Ngomakurira: Death Sentence

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Prison is, by definition, a place where people are held. Their freedom is taken away.
Originally it was a way of preventing someone from harming others without actually killing him or her. Gradually prevention moved to punishment and retribution was added to the reasons for seizing someone by force.
But now in many countries there is a third aim – rehabilitation: the desire to help a person reenter normal life with a changed outlook. Great efforts are made to accompany a person in prison with counseling, spiritual care and skills training. We can be thankful that society, at least in its better moments, has moved on to such a noble desire.
But rehabilitation requires resources – human and financial – and Zimbabwe does not spend its money on such services, though the word ‘service’ does appear: ours is officially the ‘Zimbabwe Prison Service.’ That’s a start.
But how does the death sentence fit in to ‘rehabilitation?’ Is it an admission that we have failed on earth and we leave it to heaven to do the rehabilitating? One of the reasons why the death penalty is so distasteful to many societies today is that we sense we have no right to take away the life of another – no matter what the crime.
We may be able to prove in court that this person did this thing but even then there can be room for doubt. In the UK in the 1980s there were unsound convictions for the so-called Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four. There was pressure on state institutions at the time to be seen to be doing something about the IRA ‘terrorists.’ After exhaustive and exhausting campaigns the prisoners were released and their sentences were quashed.
But even if convictions are sound can we really know the motives of a criminal? During the time reviewed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa 2 500 people were hanged; 95% were black and 100% of those who condemned them were white. Is it likely that the judges really understood the motives of those they condemned? One might argue that was an unjust state.
Where then is there a just state? Texas? One of the attractions writers work on in murder stories is how they ‘help us see what we don’t understand.’ (Colin Burrow in LRB, 22 Sept 05). Burrow brings light relief into the search for motives by having an accused explain, ‘This is why I did it: the peptides which control the level of greed in my body were at dangerously low levels, and owing to abnormalities in my hypothalamus my serotonin levels were low. Now do you understand?’
The key reason why taking another’s life can no longer be justified is our growing understanding of human dignity. A human being is just too mysterious to be tampered with. The ‘wonder of my being’ (Psalm 139) is beyond the comprehension of another person.