for fraud.This is unconscionable to those people.

A fraudster can be rehabilitated. Their sentencing of people is not proportional with crimes people would have committed. The courts are the only tools of justice that have the jurisdiction to punish people who would have commited crimes. As such must impose sentences that are not disproportional to a crime committed. My opinion without any prejudice.

libertyatliberty at gmail dot com.