Capital Punishment

This morning Australia woke to the news that two of its citizens, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukamaran had been executed by firing squad in Indonesia, along with five other men from Nigeria and Brazil, and one Indonesian national.

The public outcry in the protracted lead up to the executions, and that we will now see intensify today, has been entirely justified. Capital punishment should have no part in our modern world. It is barbaric. It is largely ineffective in its supposed main aim of preventing crime. It also denies what should be the other main aim of a criminal justice system: to rehabilitate criminals so that they can participate in society. It has been ten years since the Bali Nine were arrested for drug smuggling. In the intervening time, there have been credible reports that Chan and Sukamaran had reformed themselves: they accepted their sentences, they showed remorse for their crimes, they intended to make positive contributions to society.

Unfortunately, Indonesia is not the only country to cling on to the anachronistic practice of capital punishment. In fact, some states of America (supposedly the leader of the free, modern world) routinely execute prisoners with extreme criminal records.

Texas recently executed two men with intellectual disabilities. One of them, Robert Ladd, was killed by lethal injection at the age of 57. Not long after serving a 40 year jail sentence for murdering a woman and her children, he killed again. Ladd had been found to have “mental retardation” at the age of 13 and has consistently been diagnosed with significant intellectual deficits throughout his life. Clearly, he did not receive the level of support required to live with his disability, even after murdering a woman and child, serving a lengthy jail sentence, and being released back into society. Texas decided it was easier to end his life than deal with his disability.

Ladd’s execution followed that of Georgia man Warren Hill, also convicted of murder and also with multiple diagnoses of significant intellectual disability.

These executions occurred despite the US Supreme Court ruling that executions of mentally impaired prisoners contravene the eighth amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Although both men clearly had significant deficits in mental functioning, they did not meet the state’s unusual and outdated classification of “mental retardation”.

Australia’s inevitable outrage at the continuing practice of capital punishment in Indonesia is justified. But the continuing practice of executing intellectually disabled criminals in the United States should meet the same reaction. One could argue that Chan and Sukumaran were only convicted of drug offences, not murder, but this ignores the very real impacts that the supply of hard drugs, such as heroin, has on individuals. Drugs ruin and, in some cases, end lives. Compare their crime, which was done with a normal adult intellectual capacity and moral judgment with the murders by two men who had the minds of children, who lacked the basic adult abilities of empathy, impulse control, and understanding the consequences of one’s actions. To what extent can such men really be considered responsible for their actions, even such extreme and destructive actions? Is such crime really any different from crimes that we excuse or explain as a function of mental health disorders such as schizophrenia?

Australia’s outrage is predictable and understandable because two of the men executed this morning were Australian citizens. Should criminal justice responses really depend on a person’s citizenship? Should the execution of two Australians really be any more significant to us than those of the other six men? A life is a life, regardless of one’s birthplace or citizenship. Suppose that we were well informed that the other six men had also reformed to the extent that Chan and Sukumaran had. Would our sympathies extend to their families also, and our outrage to their unjust deaths?

In the wake of the two executions this morning, Australia has already announced that its ambassador to Indonesia has been withdrawn and that ministerial contacts will be suspended for an indefinite period. These are serious diplomatic actions that speak of dissatisfaction with how Indonesia dealt with this matter. If Chan and Sukumaran had been spared but the others still executed, would we, as a nation, still have spoken against Indonesia’s practice of capital punishment? And what of executions elsewhere in the world? Will we speak up for intellectually disabled prisoners being executed in the United States, even though they are not Austrailans? What action might our government make in response to such atrocities?

Thankfully, this whole sad ordeal has reignited this debate. Many are starting to question the practice of capital punishment beyond the brutal shootings of Australian men on foreign soil.