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Hang the death penalty, miscarriages of justice a fact of life: CRM
View(s):The Civil Rights Movement (CRM) has opposed the resumption of judicial hangings and said the State has an obligation to calmly weigh the pros and cons of such an important issue.
The CRM, in a statement, stressed the irreversible nature of the death penalty, and the danger of executing the innocent.
“The integrity and reliability of the police investigation is crucial, for it is here that the evidence emerges on which a person may be convicted. This is why no system of last-stage review by distinguished judges is a safeguard.
Can we say that our investigative, law enforcement, legal and judicial system is such that there is no real possibility of innocent people being convicted, and scapegoats being hanged to satisfy public opinion? ,” the CRM said.
It added that, there is special danger in gruesome “high profile” cases where there is public outrage, and consequent pressure on the police for quick arrests, adding that, the poor and the disadvantaged are the most likely victims of miscarriages of justice.
The CRM said it recognizes the cruel nature of many murders and appalling suffering of the victim’s relatives, but to end a particular individual’s life at a particular place, date and time, as a deliberate and predetermined act of the State, is in turn, extreme cruelty.”
“Murders should be categorised, with varying minimum sentences. A parole system should review remissions”
“A procedure set up in the UK in 1997, to investigate alleged miscarriages of justice had, by end July 2009, resulted in 280 convictions being quashed.
In some instances the accused had been hanged. Others would have been hanged if not for the abolition of the death penalty,” said CRM Secretary Suriya Wickremasinghe.