Saving Death Row Felons The Moral, Legal Implications

Life is full of choices. Some opt for a  decent living, slave-through early education through the Ivory Tower, secure a source of livelihood and create a viable foundation for future of selves and dependants, others prefer the fast lane-a life which depends on  others’ earnings to survive. They are common criminals, among them are the murderers, the paid assassins and the kidnappers to whom human life is nothing but a means to their enrichment.

This trend is not peculiar to Nigeria nor the African continent. In fact, every society suffers the dastardly acts and brazen inhumanity of criminals. What differs however, are the various peoples’ solutions towards checking the menace. It is for the same reasons, that countries of the world designed prisons for the solitary confinement of less dangerous felons, while slamming death penalty on those who, among other felonies, willfully take others’ lives, not in self defence but pre-dedicatedly. 

Here in Nigeria, crimes like armed robbery and murder attract either life imprisonment or capital sentence because of the moral code that anyone who would take another’s life deserves none of his. These are also contained in the nation’s criminal statutes and which for years permitted in the public execution of condemned felons. At some point  in our  national life, a fresh debate was introduced, which toady appears to be gaining more ground. It is that condemned criminals should be spared the death penalty, but be given another opportunity to start a new life.

The proponents of this school enjoy support from Mary Wollstonecrafts, her,  Letters written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark which argued; “Executions, far from being useful examples to survivours, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary  effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify.

Armed with this and in the guise of protecting human rights, many Rights activists now hold the view that no single individual has the right to take another’s life, and that executing a murderer amounts to two wrongs, which hardly makes, one right. It is instead their view that such a criminal, guilty of a capital offence be confined in prison and be fed by the same society against which he waged a brutal war until such a day when, his own life naturally ends as against those of others he brutally and forcefully terminated prematurely.

In pursuit of this strange agenda, in African sense human rights ideologues recently succeeded in convincing the commissioner, Human and people’ Rights Working Group on Death penalty to help persuade Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan never to allow the execution of about 870 already condemned criminals who have been languishing in various prisons for between five and 25 years. Commission’s chairperson Alpini-Guason, just achieved that without resistance.

That action, came on the heels of a resolution by the Nigerian Senate to the effect that all prisoners on death row be made to face the consequences of the choices they made in life, theirs, being an acceptance of the moral law that he who kills by the sword must himself die by it.

All the affected cases are products of sentence of courts of competent jurisdiction,  that took a thorough look at each case, having in mind, Publilius Syrus legal caution in Semiramis, “It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one” a reason why judgments of the kind are subjected to various appeals and up to date, no single one has been pointed to as a mistrial.

The argument has instead been that the life of the murderer is not just as precious as the life he took but even more precious and so should be saved at all cost because taking his life will merely harden hearts of other criminally minded survivors instead of serving as a deterrent to them that might also consider the murderer’s path as of choice.

This line of argument, “reminds me of the man who murdered both is parents, and then, when sentence was about to be pronounced, pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan” as ascribed to Abraham Lincoln in Gross’s Lincoln’s own Stories. How for instance, can a trigger-happy Police Constable willfully kill a final year, student of the University of Port Harcourt at a police check-point and label his victim an armed robber, knowing fully well that the consequence of his action would be death? And when such is pronounced according to law, Rights Advocates insist that the Killer Constable should be spared his own life after that of another.

If human life should be that valueless what guarantees are there that murder, kidnapping and other heinous crimes will ever abate? If the punishment for murder is merely a prison term with a likelihood of regaining freedom at the slightest jail delivery exercise or at every regime change, who says society would ever know peace?

This writer does not share the view that criminals who willfully take others’ lives be spared theirs because of the fact that, “exact justice is commonly more merciful in the long run than pity, for it tends to foster in men those stronger qualities which make them good citizens”, ask James Russel Lowell (Among My Books: Dante).

Besides, Marcus Tillius Cicero in the Pro Milone warned; ‘the greatest incitement to crime is the hope of escaping punishment, which in my view, partly accounts for the now brazen manner in which murders and kidnappings are being carried out. The same may also be responsible for the many unresolved murders.

Those who insist that executions would not serve as a deterrent to others have not said what would. Debatably however, execution of armed robbers in the 70’s and 80’s actually helped to check increase in armed robbery cases especiall when it was decided that such would be carried out in the criminals ome-steads.

Conversely, it is the pampering of condemned criminals on death-row and who are still feeding fat at tax-payers expense that appears to be the real incentive to increased criminality. Or was it not the  Holy Bible that insists, suffer not a witch to live? If, even a witch can suffer capital punishment why not a murderer?

What is even more laughable is the fact that the so-called rights’ groups are not bothered by the fact that the death penalty is a wholesome part of Nigeria’s criminal system and not one about to be introduced, specifically for the sake of the 870 on death row-prisoners some of whom also took lives of others.

My Agony is that a dangerous precedence is gradually playing out, one that would further embolden common criminals into full fledged killers, certain that their lives will be spared upon conviction, and who knows, even gain their freedom should a powerful kith or kin pull the right strings.

But in all these, have we, as a people stopped to think of the multiplier effects of setting free, a murderer? What of the urge for vengeance that could drive victim’s loved ones and family to resort to jungle justice? At that time, would such action attract the death penalty? If not, what will society be like?

But why should condemned criminals live on death-row for 25 years, on tax-payers’ funds? Why is it difficult for state governors to summon the necessary legal, moral and political will to discharge their duties without affection or ill-will as they swore to do? What then is their failure to sign execution orders years after courts of competent jurisdiction have done their duties, amount to.

If the governors had done their part would we have as many as 870 condemned felons testing the political will of the Nigerian leadership and her laws?

If the various state governors had done their part, it would not have required a Senate resolution to do the right thing at the right time, the failure of which has now been capitalized upon by the rights activists to truncate positive attempts to hold murderers, armed robbers, and hired killers accountable and make the accountable and make them to face the consequences of their choices.

That is why I agree with the National Economic Council which last week directed all state governors to sign urgently, the various execution orders for triumph of law over sentiments.

Fortunately, the condemned death-row felons, over whom all the debates are today raging, had a choice either to be good citizens and live or kill others and die in the process. Letting them live will be to have them eat their cake and still have it. These will grant them two of two choices instead of the one allowed.