Until recently, the world’s largest population on death row was in Pakistan. China has since surpassed us in this category, but we continue to follow second in line, neck to neck with the USA. Around six thousand people are waiting to be executed in Pakistan, which raises the question: who are these people? Why are they being executed in the first place? Amnesty International released a Death Sentences and Executions Report in 2015, and thus ranked us as the third most prolific executioners in the world. Together, Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia account for ninety percent of all recorded executions, globally. This is excluding China’s dire figures, which are a state secret alone. At the face of it, it would appear that Pakistan is hanging innocent people, and far too many of them. Such an injustice is not only exclusive to our nation, however, it is disproportionate in the populace it is targeting. Why do we still rely on death sentences to carry out our versions of ‘justice’? And what does our judiciary have to say about this?
The Irreversible Nature of Capital Punishment
There is no financial compensation or legal charge that can bring back the dead, which is where the heaviness of such a fate comes into mind. The loved ones of the wrongfully convicted lose their standing in society, and most times their primary breadwinner as a consequence of this ineptitude. “Capital punishment” as a phrase comes from the Latin term for ‘head’. The first formal placing of this take in the legal system came in 1860, when the Governor-General of the Indian Council enacted the Indian Penal Code. This legislation was drafted by a group of British lawmakers who had standing in the Law Commission and did not integrate the traditional nature of the Indian legal system into its enactment. Even English law did not adhere to uniformity at the time, and hence this was a lazy attempt to standardize it. Pakistan continues to follow this legislation in its own Penal Code, with the exception of a few provisions, especially after recent events.
Practicing the Death Sentence: What Do the Courts Say?
In 2014, following a brutal attack on school children in Peshawar, the country lifted its six year de facto moratorium on the use of capital punishment by the judiciary. This became a necessity for all capital cases the following year. The government was convinced with this decision because they believed that this was the only way to deal with the plague of terrorism within the country. When this ban was lifted, the change in policy was called into question. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, 389 death row convicts have been hanged through mid-2016. Out of these, only 49 were tried by the Anti-Terrorism Courts (ATCs) and only 12 were seen by military courts. Based on this information, it would appear that only around 10 percent of these executions were even associated with terrorism. Seventy three percent of them were ordinary murders. The government’s assertion about the lifting of their ban begins to lose ground when we assess it from these statistics.
It has become common for lower courts to rely on unsubstantial evidence and shoddy data. Judges continue to allow unreliable eyewitnesses, thus putting testimonials into question. This includes star witnesses with personal biases to an alleged crime, making the case even more problematic. In addition to this, the Supreme Court continues to disregard mental illnesses in suspects, despite a provision that forbids criminal punishment of a person with limited mental capacities in the Penal Code. In 2016 during the Imdad Ali murder case, it was held that schizophrenia was not a mental illness, and such individuals were sent to their deaths by the law.
Previous Rulings and Extenuating Circumstances
In practice, we have seen how the Supreme Court does not overrule decisions presented by trial courts. For example, in 1973 judgment, Justice Hamoodur Rahman said, “As an ultimate Court, we must give due weight and consideration to the opinions of the courts below, and normally we should not interfere with their findings where we are satisfied that they are reasonable and were not arrived at by the disregard of any accepted principle regarding the appreciation of evidence.” Furthermore, the apex court only interferes with previous rulings if there is ‘some serious defect in the process by which the finding has been arrived at’. Hence, we can note that almost seventy right percent of cases reviewed by the highest court need to be reviewed and corrected in their decisions, either by an acquittal or further assessment.
Besides this, juveniles and the disabled continue to be executed in Pakistan, despite their extenuating circumstances. Shafqat Hussain is a prime example. He was allegedly sentenced to death at the age of fourteen, and was hung in 2015. Another juvenile, Aftab Bahadur, met a similar fate the same year despite pleas from human rights groups regarding the issue of his age. Amnesty International has reported that five men who were underage when they committed a crime were executed in 2015 alone. Therefore, it has become extremely important that the country respects its commitment to human rights and rethinks its policies.
Serving Justice
Ultimately, we have to know what serving justice really looks like. Seeking and demanding change, both in law and its application, is a major part of positive an effective change. The pursuit of this entails that the interests of a larger population is being served. The notion of capital punishment in itself borderlines on the inhumane, and serves the interest of a lucky few with deep pockets and well connected families. The loss of even one innocent life is far too severe, and a reevaluation of the justice system can boil down the changes that need to be made in order to correct these wrongs.
