The Implacable Ritual

Reprieve Film Night - 23 November

2010-10-21T03:10:00.000-07:00

It is five years since Australian man Van Nguyen was put to death. Please join us for a special screening of a film about Van, 'Just Punishment', followed by a Q & A with producer Shannon Owen.

Venue: Loop Bar, 23 Meyers Place, Melbourne (near the corner of Bourke and Spring Streets)

Date: Tuesday 23 November, 6:30pm (for a 7:00pm screening)

RSVP: To John at john.riordan@reprieve.org.au by Friday 19 November 2010

Admission is free but voluntary donations will be very much appreciated. Spaces are limited so get in early.

www.reprieve.org.au

Reprieve Talk - Tuesday, 3 August

2010-07-27T22:18:00.000-07:00

Mallesons is hosting a Reprieve panel discussion next week on the death penalty.

Here are the details:

3 lawyers discuss how their encounters with capital punishment influenced their careers and perspectives on the law

Julian McMahon is a Melbourne based barrister who has acted in a number of death penalty cases in the Asia Pacific region including acting for Van Nguyen and the Bali Nine.

Mark Gibson is a Melbourne based barrister who has experience acting for both the defence and the Crown. Mark has worked with indigent defendants facing the death penalty in the US and has represented defendants with the Aboriginal Legal Service in Darwin.

Lucy Adams is a lawyer at PILCH who has previously worked at Clayton Utz and as a volunteer representing those facing execution in Louisiana.

DETAILS:
Tuesday 3 August
5.45 for 6:00

Mallesons Stephen Jaques
Level 50, 600 Bourke Street
(Cnr Bourke & King)
Melbourne

www.reprieve.org.au

Refreshments to be served afterwards
RSVP by Thurs 29 July (for catering purposes) rsvp@reprieve.org.au

Martyrs of a higher truth

2010-05-01T21:22:00.000-07:00

"Van Nguyen's light not extinguished by death" - The Age

A well written article about the impact of two close friends of Van Nguyen. It's coming on to 5 years since Van Nguyen was executed in Singapore on 2 December 2005. I've written about the impact of the death penalty on those who are effected by it personally, and a lot of my feelings on the subject come from talking with these two women. In this article they bravely articulate the extent to which they have been permanently scarred by the horrific experience of having a friend executed, but at the same time the unshakable goodness with which he was imbued before his death.

Re-reading my first essay on the death penalty, which I interviewed Bronwyn for, I compared Van to Albert Camus' "tragic hero" from The Outsider, Meursault. Bronwyn had spoken of the bravery with which he faced his execution and the forgiveness and love that he bore for everyone, especially his murderers.

This almost Christ-like forgiveness is challenging to comprehend but certainly suggests that perhaps not all that arises from capital punishment is anger, hatred and weakness. Indeed, Camus would seem correct in suggesting that those who die beneath our revenge and conceit, like Meursault and Van, are martyrs of a higher truth, “a truth that is greater and superior to man”, and perhaps they are even the “only Christ we deserve”.

In hindsight, and it's a shame I didn't acknowledge this at the time, Meursault died with an existential disregard and apathy for this hypocritical human urge to kill, but also a complete and vitriolic rejection of any religion. Camus recognised this most basic contempt for humanity as an affirmation of the absurdity of capital punishment. I don't think the fact Van and Meursault are completely different in this respect negates my original comparison. Meursault almost demonstrates a sort of forgiveness borne of indifference whereas Van's is born of compassion. Regardless of the source, this forgiveness stands in stark contrast to an execution, an action that is "unrelenting and deliberate" and completely devoid of any understanding and compassion.

Quote of the day:

"But [now] his heart wasn't beating, he wasn't breathing, he felt so cold. It just wasn't right ... and all the world's humanity was lessened because of it."

- Bronwyn Lew

Happy 20th Birthday for the 2nd Optional Protocol

2009-12-15T06:13:00.000-08:00

The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty is a side agreement to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Optional Protocol commits its members to the abolition of the death penalty within their borders.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a statement that she "would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all those States that have abolished the death penalty...While the death penalty remains legal under international law in limited circumstances, there is, as the Optional Protocol notes, a strong suggestion in international law that the total abolition of the death penalty is desirable...I urge those States still employing the death penalty to place a formal moratorium on its use, with the aim of ultimately ratifying the Optional Protocol and abolishing the punishment altogether everywhere."

Quote of the day:

These bloody days have broken my heart.
My lust, my youth did them depart,
And blind desire of estate.
Who hastes to climb seeks to revert.
Of truth, circa Regna tonat. (It thunders through the realms)

- Thomas Wyatt (After witnessing the execution of Anne Boleyn in the Tower of London)

In The News - October

2009-11-04T08:39:00.000-08:00

It's been a wild few months on death row. You've got both sides of the debate chewing heads over the Todd Willingham case (see earlier blog entry), Texas Governor Rick Perry desperately trying to avoid the fallout, Dr. Craig Beyler report receiving a withering amount of praise and criticism, Judge Sharon (Killer) Keller under professional review (see below) and Japan's death row is under serious scrutiny. At home in Australia, there is an anti-death penalty rally in Melbourne, Herald Sun readers call for death penalty to return to Victoria and, finally, a man who escaped the gallows forty years ago when Victoria abolished the death penalty has murdered again.

Willingham - Executed & Innocent?

There's been an interesting twist in the Willingham case as both sides of the debate become even more entrenched. The new chairman who was appointed by Gov. Perry has indefinitely postponed the review of Dr. Beyler's report on the fire forensics used at trial. It seems that the new chairman, John Bradley, a close colleague of Perry and a prominent conservative has been assigned to either shut down the review or make a finding that is favourable to the Governor. Bradley's words, as pointed out in the blog entry, even wreek of foul intention, "It is my experience that leadership is best applied to moving forward rather than looking back". Does this imply that he is planning to ignore the Willingham case and look only to the future of reforming archaic fire science? It's hard to say for sure but if this review doesn't take place before Gubernatorial election coming up next year in Texas then I think it speaks for itself.

It's tragic that a claim of innocence has been boiled down to pure politics. It reflects terribly on the death penalty in Texas and has done tremendous damage to public confidence. Perry has come out of this little foray looking like a dissembling weasel.

It's also worth mentioning that there has been alot of criticism of Beyler. The fact that he used Willingham's statements to police even though his statement was contradicted by the findings after the fire. There's certainly alot of misinformation flying about from both sides. There are Willingham sympathisers who claim that Beyler's report rejects arson as the cause of the fire. However, the report wasn't able to categorically count out that it was arson, however it was unable to prove that it was arson. As far as a legal standard goes, this is enough to create reasonable doubt.

On appeal after conviction it's not necessary to prove innocence beyond reasonable doubt, merely to show that a reasonable jury, properly instructed, considering the new evidence could not find the defendant guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

Is it possible to find a man guilty of arson without having ironclad proof that the fire was deliberately lit? Perhaps with exceptionally pursuasive circumstantial evidence. In this case, however, all we are looking at is evidence of inconsistent statements by Willingham, witness statements that claim he was acting strangely outside the fire (many of which were later recanted) and a psychologists report that claims he is a sociopath because he listens to Iron Maiden, has their posters on his wall and has violent tattoos.

Satisfactory? Not on your life.

What's going to happen next? It's impossible to say but I'll be sure to update as soon as there has been any kind of developments.

Japan Death Row in Tatters

After Amnesty International released a report stating that death row inmates in Japan were languishing in isolated and inhumane conditions and that they had were suffering from terrible psychological illness due to the stress of their present conditions and the uncertainty of their future. The report also condemned the secrecy surrounding the system which executed 15 inmates last year, the highest in three decades. The report coincided with the appointment of a new justice minister Keiko Chiba, an outspoken death penalty critic and member of the Parliamentary League for the Abolition of the Death Penalty. Without directly stating she would not sign death warrants, it seems quite clear that there will now be an effective halt to executions.

This, however, is no consolation to the 102 left lingering on death row with even more uncertainty as to their fate. Hopefully Chiba can put into action a process for the abolition of the death penalty but seeing as 80% of the population of Japan support it, this would be a hard fight. Perhaps simply removing the veil of secrecy from the system would open the eyes of many Japanese to the injustices that are occuring.

Melbourne Rally Against Death Penalty

On 10 October 2009, the seventh World Day Against the Death Penalty, Melbournians marched against the barbaric practice of state sanctioned killings all around the world. Speaking to the rally was Melbourne lawyer Julian McMahon who worked alongside Lex Lasry in support of Van Nguyen and who is the lawyer for Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, convicted drug traffickers who are on death row in bali. It's great to see Julian still campaigning so stalwartly fighting the good fight. Having assisted Julian on both Van and the Bali 9 cases I know how tirelessly he works and how committed he is to the cause.
I wish I could have been there for the march but I'll just have to wait for lucky number eight!

"Execution is premeditated, ritualised, state-sanctioned violence by brutalised societies. There is no crime no matter how terrible that could not be properly punished by decades in a cell."

Herald Sun Readers: Bring Back DP After Man Escapes Gallows and Murders Again

So the Herald Sun conducted a poll in early October asking whether or not Victoria should bring back the death penalty. To be honest, the issue is moot as the Australian government has an international obligation since ratifying the 2nd Optional Protocol to not only seek the abolition of the death penalty worldwide, but to put in place laws that will block the death penalty from every returning, no matter what government is in power.

The result was no surprise. Almost 80% supported the death penalty being reintroduced, and this can be explained by the context in which the poll was taken.

In 1968 Leigh Robinson was sentenced to death by hanging in Victoria for the stabbing murder of his ex-girlfriend, Valerie Dunn in her home in Chadstone. Upon the abolition of the death penalty in Victoria his sentence was commuted to the 20 year maximum that murder carries. He was then paroled and released only to murder again. Tracey Greenbury was his second victim and he has now been convicted of the crime and sentenced.

This guy is a real piece of work. During his cross examination he called the victim a "silly bitch" and said that he was just trying to help her up some steps when she slipped and his shotgun offloaded into her head accidently. Here's part of his testimony before the court:

"She started to fall and stumble and I went to grab her and all of a sudden, yeah, and that's why I'm standing here... One hell of a friggin' bang … [and I] packed me dacks and turned around and left."

I've said it before. I think that preventing recidivism is one of the most perverse reasons for supporting the death penalty. Killing someone for a perceived future crime they may or may not commit is not only foolishly misguided but also a complete rejection of the principles of the justice system, and that is reformation. Losing complete faith in the human spirit is the first step towards becoming incredibly cruel and unforgiving towards those in society who are most in need of serious help and understanding. We need to work out how the system failed both Robinson and Tracey Greenbury rather than wishing we had just killed him to begin with. As I have said before, this Stalinesque approach of "no man, no problem" is totally inhuman.

Forced Perspective

2009-10-28T08:22:00.000-07:00

It's hard to see the big picture sometimes. For a long time this was just a building that, while at first totally alien, is now comfortingly familiar. In a quiet area in The Hague, nestled between the city centre and the beach, the ICTY is the home of so much more than meets the eye.

The trial of Radovan Karadzic towards which I have been working the past 4 months has finally started. The sense of a massive undertaking was palpable the moment that Judge Kwon asked Prosecutor Alan Tieger to start his opening statement. I have worked on many different elements of this case. Some things are shocking and confronting, for certain, but these occur in small, relatively out of context tasks. Perhaps I find myself working on organising evidence for trial and come across something incredibly graphic. It's easy to compartmentalise and disassociate yourself from what you're seeing. When Mr. Tieger started to summarise clearly and concisely the many different elements and facts of the case that had once been a jumbled mess of information in my head it suddenly became so clear. It's almost like I had the knowledge of the case by not the understanding to put the many pieces together. He told the story of Radovan Karadzic as I knew it but had never heard it. Parts of the story seemed so familiar but I had never put them into context. Yes, Sarajevo was shelled and sniped for 44 months, Srebrenica was taken over and thousands were executed, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and thousands killed during the process. Karadzic stood astride all of these atrocities as the Supreme Commander of the Bosnian Serb forces.

Was this destruction and death just a product of war? No, it was the purpose of the war.

"[He] harnessed the forces of nationalism, hatred and fear to implement his vision of an ethnically separated Bosnia."

It was an amazing opening statement, and it's not over yet (there is still one more day to go). But this isn't what really opened my eyes. This made the facts of the case more clear. Something else made this new clarity that much more real. I suppose months of working on esoteric elements of trial preparation can very quickly skew your perspective of exactly what you are working towards. Yesterday things were very clearly brought into focus.

It's not so much the fact that the building was surrounded by media. It's not the fact that it appears on every major news syndicate. All of these things are relatively straight forward and to be expected. This is a massive trial that spans over years of violent history in Europe, specifically the Balkans. No, it's the presence of the victims.

The ICTY is unique international court in the sense that it is completely divorced from its context. The crimes were committed in the battle torn Balkans, yet the trial takes place in the placid city of the Hague. Compare this to the ICTR or the SCSL, both which exist, for the most part, in the places where these crimes occured. The purpose behind this are clear. Where the crimes occured is also where you will find the people who were affected. It's important for victims to feel that they are represented, especially if any kind of post war reconciliation is to be achieved. If you leave work from the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania you are surrounded by people who fled Rwanda during the genocide. Everyday you would be mingling in with communities that have been destroyed by the civil war.

The viewing gallery was completely filled up by media and diplomats from various countries. This meant that every employee watched the beginning of the trial streaming live on their computers. Some people even brought their friends into the office to watch it as well. Everyone, no matter what case they were on, was watching Courtroom 1 and the opening statement against Radovan Karadzic. But the difference that I felt most keenly was that of the Srebrenica wives and daughters. They filed through the corridor and in to the conference room just outside my office. There, just like the rest of us, they watched the trial start. To me it was a moment where all the facts came together in a neat package, for victims it was so much more than that, it was a truth that has tortured them for 14 years. And there they all sat, more than 50, all seated in one large room watching the proceedings that had such an incredible personal significance to them. Wives and daughters who had, in some cases, lost most of the men in their family and had been forced to raise the decimated families in an unforgiving warzone. Solemn respect doesn't even begin to qualify the feelings that come from encountering people who have suffered through so much. The few times I would pass them in the hallway was strange at first. They knew everything about this conflict from intimate personal experience but so little about what goes on at the tribunal. To me I know nothing about what these people really went though during the war, but I know exactly how this tribunal operates from day to day. As some of them filed passed our office on their way out of the building, after watching the opening statement, they would peek their heads into the office and with a gentle smile and say thankyou.

Everyone at this tribunal is here to do justice for the people of the former Yugoslavia, but sometimes you need to be reminded, especially when Bosnia feels so far away from the Hague. Sometimes you need to step back from the specific and finicky legal, administrative and procedural issues and realise that this story is a tragically real one for a huge amount of people. Sometimes certain things need to force your perspective towards the most important reason behind these trials, the victims.

Quote of the day:

"Power is the relation of a given person to other persons, in which the more this person expresses opinions, theories and justifications of the collective action the less is his participation in that action."

- War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Innocent and Executed

2009-10-16T03:52:00.000-07:00

With every passing week it is becoming increasingly clear that an innocent man was executed in Texas on 17 Feb, 2004.

The New Yorker published an article in September (It's quite lengthy!) outlining the case in all its excruciating detail. To summarise it briefly, Todd Willingham was charged with the murder of his three children by deliberating setting fire to the family home on 23 Dec, 1991 . The case against him was a mix of witness testimony, psychological examinations and, of course, arson forensics. The witnesses stated that Willingham appeared calm outside the front of his house as it burned down and didn't seem to make any attempt to rescuse his children from the house. The psychologists stated that he was a man with violent tendencies and a disturbed mind due to his graphic tattoos and interest in explicit and violent music. However, the most damning of all the evidence was that of the forensic arsonist. What he explained is all very techinical, but suffice to say he found evidence that fuel had been poured around the childrens bedroom, essentially turning the room into a death trap, while making it easy for Willingham to escape.

He was found guilty and sentenced to die.

Even before Willingham was executed almost all of the witnesses recanted their testimony. Most of them stating that Willingham was indeed extremely distressed and had to be physically restrained by firemen to stop him from reentering the house. The psychologist was completely discredited and turned out to be a close friend of the prosecutor. But the most important element is the forensic evidence. A prominent fire expert reexamined the evidence brought against Willingham at trial and was shocked at just how archaic the methodology was. Dr. Craig Beyler prepared a report (found here). Dr. Beyler found that the methods were similar to that of a "mystic or psychic" and were completely without merit or understanding of fire analysis.

As if all the dysfunctional elements of the Texas justice system were coaelscing into one tragic event, Sharon "Killer" Keller (see below) was the judge presiding in Willingham's final Habeas appeal to the Texas Court of Appeal. She refused the compelling claims of innocence.

This is the kind of morbid holy grail that anti-death penalty supporters have been waiting for.

At the moment Governor Rick Perry has appointed a panel of experts to examine the fire and the scientific methodology used at trial. However there have been further scandals regarding Rick Perry's attempt to cover up the whole issue. Three members, including the chairman, were removed three days before they were meant to review the expert report that refutes the fire being arson. The officials have stated that they were met with representatives of Rick Perry's and were pressured and influenced. It's all very political and hard to pin down with any certainty, but one thing is for sure, and that's the fact that something is seriously out of whack.

Perhaps the saddest element of this entire case is that the truly callous and cruel amongst those who support the death penalty are coming out of the woodwork. It's as if, once sentenced to death, you must be proved innocent beyond reasonable doubt. This simply isn't the case and it is only necessary to present that there was clearly reasonable doubt and that no charge of arson could possibly be upheld. It seems that death penalty supporters are more frustrated than horrified with this present situation. They would rather innocent people weren't executed so that they didn't have to explain it away.

For me, the execution of an innocent man is an incredible tragedy and one that can never be rectified. However, the potential for innocent victims has never played an important role in my opposition to the death penalty. The issue goes far deeper than the fact that the death penalty could execute an innocent person. The death penalty is far too indiscriminate with the pain and suffering it imposes on those caught in its mechanisms. It's an act of intolerable cruelty to the victim's family, the condemned's family, the jurors and the society that witnesses a state sanctioned execution. For as long as we hold on to nothing else but the fear that innocent people will be executed as our founding principles for opposing this barbaric practice, we are tacitly supporting the death penalty in situations where there is no doubt as to a man's guilt.

What is so crucially important about this case is seeing that the state of Texas is forced to pay the price of confronting the truth. I have no doubt that the very foundations of the death penalty will be uprooted if the innocence of Todd Willingham is found to be finally irrefutable. What is it going to take for this conclusion to be reached? Probably alot of politics, dirty fighting and nitpicking, but I have no doubt that in the long run this institution of death in Texas and the U.S. will suffer a mortal wound from which it won't ever recover.

Quote of the day:

"The only statement I want to make is that I'm an innocent man - convicted of a crime I did not commit."
- Cameron Todd Willingham's last words

"Last Suppers" - An Artistic Perspective

2009-09-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

The macabre tradition of allowing a condemned man to choose his last meal is as fascinating as it is bizarre. The idea of one show of mercy or compassion before an act of intolerable cruelty creates a sad and complex dichotomy, but it is one that is employed in nearly every instance where the death penalty is used. It's difficult to pin down any definite reason behind why this tradition still exists, but it is certainly deeply rooted in history. There's no doubt that it is intended as an act of compassion, one that is meant to comfort both the condemned man and to appease the conscience of the executioner. It almost seems that by accepting this act of generosity the condmned man is absolving the executioners by accepting the act of generosity.

An artist by the name of James Reynolds from Kingston University has researched "last supper" requests from men on death row, and photographed them on a standard prison issue tray. He has not stated any political or moral point of view, it is purely for your own interpretation. What do you make of it? Here are my thoughts -

The sentiments that accompany the imagining of ones last moments before being executed, to me, is a sort of foray into an emotional abyss. Like that existential feeling that envelopes you when you stare at the stars for hours on end, totally overwhelmed by the infinite universe right before your eyes, but at the same time so totally aware of your own mortality and insignificance. Would this meal actually give them any comfort at all? Would you even be able to contemplate eating? I lose my appetite simply imagining the situation. How consumed you would be with the thought of your fast approaching death. Imagining the final steps towards the gallows, imagining the shock of coming in to full view of the place of execution, the helplessness upon being blindfolded and shackled. All of these imaginings are tortures that act as a sort of prolonged execution for the accused. It's almost like the hands of death are reaching back through time and grasping at your conscious, pulling you towards it long before your time has come. This extended suffering is cruel beyond all measure.

I've talked about the suffering experienced by those close to someone who is executed. The best way to get any sort of idea on the suffering that must be experienced by a condemned person on death row is from people who experienced it themselves and have survived due to exoneration or a permanent reprieve.

Sakai Menda, a Japanese man who spent 34 years on death row in Japan, put it in this way:

"It’s strange when they near your cell. You lose all your strength and you are like this. You lose all your strength as if a rope is dragging it out of you. Then the footsteps stop in front of another solitary confinement cell and when you hear the sound of the key turning you feel relieved."

It's particularly topical considering that at the moment the system of capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny at the moment as inmates languish on death row and their mental state is seriously deteriorating. What a perfect example of the incredible tortures that one undergoes in such a situation.

Darby Tillis was sentenced to death and eventually exonerated, and described his time on death row as such:

"Whether a death sentence is carried out in six minutes, six weeks or six years, the person set for death begins to suffer the most cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment. Death row is segregated from the rest of the general inmate prison population. You’re warehoused for death, treated like contaminated meat to be disposed of. You sit there and await death, and the pain you know will come to you one day"

As I said earlier, if accepting a last meal is an act of tacit forgiveness from the condemned man towards his executioner, then clearly some of the accused use this gesture to make a statement that speaks louder than words.

Taking the time to really appreciate the meaning behind these photos would no doubt reveal different meanings to different people. To me it's an image of loneliness and of humanity. Our need to eat in order to survive is an instinct we all share, even with a man who is condemned to die. But in this situation you have a person with no hope of surviving more than a day, yet set before them is a meal, a last supper. As vulnerable and as human as the rest of us. The uniformity of the orange tray, and the symetrical arrangement of the food seems to represent the organised, cold and calculating process that is the death penalty. Humanity and inhumanity, or man's inhumanity to man. It's an incredibly powerful juxtaposition that, to me, throws away considerations of justice, right or wrong, and leaves you with a person who you cannot dismiss as an "aberration" or a "monster".

Quotes of the day: (A special double feature. One in memory of the late Ted Kennedy.

"My brother was a man of love and sentiment and compassion. He would not have wanted his death to be cause for the taking of another life."
- Edward Kennedy

"I prayed in the morning I would be able to sleep at night, I prayed at night I would be able to wake up in the morning."
- Ronaldo Cruz (Wrongfully convicted in 1983 and sentenced to death. Exonerated by DNA evidence)

Fighting For Peace

2009-09-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

The difficulties of intervention in international conflicts is one of the most complex issues of International Humanitarian Law. When is it justified to intervene in a conflict? What kind of peace keeping activities are justified? How do you solidify peace between two warring parties without seeming partisan to one cause?

These questions are constantly undergoing intense debate and discussion, but the real question I'm interested in is how a massacre like Srebrenica can be allowed to occur while the eyes of the entire world rest on the Balkans?

In the case of the conflict in Bosnia it's incredibly challenging. The United Nations were the envoys of peace and inserted thousands of UN Protection Forces (UNPROFOR) into Bosnia to regulate and observe the conflict from the ground. While behind the UN was NATO, the big stick that could be waved in situations of non-compliance with UN sanctions.

In the case of Srebrenica the UNPROFOR were drastically under prepared for imposing any kind of influence over the Serbian troops that lay siege to it. To make matters worse, Bosnian government troops organised attacks and rallied within the "safe zone" of Srebrenica.

Srebrenica wasn't at all safe, infact it was being actively used as a military base for Bosnian troops, and at the same time the UN troops who were protecting the enclave were lightly armed with no mandate to protect with force. So when the Serbian troops overran Srebrenica it's no surprise that the UNPROFOR could do nothing to stop them. It reminds me of a quote from the book Emergency Sex, "If blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeepers show up in your town or village, and offer to protect you, run."

The frustration that must have been felt by the Dutch troops who were helpless to stop the ensuing chaos. Frustration towards the Bosnian troops commanded by Naser Oric who constantly flouted the town's status as a safe haven.

There's no doubt that the situation in Srebrenica was complex. The UN had not secured the safe zone effectively, they were unable and unequipped to defend it, the Bosnian troops continued to launch attacks from within it and the Serbian troops lost patience and made a move on the town. Does this justify or excuse the mass execution of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys? It's hard to believe, but there are those who defend the actions of the Serbian forces, excuse those in command of them, and even go so far as to deny the genocide ever occured. Arguments are plentiful for denying any genocide occured. A column of Bosnian troops continued fighting around Srebrenica as they retreated after the town was taken. In other words, the men who died in Srebrenica were legitimately killed during the fighting. That the numbers were greatly exaggerated by people who simply went missing in the chaos and were never killed. That the few mass killings were undertaken by out of control militants with no affiliation to the Serbian (VRS) forces.

The facts remain, and shine through all the misinformation. Bodies were found ligatured, blindfolded and horrifically beaten. Bullets were traced back to the guns of Serbian troops. DNA identified thousands of unique individuals. Mass graves were dug quickly and concealed. The tragic list of facts goes on and on. If to forget a genocide is to "kill twice", as Elie Wiesel put it, then to deny its occurence is to kill ad infinitum.

It's not in the international communities interests to fabricate this atrocity. So much blame falls on those in a position to stop the genocide. If no genocide had occured, the use of force by UN and NATO forces would have seemed utterly disproportionate. Afterall, there were so many opportunities to stop the catastrophe from occuring, but it's easy to see the right answer to such decisions in hindsight. Making decisive decision in a warzone that are intended to maintain peace must be a nearly impossible situation. Romeo Dallaire writes about his experience of helplessness in Rwanda in his book "Shake Hands with the Devil", which I have every intention to read as soon as I get my hands on it.

How is it that so many can be murdered while the international community watches? It would seem that the confusion of warfare can muddy the waters to such an extent that almost anything can be concealed in the fog of war.

Because of all this uncertainty, because the whole war was a mess of deeply rooted political, social and economic problems, it seems to be possible for people to say, with a straight face, "Perhaps Srebrenica wasn't really a genocide". Some revisionist historians still deny or lessen the scale of the Holocaust, even though this position usually makes them a historical pariah. Is it more acceptable to cast doubt on Srebrenica because of all the "fog" that surrounds the war, or perhaps because it wasn't on the same scale? For certain the crimes weren't as black and white as can be found in the Holocaust, and it is no where near the same scale. But the test for genocide is not a comparative test with the Holocaust. The Rome Statute defines it as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group."

In 2004 the ICTY Appeals Chamber ruled in the Krstic case that the Srebrenica massacre was genocide. There has to be some point where, much like the Holocaust, it becomes insensitive and unnescessary to still question the merits of this decision. Like flogging a dead horse, only this horse can be replaced by millions of people who are still very closely affected by the massacre. Misinformation and doubt are core elements of warfare, and so black and white, right and wrong, are always difficult concepts in International Humanitarian Law.

Quote of the day:

"There is a loneliness about peacekeeping, especially when it is divorced from peacemaking."

In The News - Aug/Sep

2009-08-31T07:10:00.000-07:00

So it appears the the Sri Lankan President has announced that the death penalty will start being enforced again. This is a country that had the death penalty but refrained from using it since 1977. As the BBC put it so eloquently in french, it has been in abeyance! Oh la la.

Now due to a spate of violent crimes in a seemingly rapid decline into lawlessness, the support for reigniting capital punishment is growing. This is particularly interesting given the prominance of Budhism in Sri Lanka.

This came to my attention through a Sri Lankan publication I've never even heard of before called The Island. The opinion piece is quite astounding and as I read it I felt compelled to comment on it.

The piece starts with a quote from Oscar Wilde, and this is what really caught my eye.

"He has killed so he deserves to die."

Does Mr. Dunusinghe, the author, even realise the irony of using this quote to begin an article entitled "Bringing back the hangman". For those who aren't familiar, this is a quote taken directly from Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", which I have quoted in this blog in the past. Infact, the small stanza was one of the "Quotes of the day". If that doesn't raise some alarm bells, let me give you a little bit of history behind this Ballad. It was written by Wilde after he was imprisoned in Reading Gaol for committing the crime of "gross indecency" which was a lesser crime than "buggery". It was widely believed that he was either homosexual or bisexual. During his time in prison he felt the impact of an inmate being hanged for murder. Upon his release, while in exile, he wrote the ballad. The relatively long piece goes on in detail about the horrifying experience of a man condemned to die. The waiting, the certainty, the cold and calculated mechanism that is official murder. In two words, Albert Camus' "implacable ritual".

Other than the one I previously quoted, here is a section of it more directly related to the issue:

He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty place

He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to see
Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one's throat, before
The hangman with his gardener's gloves
Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.

Quoting it in an article that is pro-death penalty would no doubt make him roll in his grave (see grave above). It's a beautiful piece of writing which is quite complex and relates heavily to Wilde's experience in prison.

Dostoevsky puts it:

"But the chief and worst pain may not be in the bodily suffering but in one's not knowing for certain that in an hour, and then now, at the very moment, the soul will leave the body and that one will cease to be a man and that that's bound to happen; the worst part of it is that it's certain ... To kill for murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands. Anyone murdered by brigands, whose throat is cut at night in a wood or something of that sort, must surely hope to escape till the very last minute ..., but in the other case (execution) all that last hope which makes dying ten times as easy is taken away for certain. There is the sentence, and the whole awful torture lies in the fact that there is certainly no escape, and there is no torture in the world more terrible."

This is quite poignant also given the topic of the article. What is the point of having a death sentence that is not in use? Since 1977 people have been sentenced to death, have had to suffer the uncertainty of their fate, only to be pardoned by the President.

It has been an issue I have discussed quite often, the effect of the death penalty on those who are left to languish in its clutches. It's not something I have dedicated an entire blog entry to, so I think that is on the agenda.

Back to the opinion piece at hand. If this fatal flaw at the very outset wasn't enough to completely discredit it, then reading on will leave you without any doubt.

By far the most worrying part of the article is the endorsement of capital punishment as the only alternative to police taking vigilante justice.

"Today we have a new and frightening development with the Police taking the law into their hands and arranging fake encounters for the purpose of carrying out executions. Should not these murderers also be tried and put to death after a judicial process? I ask the ‘pious’ what if we had captured Prabhakaran alive? Did he not deserve to die at the gallows? Saddam was hanged for less by the Americans and the West."

Prabhakaran was the leader of the Tamil Tigers who was found killed in a "rocket attack" in may this year. But there are reports that he was killed by a close range bullet to the back of the head, execution style. Calling on the death penalty to fix gaping holes in the justice system such as this does not seem like a particularly wise course of action. If your police and armed forces are unable to operate in a functioning and just manner, how can it be imagined that the death penalty will somehow alleviate this situation. If anything it would make the system far more brutal and arbitrary. God forbid a police force that deems it appropriate to execute accused criminals before bringing them to trial should be tasked with investigating the case against accused who are at risk of being sentenced to death.

The author suggests that despite the "corruption" of the authorities, a review by 3 Supreme Court judges could solve any issues of "wrongful execution". Sadly, and possibly unbeknownst to the scholar who penned this article, judges rarely if ever have the opportunity to go fact finding on appeal, and often are there solely to examine the evidence put before earlier courts, or any additional evidence found since then.

"It has been medically proved that hanging is more humane than any of the other methods. The term ‘Capital’ incidentally originates from Latin capitalis, literally "regarding the head" (Latin caput). Hence, a capital crime was originally one punished by the severing of the head."
Here is a textbook lesson in wikipedia journalism. You'll find these exact words, regarding the etymology of capital punishment, at the beginning of the wikipedia article on capital punishment. What worries me is the suggestion that hanging is medically proven to be more humane than any other form of execution. Find me one modern "medical" source that makes this ridiculous assertion and I'll hang myself.

It continues:

"We do not need to have any qualms about carrying out executions as Capital punishment has been practiced in virtually every society, and thus can be considered to be almost universal or close to it. Capital punishment is meted out in countries where more than 60% of the world’s population live. The four most populous countries in the world (the People’s Republic of China, India, United States and Indonesia) apply the death penalty and are unlikely to abolish it. Forty five countries today retain the death penalty."

I know my point of view might come across and patriarchal and colonial, but suggesting as any sort of authority that the death penalty is "in favour" around the world simply because it was once employed in every country, at least in their history, is not only absurd but totally missing the point. That the majority of nations (94) have completely abolished the death penalty is where the point can be found, and the direction in which modern sensibilities are moving. Of the other 45? Such hallowed company as Iran, Iraq and North Korea. The U.S. being the only Western liberal legal system that employs, and that is only a minority of states within the states. The United States is by no means "united" on the capital punishment. Incidentally, according to the DPIC (Death Penalty Information Center) in 1977 only 16 countries were abolitionist. It's interest to note again that it was in 1977 that Sri Lanka held its last execution. Is this conicidence or the signs of a slow and steady progression towards abolition. So why now is Sri Lanka baulking against the international trend?

He then goes on to talk about the cost effective nature of the death penalty and the deterrant effect. The latter being a legitimate concern but wickedly difficult to establish either for or against. The former being one of the most discredited and disowned grounds for supporting the death penalty.

Perhaps my favourite section is this:

"Imprisonment is not for murderers. There are three purposes for prisons. Firstly, prison separates criminals from the general population. Second, prison is a form of punishment. Finally, prison is expected to rehabilitate prisoners; so that when prisoners are released from prison, these ex-convicts are less likely to repeat their crimes and risk another prison sentence. The logic for capital punishment is that prisons are for rehabilitating convicts who will eventually leave prison, and therefore prison is not for people who would never be released from prisons alive."

I hope that somebody doesn't come on here and tell me this is some marginal, ultra-conservative rag that nobody reads. Or that the opinion piece was written by an high school student and the editor desperately needed to fill a column. My fear is, after reading this article, this sort of misinformation could possibly be common.

Have I just wasted my time? Have I just given this article more air time and consideration than it deserves? Probably, but sometimes the ignorance of the many can be the firebrand of the few. Hmm, I quite fancy that phrase. (TM)

Quote of the day:

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime."
- Oscar Wilde

In The News - August

2009-08-18T03:09:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court of the United States has ordered an evidentiary hearing should take place in light of new evidence, a decision that has been without precedent in 50 years. The pleas of Georgian death row inmate, Troy Anthony Davis, have not gone unheard around the world. He was convicted of killing an off duty Savannah police officer in 1989. He claims that almost all of the witnesses in his trial have since recanted their testimony and that the key witness is the shooter himself. However, this has not been a serious consideration in any of the appeal circuit courts due to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act which was instituted to streamline the death penalty. This ensures that the federal courts consider appeals based on constitutional grounds, and not factual or evidentiary grounds.

It’s unlikely that in the long term this decision will have any serious impact on the operation of the death penalty, but it certainly puts the question up in the air, and the more the waters are muddied, the more doubt that is put in the minds of America’s constituents, the better. This case also goes to show just how much power a collective of voices can have in seeing justice done. Troy Davis will now have the evidence against him properly reconsidered which is, at the barest minimum, justice. Whether or not his conviction is upheld remains to be seen. Should he be found innocent, I would expect the reverberations from such a decision to shake the very foundations of the death penalty in the United States. Here is a man, on death row 20+ years, having come close to execution numerous times, his call for a re-trial consistently ignored and finally found to be innocent.

This is such a endemic problem with the death penalty. Executing somebody demands even the most callous of people to be completely sure of their guilt. This is exactly why there are 11-13 stages of appeal for someone sentenced to death in the US. The problem I perceive, however, is the fact that the system needs to be “expedited” in the first place. Imprisonment isn’t a sentence that needs to be “hurried along”. It is a sentence than can be quickly reversed and easily maintained throughout a trial and all subsequent appeals. The death penalty needs to rush through countless appeals so that the actual sentence can then be carried through, after which, it is utterly irreversible.
"A state supreme court, a state board of pardons and paroles and a federal court of appeals have all considered the evidence Davis now presents and found it lacking”
In typical ultra-conservative fashion, Scalia has thrown out all reason and common sense by defending the decision of the previous federal court judges. To blindly put your trust in the functioning of the judiciary despite overwhelming evidence that the system is not working. Scalia is essentially denying that anybody could fall through the cracks and that the system could accidentally execute an innocent man. He seems to go as far as to suggest that if the state did execute an innocent man, because he was found guilty and that was upheld at every level of jurisdiction, the execution was “legal” despite innocence. Does he even realise that as the highest court in the U.S. it is his role to be a guardian of justice. Instead he seems to prefer turning a blind eye to the fact that perhaps capital punishment is not entirely infallible.

There’s no point dwelling on the ultra-conservative minority in this decision, especially when the split was 7/2. Justice Stevens summed it up well:

"Imagine a petitioner in Davis' situation who possesses new evidence conclusively and definitively proving, beyond any scintilla of doubt, that he is an innocent man. The dissent's reasoning would allow such a petitioner to be put to death nonetheless. The court correctly refuses to endorse such reasoning."

I’ll keenly await the outcome of Troy Davis’ evidentiary hearing.

______________________________________

Another big development has been a case which, about 2 years ago, I totally failed to put up on this blog, although I was aware of it. About 2 months before I arrived in the U.S. for my Reprieve internship, Michael Wayne Richard was executed while his lawyers scrambled to submit a motion for a stay of execution in order to lodge an appeal. Judge Sharon Keller, the presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, ordered the court closed at 5pm, against normal policy when an execution is about to occur.

It’s incredible to think that a judge who deals with cases and sentences that involve the execution of a person could be so capricious and heartless to take actions that would block this mans life from being spared. In truth, however, it’s not so hard to understand. When you have been dealing with state sanctioned murder so intimately and for so long, a form of brutalisation must occur. Seeing brutal murderers come and go, churned out by the implacable ritual that is capital punishment must be utterly soul destroying, especially when you take an active and complicit involvement in it. To Sharon Keller, execution must seem not only normal, but a huge inconvenience on her life, one which can be brushed aside effortlessly with a simple act of bureaucracy that screams of vindictiveness on a Machiavellian scale.

Thankfully, although massively delayed (2 years), she now stands trial for her acts. I would say that she should be held criminally liable for the death of this man, but I understand that it would be obtuse to suggest that a member of the judiciary could be held criminally responsible for a decision made within her official duties as a judge. That would completely compromise the independence and impartiality of the judiciary (which is already questionable in the United States).

I hope that the truth comes out in this trial and that the outcome does some small amount of justice to a man who was wrongfully executed.

Monster's Ball

2009-08-17T07:02:00.000-07:00

Humanity and the death penalty is something I think I've written about on this blog and talked about all too often. Inhuman, evil and monster are words that I've extricated from my vocabulary when describing other people and their actions.

The whole question of humanity and the death penalty was raised again when I watched the movie Monster's Ball, starring Halle Berry, Billy Bob Thornton and Heath Ledger. I don't quite know how this film stayed under my radar for so long, but I had never really gone out of my way to see it.

Without giving away too much of the plot, it's the story of a family of three men from different generations who have grown up working as prison wardens on death row.

What really surprised me while I was watching the film was the moment Halle Berry arrives at the prison to see her husband on death row. To my surprise she pulled up to the all to familiar boom gates of Louisiana State Penitentiary, AKA Angola or The Farm. I felt like I'd been ambushed by a memory and a place that felt so familiar that I felt something akin to homesickness. It feels a bit absurd to say that I would be homesick for the entrance to a prison, but it has a way of bringing up very personal and vivid memories, which makes you immediately feel a sort of affinity with whatever you are engaging with, in this case, the film. I had spent so many hours at those front gates, waiting for the prison guard to arrive in his truck and take us on the long drive through the prison grounds to Camp D - Death Row. The wait was usually quite sombre. Surrounded by tall cyclone fences crowned with thick and menacing razor wire. The prison guards were always less than friendly, although our foreign accents sometimes elicited a smile from a usually taciturn demeanor. When I saw this place in the film, even though it was simply a scenic tracking shot that lasted a 20 seconds, it still made me sit bolt upright, my head swimming with memories.

The scene that followed was a visit between Halle Berry, her young son and her baby's daddy, as they say in the states, who was the condemned man. He was due to be executed the next morning and this was a farewell. The young boy asks why his father has to go, to which he responds, "Because I'm a bad man." The young boy asks him, "Who says?" to which he replies, "I do."

I've always believed that the death penalty destroys more lives than just the man who is executed. It ripples through society with corrupting after effects. This is beautifully portrayed in the film as the family of prison guards find their lives falling apart in the wake of this mans execution. The eldest, a retired prison guard, is an embittered, racist and generally cruel man who quite clearly takes great pleasure in the execution of criminals judging by the scrap book into which he lovingly pastes articles to do with executions. Billy Bob Thornton, the son of the eldest and the father of the youngest, is clearly heavily influenced by his father in terms of his racist beliefs, but it's unclear whether he truly harbours the same beliefs, or is simply dissembling to please his aging contemporary. Halle Berry as the wife of the condemned man, turns to alcohol while her morbidly obese son eats chocolate excessively. He hides this from his mother, who beats him when she eventually catches him with chocolate on his face.

None of the characters in the film have any redeeming qualities, with the exception of two. The condemned man, and the youngest generation of the prison guards, Heath Ledger. Both have extremely brief roles in the film, but their actions and personal stories have an impact on every other character in the film. In a way, their tragic stories engender a change in all of the other characters.

When the condemned man is waiting in his cell for the morning of his execution to dawn, the viewer is taken through a sort of intimate moment of shared suffering. He grabs the youngest prison guard and holds on to him through the bars of the prison cell. It's the most heartbreaking scene and you can't help but be filled with compassion. The father pulls his son away from the bars because he can see the compassion weakening the resolve of his son.

The condemned man, who enjoys sketching, begins to sketch both father and son as they sit outside his cell, keeping vigil. He tells the two of them, as he sketches the fathers face, "It truly takes a human being to see a human being."

These scenes of a mans last few hours are where the title of the film is most relevant. The monster's ball is the name given to a party held on the eve of a man execution, as was tradition in England before they abolished the death penalty. A similar tradition is represented in the film in the form of a mans last supper, which is still the norm in U.S. states that still use the death penalty. The condemned man orders whatever he wants for his last meal and, interestingly enough, in this scene it become clear that he never touches his food.

These three men share an intense and tragically intimate experience as they walk the condemned man to the electric chair. The cold, callous nature of a state sanctioned execution hits you so powerfully that when Heath Ledger, the youngest of the family, drops to his knees during the "last walk" and throws up, you are struck by just how terrible an impact this has on the guards, let alone the condemned man himself.

The tragedy of the Monster's Ball is that these people's lives disintegrate in the aftermath of the execution. I would say more but I would risk ruining the end of the film. Whether or not the ending has any redemption for the main characters is worth seeing for yourself. I think you'll find that the ending of the film speaks for itself.

Quote of the day:

"It truly takes a human being to see a human being."
- Monster's Ball (2001)

Changing Scope

2009-07-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged at all over the last 6 months and it's due entirely to applying and interviewing for graduate positions in January and February, and traveling Europe since March.

From July to December I'll be working as an intern for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. During this time I hope to find the time to keep blogging, however, I wanted to make a slight change to the subject I've been writing about.

At the moment my purview is specifically state sanctioned executions. I wanted to change it slightly to include extra-judicial killings. This essentially includes genocide (the ultimate international crime) and mass murder committed by a state, a state body, the army or police. I have a strong interest in International Humanitarian Law, and mass executions are a horrifying, tragic and very real element in modern warfare.

I won't be including other warcrimes, for example torture, because then I think this blog will just start getting far too broad. I want to stick to state sanctioned and extra-judicial killings.

The obvious reason for this inclusion is that for the next 6 months I'll be working heavily with cases regarding war crimes during the Bosnian-Serbian war. As with my internship in New Orleans, I won't be able to talk about specific details of cases that I am working on, but I will be eager to write about the concept of warcrimes, the capture and trial of war criminals and any form of murder directly or indirectly undertaken by a government, government body, police or army outside the purview of the law.

During my visit to the Jewish Holocaust Museum in Berlin I saw a quote on the wall that is almost like a introduction to the horrifying expositions that follows, and it's a quote from Primo Levi an Auschwitz survivor and prolific writer.
"It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we
have to say."

It occurred to me that although the Holocaust has not been repeated in history on the same scale, it certainly has been recreated in part through numerous conflicts, Sudan, Rwanda, Cambodia, Former Yugoslavia. Even with the creation of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, it still occurs. What needs to be done to stop it from continuing? The face of war has changed, and even though it is unlikely that a state will ever adopt a calculated policy of mass extermination like Hitler and the Nazis did, there are still conflicts in which massive amounts of non-combatants are murdered. Warcrimes Tribunals such as the one I will be working with have been extremely successful in holding warcriminals to account for crimes against humanity, but a more serious question is what more can be done to ensure that these crimes aren't allowed to occur at all, and when they do, how best to prosecute them.

Once I'm settled in The Hague I'm sure there will be lots on my mind.

Quote of the day:

"I am constantly amazed by man's inhumanity to man."

- Primo Levi

In The News - July

2009-07-02T08:45:00.000-07:00

The Australian Government has made a big step towards ensuring that capital punishment cannot ever exist again in Australia. This is a strong message in support of global abolition and of course greatly in support of our Australians still on death row overseas.

The legislation will draw on the Commonwealth Government's external affairs power in s. 51(xxix) of the constitution. This power, it is argued, can interpreted to allow the Government to act upon international treaties, and therefore legislate on behalf of the states. The international treaty in question is the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, of which we are signatories. We have also co-sponsored a resolution for a moratorium on the death penalty.

Even though it's merely a consolidation of the status quo in Australia, it's an important step in the right direction both at home and abroad. The Human Rights Committee observed that "all steps taken to abolish the death penalty must be viewed as progress towards the enjoyment of the right to life." This is no doubt the case by closing the door completely on the death penalty.

Andrew Chan, Myuran Sukumaran and Scott Rush are still on death row in Indonesia, and so any unified approach against the death penalty will not fall on deaf ears with our closest neighbours. What more powerful message to send than a complete and irrevocable refusal to ever allow the return of the death penalty.

The legislation is expected to be past in spring. For the sake of Australians abroad I hope that not too much political debate is raised by the Opposition, because only a bipartisan approach will send a strong enough message to perhaps save lives.

2008 - Death Penalty In Review

2008-12-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to a really concise report from the Death Penalty Information Centre.

It shows the consistent trend away from the death penalty, with death row numbers and executions lowered across all States.

It also highlights the economic and social problems the death penalty creates, with taxpayers money being spent on housing death row inmates for over 12 years. With too little money being provided for indigent defendants, some courts have refused to hand down the death penalty until the legislature invests more money in the system.

The death penalty in America is on the verge of collapse, but this could spell even greater disaster for those on death row, as the system has the potential to shut down completely, or become even more draconian in the face of a financial crisis.

Enjoy reading and Happy New Year!

AFR - "Budding diplomats test career waters"

2008-12-15T05:50:00.000-08:00

Monday, 01 December 2008 | The Australian Financial Review | Erica Cervini

International internships inspire law students to continue humanitarian work, write Erica Cervini.
As Jihan Mirza walked the halls of the United Nations in Geneva earlier this year, some people assumed she was a diplomat. She was, in fact, a final-year Monash University law student.
For two months Mirza was a UN intern at the Human Rights Council, which gave her the chance to mix with diplomats and academics and learn the finer points of diplomacy.
"It was an amazing experience," says Mirza, who was one of five students awarded a global internship for 2008 by Monash's Castan Centre for Human Rights Law.
Because Mirza was part of the Australian delegation to the Human Rights Council, she had the chance to address plenary sessions in the Palais des Nations on behalf of Australia. On one occasion, she gave Australia's response to human rights issues in Zimbabwe.
Mirza is one of many law students who head overseas to complete internships at organisations such as the Centre for Justice and International Law in Buenos Aires and the Global Policy Forum in New York.
Students often gain credit for the internship as a subject towards their degree and law schools often provide travel grants for the internships. The experience can also provide career direction.
Mirza says her internship has crystallised her decision to work in international policy and human rights. Next year Mirza, who has a Lebanese background, hopes to work for the UN in Lebanon or East Asia.
Sarah Callaghan agrees that doing an international internship cemented her wish to work overseas in humanitarian law. Callaghan spent three months with the UN Commission for Refugees in Cairo in 2003 while in her final year of law at the University of Adelaide.
"It [the internship] made me realise that there were a lot of people doing different things," she says.
"If you are open to opportunities and open to try different things, you never know where they will lead."
After graduating, Callaghan worked for the South Australian minister for justice but was always keen to return overseas.
Callaghan also spent a year in Liberia working on the 2005 elections and two years in Afghanistan working with the minister of counter narcotics with a UN non-governmental organisation on a refugee legal aid project.
She has also worked briefly in the Sudan on a law project.
Now, Callaghan is in Uganda working for Irish Aid on governance issues, such as justice reform, and expects to stay in the country until the end of the year.
John Riordan's three-month Reprieve Australia internship at the Louisiana Capital Assistance Centre in the US has inspired him to seek work overseas in humanitarian law.
Riordan, who finished his law degree at the University of Melbourne in June this year, says the internship in New Orleans gave him large responsibilities.
"I visited three prisoners on death row, and to chat to clients is a huge responsibility," Riordan says.
"We're there to give humanitarian support [so the prisoners] have some contact with the outside world," he says.
"There are not many opportunities in Melbourne to deal with clients so intimately, especially in such serious circumstances."
Riordan, who has assisted barrister Julian McMahon on the Bali Nine case, hopes to do a UN internship next year.
"I am really keen to do something other than corporate work," he says.

Just Punishment - Retail

2008-11-10T01:05:00.000-08:00

The documentary about the appeal to save the life of Van Nguyen in Singapore is being retailed on DVD by Ronin Films.

There's also an excellent study guide for anyone tackling this topic on an academic level, or perhaps interested in screening the film to their class.

By far the most powerful element of this film was the ability of the directors to speak intimately with the friends and family of Van, while also having access to the diary kept by Van in prison. Some of the passages are incredibly moving and as soon as I've received my copy I'll be sure to write up a few of the more powerful ones.

In The News - November

2008-11-09T21:44:00.000-08:00

It's been 3 months since my last blog entry and during that time the Australian government has been equally as silent on the issue of the death penalty. Yesterday, at midnight, the three convicted terrorists, Amrozi, Ali Ghufron and Imam Samudra were executed by firing squad in Indonesia.

________________________________

"A memorial to honour them, bombs to avenge them, terrorists to share glory with them"
- Julian McMahon

As soon as the news broke, there was sadness, ambivolence, relief and mourning. The news flashed with horrific montages and graphic retellings of the explosions. Once again salt is poured over a wound that has taken years to even begin healing. The three unrepetant terrorists will no longer taunt us with their defiant smiles, but they have succeeded in leaving a legacy of pain and suffering long after their violent deed has concluded. They have now been enshrined as martyrs in the eyes of some, when they should have been left to disappear into obscurity. Now they will exist as a rally point for future extremist activities, their names will no doubt be the catchcry for the next generation of ignorance and hate. I'm worried that the saddest chapter in this saga is yet to come, as the Bali Bombers legacy grows popularity and results in even more suffering. I sincerely hope that this isn't the case, but there can be no doubt that the execution has created sympathy for them amongst some Indonesians. If the Bali Bombers had been left to die imprisoned, they would have been forgotten, lonely old men who were never given the opportunity to become martyrs.

_______________________________

"I will not beg for their lives to be spared. But I seek that which I consider more appropriate. A penalty which will serve as a constant reminder to others. A penalty which will not destroy the lives of their families"
- Brian Deegan

Further, the painful issue would not have resurfaced so heavily in the media, their faces would not have been plastered over ever newspaper and headlines, their exploits not retold so graphically. The suffering of the victims families is now twofold as they are forced to try to seek closure all over again, while dealing with the news suggesting that there is some support for the bombers in Indonesia, with crowds at their funeral. One of the fathers of an Australian victim made it clear that he just wanted to entire horror story put to rest, and that now the executions have occurred, he can finally forget the pain and focus on the healing. He suggested that any families seeking closure from the execution would likely be disappointed and find that the only thing that has changed is three more corpses on the pile, and the lives of three more families irrevocably changed for the worse.

________________________________

"A retreat from principal to political opportunism"
- Colin McDonald QC

I'm furious that the Rudd Government has remained totally silent the last 2 weeks as momentum builds towards the execution of the Bali Bombers. Their silence indicates their unwillingness to adhere to their international obligations and their own values. It shows me that Rudd is a politician first and a man of principal second, and it's for this reason that silence came first, and then, after the execution, principals second.

_________________________________

"When civilised societies reject the death penalty... they declare they do not measure the worth of human lives by the same scale that such men do. It is a repudiation of the logic of terrorism."

- Editorial, The Age

Meanwhile, much like in Van Nguyen's case so many years ago, the Asian press are rediculing our inconsisitent policy to the death penalty. When Howard supported the execution of Saddam Hussein by saying he wouldn't shed any tears for the dictator, the Singaporean media jumped on his words and hypocrisy for showing double standards when it came to non-australians. Now, the Rudd Government have gone one peg lower, they've been too cowardly to even make their values known until after the fact. I'd rather our government be vocal about their values rather than behaving like a snake in the grass, only rearing its head when the trigger has already been pulled. Their silence is even more damaging in context with past comments made by not only Howard, but Downer - "I wouldn't weep for people who have killed 88 Australians if they were executed. I can't pretend otherwise" and even Rudd "They deserve the justice that will be delivered to them. They are murderers, they are mass murderers, and they are also cowards."

________________________________

"Wherever we are not consistent, the Asian press accuses us of being hypocritical. They ask why should there be one rule for Australians and a different rule for non-Australians?"
- Julian McMahon

Perhaps even more close to home is the massive risk our inconsistency has created for the final 3 of the Bali Nine on death row. Scott Rush, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Their chances of gaining a reprieve from their impending executions is now severely limited and the impact of any appeal from the Australian Government will seem impotent at best.

At least now the Government can move on from their political pandering and the families can truly begin healing without any more death or suffering plaguing the healing process.

Politics Over Principles

2008-08-11T05:23:00.000-07:00

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith pre-empted criticism yesterday by claiming that refusing to appeal for the lives of the Bali bombers was not inconsistent to Australia’s opposition to the death penalty.

Mr Smith’s clear refusal to address the execution Bali bombers is more than simply remaining silent, it is a clear acceptance of the sentence. As an abolitionist nation we must show that we do not only reject capital punishment in Australia but also worldwide, anything else would be inconsistent to our values. Indeed, we do push for abolition worldwide, and as a member of the United Nations we are not softly spoken on this point, nor should we be. Indonesia, as one of our closest neighbours, as a nation that is a liberal democracy, as a country where three Australians are sentenced to die, how can we do anything but make our refusal to accept capital punishment abundantly clear? Our integrity, our principles and the lives of our own citizens depend on it.

By refusing to apply our abolitionist values to the execution of terrorists, yet vowing to always appeal for the lives of Australians on death row, Mr Smith and Prime Minister Rudd are creating a glaring inconsistency. Would they change their tune were the Bali bombers Australian citizens? I sense a paradox.

The Bali bombers are to be executed for a crime committed, in part, against the Australian people, and we have a duty as abolitionists to send a clear message in response – don’t kill in our name.

I am not asking that we excuse the Bali bombers, but that we treat the value of life as inherently equal, terrorist or drug dealer, Australian or Indonesian, and send a clear, unequivocal message that we in no way support the execution of the Bali bombers.

Capital punishment in the world will only dwindle when our stance is united and unconditional, when we are consistent with our values, and when our politicians refuse to allow a nation’s principles to bend under politics.

Quote of the day:

"We are not so mad as to think that we shall create a world in which murder will not occur. We are fighting for a world in which murder will no longer be legal."

- Albert Camus

One Step Backwards For Two Steps Forward

2008-07-29T23:18:00.000-07:00

In a world that is slowly progressing toward abolition, America was poised to take a step backwards. The prospect of regressing to a situation of allowing the death penalty to apply to non fatal crimes was a very real one. Indeed, with Scalia and Alito sitting on the bench it was thought that the decision could very easily fall in favour of the Louisiana legislation.

For those who don't know, the Louisiana legislature enacted a bill that allowed for the execution for the crime of rape of a child under the age of 13.

I've touched on the issue of child rape and the death penalty in this blog before. It came up as an issue because the Supreme Court of the United States had granted certiori to hear the case of Kennedy v. Louisiana. I was in Louisiana while the Capital Appeals Project was preparing their submission to the court and I saw first hand the incredible amount of work that Jelpi Picou and others were putting in to it.

It seems like a relatively peripheral issue, the question of what sort of crimes deserve death. An abolitionist would counter that no crime deserves death, and to compare the suffering of victims is a fruitless task. However, in the case of Kennedy the question is solely whether or not a non-fatal crime warrants death, and so capital punishment applying to murder cases must be accepted as the "standard". Clearly, in the case of Kennedy v. Louisiana, the interests of abolitionists were on the defensive, and an unfavourable verdict stood to set back national values by almost have a century. However, by taking a step backwards and accepting that "death is different", the lawyers for Kennedy were able to consolidate the present position of the death penalty in America.

The decision highlights a shifting climate in America, as more and more states abolish the death penalty, retentionist states find their system falling into disrepair and being without purpose. Louisiana, who had sentenced two men to death under the law in question, has not held an execution since 2003. California are reporting their system costs almost twice as much as a life sentence. There are some states, however, that continue killing fervently, with Texas leading the way.

The issue of paedophilia has been all over the news. From the confiscation of Bill Henson's art to the international horror at the discovery of Hans Fritzl's dungeon. Our obsession with sexual deviants is obvious, and our hatred of them makes for a sort of morbid fascination.

To even consider punishing this sort of crime with the death penalty shows just how much some legislatures in America have been influenced by the outcry of certain vocal public groups. I realise that a child rapist is someone who preys on the vulnerable, causes life long and irreparable damage to the victim and has a high tendency of reoffending, but to call for their death simply doesn't make sense.

These are cases where very often the strongest evidence will be the testimony of the child. Criminal trials are incredibly traumatic for victims to undertake in regular circumstances, and so for a child these must be horrific. Defense attorneys are requried to cross examine victims as diligently as possible, but with the utmost sensitivity and compassion. Imagine now that you are a defense attorney and your client's life is on the line depending on how effectively you cross examine this child. This issue was raised by a defense lawyer in Texas, who claimed that he would "rip the kids apart" and ensure that he was as brutal to the victim as the state of Texas was prepared to be to his client. At first this approach caught me off guard, but I realised it was more hyperbole than anything else. This defense lawyer is confronted with an impossible situation, his compassion for the suffering of a young girl, and his obligation to stop his client from being murdered.

Then there is the public humiliation of sex offenders. During my time in the U.S. I was amazed by the insensitivity with which child sex offenders were dealt with. There was a section in the newspaper where they were forced to announce any change in address, with a photo of their face and an announcement of the crime they were convicted of. The sort of ignorance, intolerance and hatred this must expose them to would be no doubt overwhelming. Having some form of rehabilitation or community support is exactly what people in this position need. Sadly, further isolation and persecution is likely to aggravate their problems and put them at greater danger of offending again, perhaps even more violently.

Rather than executing those in our society who fail to respect the rights of children, we should consider what can be done to help prevent this sort of behaviour from manifesting itself. This would not only go towards curbing recidivism, but also in preventing any initial crime from ever occuring.

Quote of the day:

"Society has erected the gallows at the end of the lane instead of guideposts and direction boards at the beginning."

- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

In The News - June

2008-06-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

June has seen some huge developments in the death penalty around the world, some welcome and some tragic.

Indonesia vowed to expedite the execution of drug smugglers. As a result of this call to push for the executions to be carried out, there were riots in Indonesia's maximum security prison. Prisoners are moved from Kerobokan to this island prison when their executions are pending. The riot was believed to have been caused by, or in sympathy for two Nigerian men who received their death warrants the day that the announcement was made to speed up executions.

The two men were shot 2 days later in a tragic conclusion to an incredibly tense week in Indonesian prisons. It's a chilling reminder that even though the appeals can last for years, the threat of death is very real, and handed down with cold blooded efficiency.

I don't need to spell out just how damaging this is to our Australians on death row in Indonesia. Only 3 of the Bali 9 are left on death row – Scott Rush, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. The three of them are yet to lodge their judicial review appeals which proved successful for Chen, Norman and Nguyen.

__________________________________________________

Perhaps the biggest news, but not so close to home, was the decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana by the Supreme Court of the United States.

The full judgment can be found here.

In Kennedy v. Louisiana the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the 8th Amendment of the Constitution (cruel and unusual punishment) prohibits executions for the crime of rape of a child under 13 in a 5/4 decision.

It has been widely criticised in America by both presidential candidates, McCain and Obama. Whether or not Obama is simply paying lip service to the death penalty in order to keep the conservatives on side is yet to be seen. The decision is seen to be judicial activism at its worst, with the majority finding that "developing standards" do not adhere to the ultimate punishment applying to non-fatal rape.

Alot of opinions I have read on the matter maintain that the elected representatives in Louisiana have been robbed of their right to represent the people of Louisiana by the subjective morals of five rogue justices. Interestingly, in all my time in New Orleans, Louisiana, most people I spoke to were entirely unaware that the death penalty applied to the crime of rape.

It is a challenging question; What severity of crime warrants the ultimate penalty? For an abolitionist, combating this question take some mental acrobatics. Comparing the suffering of different victims is always bound to raise objections. Many retentionists see this decision as a "green light" to paedophiles and a slap in the face to child rape victims, but it is just not that simple.

I'll save this question for my next blog entry. You'll have to forgive the lateness of this post, but after writing a 5000 word essay on the death penalty my creativity and passion was totally drained.

Monsters Like Us

2008-06-16T04:50:00.000-07:00

I've touched quite a few times on my thoughts when it comes to the morality of human beings who commit horrendous acts. I don't believe in words like "evil" and "inhuman" simply because they imply that the action is beyond human capabilities and comprehension. I believe that for as long as we fail to recognise certain behaviours as inherently human, we fail to understand the causes and therefore we let down ourselves and those that we condemn.

I said in my first post that I wanted to develop my opinions on the death penalty through open discussion. After I wrote my blog entry on Josef Fritzl and the international hatred that was aimed at him, a few people (who I won't name) broached the subject with me in person. They disagreed, feeling that I was being insensitive to the feelings of those people who were truly affected by what happened. I think my initial response was that I have little sympathy for people who have only had their sensibilities affronted, and that people so willing to judge when their connection to the case is as fleeting as a few articles in the newspaper don't concern me at all. When it comes to the victims and their families, it is a different story all together. I can't possibly imagine the suffering that they are going through, and wouldn't suggest that I could quantify or rationalise that suffering.

When I was interviewed for my internship in the U.S. I was asked a question that took me a few days to realise the answer to:

There is a man who has been arrested for murder in the second degree and sentenced to life in prison. While incarcerated, he smuggles a gun into the prison and shoots a prison warden to death. He is sentenced to death for the crime and while on death row he fashions a knife and stabs another warden to death. How would you justify to the families of these 3 victims that this man doesn't deserve to die? Every day this man is a risk to the lives of people who are just getting up and going to work and trying to live their life.

The answer, I realised is that there is no answer. One of our most defining qualities as human beings are the values we have been brought up with. In a situation such as this, you do not justify your values to the families of those 3 victims. You show humility in the face of their suffering and you swallow your pride. You can't reason with that sort of anguish and nor should you try.

In that case, is it ever justifiable to engage in discussion about the morality of murderers and rapists?

I read an article in the A2 (The Age) on Saturday entited "Monster Like Us: Is evil knowable, or does morality demand that we deny its humanity?" by Maria Tumarkin, that examined this very question in the context of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a crime that claimed up to 6 million souls, and has had such a wide impact, has touched so many lives directly, that perhaps it is wrong to examine it objectively and dispassionately. This post draws heavily from the article that appeared in The Age.

This article was of great interest to me, especially since I had studied the Holocaust in university and had written a few papers on whether or not "ordinary" Germans were capable of committing the atrocities or if they were inherently "evil" people.

I realised that this is an issue that has divided human thought and feeling for centuries. From Rousseau who believed that we must make "evil" intelligible, to Voltaire who stated that our morality demands that we don't.

Hannah Arendt is no doubt one of the most controversial figures on the subject of "moral relativism". She observed the trial of Eichmann, who was eventually hung by the state of Israel. She wrote on the "banality of evil":

"It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never radical, that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface... That is its banality. Only the Good has depth and can be radical."

Opinions like this always spark angry reactions, labeling them as apologist, revisionist or trivialist. More so, how can someone who has never been even remotely close to such a tragedy comment on the nature of evil. The article quoted a poem written by Aushwitz survivor Charlotte Delbo that really struck me:

"O you who know / did you know that you can see your mother dead / and not shed a tear... / Did you know that suffering is limitless / that horror cannot be circumscribed / Did you know this / You who know."

It appears there are two reasons that challenge those who seek a human element to seemingly inhuman acts. There are those who would tell you that until you have experienced such suffering yourself you are not capable to speak of it. And others who threaten that to stare evil in the eye, shake its hand and treat it with equal consideration is not far from courting the devil itself.

Before reading this article my opinions were too absolute. I believed that nobody had a monopoly on suffering, that nobody had the right to consider another human being as inhuman or evil. The author, Maria Tumarkin made it quite clear that a battle rages inside of her head:

"And so the two voices in my head grow louder. There is no peace. Not even a prospect of ceasefire. Such blind foolishness fuelled by the self-congratulatory missionary zeal to insist that the darkness is knowable, always ready to yield meaning and to be illuminated. Such pig-headed denial of what makes us human to insist that the darkness is impenetrable, off-limits."

The possibility that arrogance is the driving factor behind delving into the unknown is an interesting point of view. Perhaps it is a denial of a natural human reaction to rationalise "evil" acts, and to do so is nothing but a "pig-headed" attempt to distance ourselves from our natural emotions. Much like Marlow, who "delved deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness" and experienced first hand "the horror" of the human condition, we are delving into elements of the human psyche which are impossible to rationalise or humanise.

What is the correct answer, the right approach? What I've realised is that there isn't one. But what is necessary is that the nature of humanity is always open for discussion and that absolutism only stifles the discourse. It is inherently human to consider the incomprehensibly cruel acts of others as inhuman, while at the same time it is inherently human to search for humanity when faced with seemingly limitless evil.

Quote of the day:

"I think the only answer is to look inside ourselves, not others. The Nazi, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan killer is a man who looks like us. That's my only conclusion."

-Francois Bizot

In The News - May

2008-06-10T04:45:00.000-07:00

Two cases in the news over the past month have caught my eye and both of them are related in so far as they represent two polar issues surrounding the death penalty.

It's strange that both of these cases took place in Victoria, a state that hasn't utilised the death penalty in over 30 years.

I'll start with the first story, which occurred on 28 April 2007 when Leigh Robinson, 60, chased down Tracey Greenbury and shot her to death on her neighbours doorstep while she screamed for help. It sounds like something straight out of a horror film. There were many witnesses who observed the murder, and watched the man flee into a car and speed off. A statewide manhunt was conducted by police, and it wasn't until 30 April that he was finally apprehended.

What makes this relevant to the death penalty is Leigh Robinson's past. He was sentenced to hang after stabbing his 17 year old girlfriend to death with a carving knife in 1968. His sentence was commuted around the time when Victoria abolished the death penalty and so he was spared the noose. Newspapers claimed that Robinson had "escaped the gallows" and murdered again, painting a very clear picture that the government had failed in protecting us.

I don't need to emphasise the challenge this creates for anyone who doesn't believe in the death penalty. A man who does his time in prison, is released and then kills again. If he had been executed then Tracey Greenbury would still be alive and I can't dispute that. It's challenging to justify why this doesn't shake my opposition to capital punishment. I don't believe that the taking of a life creating the vague possibility that another life might be saved in the future is a justfication for an execution. It is akin to someone justifying a murder by saying that they've saved the life of an unknown person who could have been killed in the future by the person they murdered. Slightly rediculous and far fetched? I understand that Leigh Robinson had murdered before and therefore some would suggest that he was more likely to murder again, but there is simply no evidence that this was a probability. You can't kill people based on hunches.

The other side of the issue relates to the exoneration of Colin Campbell Ross after 86 years. Ross was executed in 1922 for allegedly murdering Alma Tirtschke. He was charged with luring the 12 year old girl into his bottle shop, raping her and killing her. Attorney-General Rob Hulls signed his exoneration on 27 May based on fresh DNA evidence, almost a century too late. The two families, that of the victim and the accused have suffered a great deal from both the cruel murder of Alma, and the unjust murder of Colin. An execution cannot be undone, and just like the murder which it seeks to avenge, has consequences that echo for lifetimes. The niece of Colin Ross described a shadow that had lifted from over her, and the stigma attached to be the descendant of a convicted child rapist and murderer.

Both of these stories, that of Leigh Robinson and Alma Tirtschke are undeniably tragic, and the consequences are irrevocable. However, no matter which way you look at it, no matter what your opinions are, one is a story of the government failing to protect its citizens, the other is a story of a government that murdered one of its citizens.

Defending the Indefensible

2008-05-26T07:57:00.000-07:00

A question that I hear quite alot when it comes to criminal defense work is, "How do you rationalise defending someone who is very possibly guilty of whatever crime they are charged with?"

It's not a baffling example of cranial compartmentalisation that allows me to justify it, it's just a belief in the fundamental rules that apply to our criminal legal system.

Every one is innocent until proven guilty. This is quite a lofty fall back line and I would be quite naive if I said that this alone makes it easy to defend someone no mater how guilty they may be. What it does reinforce in my mind is that every body deserves their day in court and everything that this entails. There are prosecutors who, by their role alone are seeking to prove the accused guilty beyond reasonable doubt by any legal means available to them. It's for this reason that an equally vigorous and diligent defense should be provided to the accused. With the two sides presenting the most favourable of arguments to their conclusion of innocence or guilt, it is hoped that the jury can decide whether reasonable doubt exists or not. It goes further than this however, and involves keeping close scrutiny on the opposing sides conduct during the trial and ensuring that the accused exercises all of the rights that are available to them.

It might seem manipulative and callous to suggest to a man arrested by police as a suspect for murder to give no comment. I can understand that such advice seems to be perverting the course of justice, but the truth is, the justice is meant for a courtroom, and to make admissions to police upon arrest almost always makes things extremely difficult in the long run. It's not manipulative to exercise your right to silence, in fact it's prudent. In my brief experience with the criminal law, police have been known to use a laundry list of manipulative tactics to get a suspect to talk. They deprive the suspect of sleep, they badger the suspect with questions, threats and promises. The whole experience is exhausting and in such a high stress situation you might be end up saying anything. There have been times in my life where I have said something under far less pressure only for that poorly thought out comment to come back to haunt me.

This is why defense lawyers exist, to act as a dedicated and committed advocates in the interests of the accused when so much power and resources is weighted against their demise.

What amazes me is that this basic mechanic of our legal system still receives strong criticism. With the recent media frenzy regarding Josef Fritzl and his incestuous relationship with his daughter that he imprisoned in a dungeon, this criticism has reached international levels. The defense lawyer of Fritzl has suggested he will plead insanity if one of the two doctors who assess him find that he is mentally unable to stand trial. I don't find this at all unjust or despicable, but a basic right that is recognised on an international humanitarian level. Yet still people call for blood, the executions of both Fritzl and his attorney, Rudolf Mayer, on the basis that "any man who can defend such an evil monster deserves to join him on the gallows."

I've written before about the use of the word "evil" and the refusal to really understand the underlying causes that surround tragedies like these. So often it seems that people get carried away by their emotions and forget that someone like Fritzl is still human and deserves equal consideration before the law.

No matter how hard you squint your eyes, pull the blankets up above your head in fear, the boogeyman exists only in your imagination. There are no inhuman beings or incomprehensible acts. Beneath every human action there is a human thought or feeling. Some of these are failings as we are by no means perfect, but it is acknowledgeing these inherently human faults that is crucially important to any opposition to the death penalty. Everything is capable of being understood, we just need to look beneath the surface rather than casting stones.

Quote of the day:

"There is an explanation for every deed, for every criminal act."

- Rudolf Mayer

In The News - 16 April

2008-04-16T22:07:00.000-07:00

There has been a huge amount of news during my silence. I'll start with the most recent and move on.

___________________________________________________________
Death Penalty Ruled Constitutional

Today the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that lethal injection is constitutional and is not cruel and unusual punishment in the case of Baze v. Ress. 7 months ago a case was brought before the Supreme Court by two men sentenced to death in Kentucky. They claimed that lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment because a) there was a good chance it may not be administered properly, and b) it paralyzes you so you have no way of expressing the pain you are suffering. The death penalty in all states was put on hold, pending this decision. I wrote an entry on it earlier this year. The decision was split 7-2.

The decision is unambigious and it is certainly disappointing. There can be no doubt that, at the very least, it has sparked debate and raised doubt. At the most, it spared some lives for a least a little while and gave defense attorneys much needed time. Perhaps it even gave some inmates the rare gift of hope, but I didn't discuss it with the men that I visited.

Interestingly, one of the majority Judges, Stevens, said in obiter:

''I am now convinced that this case will generate debate not only about the constitutionality of the three-drug protocol, and specifically about the justification for the use of the paralytic agent, pancuronium bromide, but also about the justification for the death penalty itself''

The article states that a decision by the Supreme Court on the validity of the death penalty for child rapists is expected in June.

____________________________________________________________
Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection

A case that my office was working on has had a favourable outcome. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was successful in overturning the conviction of Allen Snyder based on the prosecutor striking off black jurors unfairly. Jury selection is a notoriously exploited means through which a trial can be tipped in the favour of prosecution, especially against black defendants.

This is an incredibly powerful message to all American trial judges and prosecutors to conduct proper jury selection. It's a small step in the right direction for reforming a dangerously corruptible system.

Allen Snyder's case will go to retrial.

____________________________________________________________
Three of Bali Nine Spared Death

Three members of the Bali Nine have had their death sentences commuted to life. The "Melasti Three", Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, Si Yi Chen and Matthew Norman, have successfully appealed against their death sentences that were upgraded from 20 years to death upon successful counter-appeal by the prosecution.

While Sukumaran and Chan, the two I have been working on, were appealing to the Constitional Court, these three made a direct appeal to the Supreme Court for a judicial review of their trial. There are 51 justices on the Supreme Court bench, and so the chances of getting a new batch of more favourable, less conservative judges was high.

It's a great success for Australia and the Bali Nine, however there are still three of on death row, Scott Rush, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan. As you can imagine, the fight for these three is energised and positive. Exactly what impact this decision will have on the future of the final three on death row is unknown. Due to my work with the lawyers and the sensitive nature of the case I won't be able to write in too much detail about what I know, or what is going to happen next. Needless to say, it's a busy and exciting time.

Reflections

2008-04-03T20:16:00.000-07:00

You'll have to forgive my absence from writing anything at all. My internship with Reprieve finished in late February and since then I was travelling through Central America and only returned home a few days ago.

I wanted to reflect just briefly about my time in New Orleans. Here are some of the questions I'm asked most frequently. I'd be happy to answer any other questions, just post a comment to this.

Is New Orleans recovering from the hurricane?

In some ways yes, in others, no. For most of my time there, I stayed mostly in the Downtown, French Quarter, Marigny area which was fairly untouched by the hurricane (the odd street sign is missing). On my last day, however, I visited the 9th Ward which was still totally destroyed beyond anything I could have imagined. The reason is simple, the people who lived here are simply too poor to relocate back home and rebuild. By comparison the more affluent suburbs who were hit equally as devastatingly, are recovering quickly, with houses being built, and many of the houses still standing (due to stronger structures). Many of these houses are being built on stilts.

What is your most memorable moment?

All of my visits to Angola State Penitentiary. Every trip up there was eye opening and humbling. I would recommend to anyone who feels passionate about the abolition of the death penalty the get in contact with a death row inmate. Communicating with them in genuine good will is one of the kindest things you could possibly give them. They have only other prisoners and guards to talk to much of the time, and so an outside perspective, a fresh voice, helps them persevere more than you could possibly know. Reprieve offer a penpal program, click here. There are also numerous websites where inmates on death row can advertise themselves as pen pals. Unfortunately, this is often abused by relgious fanatics and crazy women who want to dote on a helpless human being. Don't write to these men with pity in your heart, just compassion.

What was your biggest disappointment?

Not being let into a jury members house. We conducted jury interviews which is an attempt to find some sort of jury misconduct in a trial. We ask them questions to try and ascertain if they, or any one else did anything that is not prohibited during deliberation. I went to the houses of 2 jurors, and both of them told us to go away, that they didn't want to talk to us. My other colleagues had more success, finding evidence of misconduct. It would have been a great experience to have interviewed a juror, but no such luck.

What was your most moving experience?

Interviewing the grandmother of an accused. As we spoke to her about her grandson's upcoming trial, I remember the sheer absurdity that seemed to accompany a fairly placid conversation regarding the murder of this 19 year old boy. Talking to someone about the the future execution of a family member as if it was simply an everyday thing was incredibly confronting. Photos of the boy lined her wall just like you'd expect in any grandmother's house, especially mine. No one should have to go through this.

What was it like meeting people on death row?

Nothing like what I expected. They were funny, friendly, optimistic, remorseful and contemplative. I was not expecting to meet crazies but I was expecting them to be far more subdued. I, personally, couldn't imagine functioning coherently with the constant thought of impending execution upon me every day. Death Rown Syndrome is a recognised mental illness that is caused by the isolation of the prison cell and, no doubt, the constant fear they endure. Making conversation with a man who is limited to a cell 23 hours a day, and a courtyard for the other hour was a challenge, but a good experience. The obvious questions that we all learn as social etiquette on how to make polite conversation doesn't apply. It was challenging, and they were naturally apprehensive when they met me, but they opened up after a little while. I still keep in touch with one of them.

What shocked you most about the Louisiana legal system?

There is a man in Louisiana who has been incarcerated for 6 years without trial. The constitutional maximum is 2 years. How this is possible is beyond me. The reason for the delay is because the parish does not have the money to give him a capital trial, so they delay until they have the money. This is the same parish that apparently has satanic cults roaming around, run by the son of the sheriff. Scary? This son is also implicated in numerous murders. He apparently offers poor people large sums of money to off certain people. I was more than a little anxious while I was there.

Did you save anyone's life?

No. It's a long and arduous process. Often the greatest development is simply a retrial, which then takes months to complete.

What now?

I'm returning to work with Julian McMahon in defense of the Bali 9, hopefully staying involved with Reprieve and writing a 5000 word essay on the death penalty. My topic will be on sentencing child rapists to death and the implications of non-fatal crimes being punishable by death.

(A little quote sent to me by Arthi. Thanks for reading!)
Quote of the day:

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest"

- Elie Wiesel

In The News - 31 January

2008-01-31T16:07:00.000-08:00

Just Punishment was screened at the HRAFF earlier this month. It's now being screened around Australia and will hopefully be aired around Asia over the coming years.

It's an amazingly moving story about the reformation of Van Nguyen on death row in Singapore. It was filmed over 2 years, following the lives of those close to him, and his own life through a diary he kept while incarcerated.

See the trailer here.

The Politics of Life and Death

2008-01-28T09:59:00.000-08:00

It always seems like the death penalty is an issue that politicians use for their own political advantage. The politics of life and death can twist the real questions surrounding capital punishment into an aberration.

The best example at the moment is the question of the "constituionality" of the death penalty. The "three drug cocktail" debate that is before the U.S. Supreme Court is utterly surreal. First of all, an anesthetic is administered into the body, followed by pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. The former paralyzing all the muscles in the body and the latter causing cardiac arrest. The real issue that is before the Supreme Court is the possiblity of the anesthetic being administered incorrectly, followed by the condemned man suffering an excruciating death, trapped within his own body that is incapable of expressing the agony they are experiencing. Imagine waking up during open heart surgery, but unable to move or communicate that you are able feel your body being torn open. The possiblity of the anesthetic being incorrectly administered is all too real, especially when the hypocratic oath forbids real physicians from being present. I know very little about anesthetics, but I do know that being an anesthetist is almost as specialised and complex as being a surgeon, and the intricacies of putting a person "under" is somewhat of an art form.

The purpose behind a drug that paralyzes the muscles is to make the death easier for the community to swallow. A politician won't be able to sell to the public a form of execution that leaves the victim convulsing wildly on the table. Essentially, it's for our good that they are being stopped from expressing any signs of pain or agony. Justice Stevens recognised this,

“I’m terribly troubled by the fact that the second drug is what seems to cause all the risk of excruciating pain and seems to be almost totally unnecessary.”

It may seem that arguing about the constitutionality of lethal injection is conceding the legitimacy of the death penalty. I believe that arguing about humane murder is an exercise in futility, yet it does serve a valuable purpose. With every day that passes without an execution, the condemned are given a reprieve, the system loses momentum and opposition to the death penalty must inevitably grow from this. Take away the constant stream of executions and more and more people will lose the taste for it.

The death penalty is, of course, going to be a strong issue during the U.S. election this year, and I was disappointed to hear that all the Democratic candidates are pro-death. It almost seems like a political necessity to avoid appearing soft on crime.

Back home we have a similar problem with the Rudd government stating that “The Australian Government will intervene to oppose the death penalty only in the case of Australian citizens.” The words "intervene" suggests different emphasis than the Howard government which stated quite clearly that "I find it impossible … to argue that those executions should not take place when they have murdered my fellow countrymen and women." The difference in approach is in the nationality, rather than the nature of the crime. What I'm trying to say is, it's rational to say that Australia will not use forceful negotiation to save the lives of non-Australians on death row in other countries. It makes sense to me that a nation has no place to "intervene" in the autonomy of another nations democratic processes unless it threatens the lives of that former countries nationals. Voting at the United Nations for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty tells me that the Rudd government is pushing for a world free of state executions.

Even though Australia won't intervene in the executions of the Bali Bombers, it shouldn't support them through silent approval. There is a thin line between refusing to "intervene" and condoning something. An official government policy that states that Australia does not support executions has just been made to the U.N., so why can't we say the same thing to Indonesia? It's not "intervention" to simply state our stance on a matter.

And then that contradictory, racist and political head rears itself. Mr. Rudd will never intervene to save the lives of a terrorist. What about an Australian terrorist? Is this why David Hicks spent 6 years in an illegal prison without trial, because he was a terrorist? What if David Hicks was facing a firing squad in America after being found guilty of terrorist acts? I call this view contradictory because to say we will never condone the executions of Australians, but never save the lives of terrorists creates a huge logical gap. I call it racist because it suggests that terrorists only come from elsewhere, and that it's not possible that they could originate from "white" Australia. Right now Kevin Rudd's approach on the death penalty is purely political. He's playing the game, pandering to what we want to hear, but he's talking himself in circles.

So why does politics always breed the wrong focus on the issues behind capital punishment? The rhetoric that is used by politicians when they talk about the death of other human beings simply creates static around the issue. So many people have no idea that executions in America are on hold. So many people in Louisiana have no idea that the rape of a child attracts the death penalty. Why are so many Americans disinformed or disinterested in the process? It almost seems like state killing is a political toy born of ignorance and fear. I know that I can't change the fact that politics is mercurical and pragmatic by nature, but if I had my way I'd make those politicians a little bit more aware of just what their gambling with.

Quote of the day:
"How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?"

-Bob Dylan

It's Always Darkest Before Dawn

2008-01-03T15:26:00.000-08:00

The sayings usually go, an eye for an eye or a life for a life and from one perspective it seems entirely fair and just, but from another it seems hypocritical and shallow. The situation in America with regards to the death penalty is like a tale of two cities, it's the best of times and it's the worst of times, no matter what point of view you hold.

On the one hand, as I wrote about in my last entry, there seems to be a growing distaste for capital punishment as a form of justice with New Jersey being the first American state to abolish it in 27 years. It goes further with the United States Supreme Court currently considering the constitutionality of lethal injection. In the unlikely event that it will be found too cruel a form of execution, I can only wonder at what possible alternative they could dream up. Whatever the case, the nation is taking note of the Court's pending decision.

The same is also occurring, however, on the opposite side of the coin. Since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976 no one has been executed for a crime that was anything less than a homicide. In Coker v Georgia it was ruled by the Supreme Court that the rape of an adult woman could not attract the death sentence because it was not proportionate to the crime. The case failed to address any other offences which were not grievous enough to attract the death penalty, but it would be necessary in the future to show that it is a worse crime than rape.

In 1995 Louisiana enacted a statute under which it was a capital offence to rape a child under the age of 12. This decision effectively found that the rape of a young child could destroy the life of a child and therefore was equally as morally corrupt as murder. The practice of comparing suffering is always dangerous ground, especially something as volatile as rape. The vulnerability of the child is the key issue, and in other states these laws include the rape of elderly persons. A handful of American states have variations, such as the execution of repeat offenders, however the basic premise remains the same, the execution of people who have not committed a crime of homicide.

Two men now sit on death row in Louisiana, Patrick Kennedy being the first to be convicted of the rape of an 8 year old girl, and the second convicted only a month ago.

Personally, I find it difficult to see murder as more deserving of the death penalty than rape, and it seems unhelpful to discuss degrees of what qualifies more for a death sentence when I believe that nothing fulfills such a standard. However, there can be no doubt that an extension of death penalty beyond normal social standards is worrying. Much like the cases of Atkins and Roper, where the executions of mentally disabled and juveniles was found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, the case of Patrick Kennedy raises similar questions.

Indeed, Patrick Kennedy has been granted Cert to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. If precedent prevails, the question will be approached in the same manner which it was in Atkins and Roper, where the court looked at the national consensus, jury considerations and international trends. There can be no doubt that the vast majority of the country does not feel that child rape warrants execution, and internationally the same standard would seem to prevail. The decision will have far reaching effects whatever way it goes. It could spell the end of executions for non-homicide crimes with the court deciding to set a standard rather than just restricting themselves to the facts of the case at hand. There are still far more hurdles to overcome however.

Child sex offenders are easy targets, they often suffer from psycho-sexual disorders and without the right support are likely to reoffend. I was reading the Times-Picayune the other day and turned to the announcements section. Under the Legal Notices there were the photos of about 8 men, all sex offenders, all forced by law to announce their prior convictions when moving address. That is one way to ensure that a sex offender is unable to reoffend, however it certainly doesn't offer them any sort of social support, infact it likely serves to vilify them and make them victim to hate crimes within their neighbourhood. I'm not saying that communities shouldn't be made aware of when sex offenders move into their area, but it should be done in a way that will discourage any sort of vilification.

The movie Little Children focuses ever so slightly on a man who is harassed by his neighbours for revealing himself to some children. Without spoiling the film, the result of his constant vilification and total lack of social support has serious consequences for both him and his family.

The step towards the execution of child rapists almost seems to draw from the Stalin-esque concept of "No man, no problem." This approach is based on the likelihood of the person reoffending, and so, by simply removing them from existence there is no fear of another child being harmed. This cold and callous approach is indicative of the extent of respect and support that such people receive from a system which fails to rehabilitate them. Either a community can attempt to help these people or they can kill them off.

For me, the right direction seems obvious, but the right answer more clouded. I don't know the most effective systems or methods of support to offer child sex offenders, but I do know the first step is to treat them like human beings.

Quote of the day:

“The guilty one is not the who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.”
- Victor Hugo

In The News - 17 December

2007-12-17T11:52:00.000-08:00

This morning the Governer of New Jersey signed a bill that would repeal the death penalty. 8 men on death row will have their sentences commuted to life without parole. This is a pretty big deal in a country where no state has abolished capital punishment in 3 decades. It also comes at a time when the Supreme Court is considering whether or not lethal injection is cruel or unusual punishment.

I can only hope that some sort of domino effect results from one state taking some positive action. Apparently alot of states are seriously discussing it, but down South they are sentencing people to death like it's nobody's business. Infact, just on Wednesday last week the second man ever in Louisiana was sentenced to death for aggravated rape in Shreveport. Aggravated rape in Louisiana is the rape of a person under 12.

In news back home, K-Rudd seems to have made it pretty clear that he intends to push strongly for the sentences imposed on the Bali 6 to be commuted.

Perhaps the most imporant news, it's about 5 degrees outside and I don't have a bloody jacket because I decided to "pack light". I'm a fool who thinks he is immune to the cold, even my sleeping bag is about as thick as a bed sheet.

The Dearly Departed

2007-12-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

It's easy to get romantic about our life experiences, to look at things through from a sort of rose coloured nostalgic perspective. Throughout our lives we no doubt have a wealth of memorable moments, but there are of course many that we won't have a chance to experience. What is life if not a string of moments, one after another. Living life is about having experiences, the good along with the bad.

I visited three men on Death Row yesterday at Angola prison but that's not where my story begins.

When I arrived home late from work on Thursday night I found all of my neighbours gathered in the courtyard having dinner. They told me that they planned to watch "Dead Man Walking" that night, a movie that is arguably the most renowned cinematic representation of "southern hospitality". So many times I've walked in to Blockbuster with every intention of renting the movie, only to be distracted by "Blades of Glory" as a new release, or some other Hollywood flick which promises a much more upbeat evening. What are the chances that the day before my journey out to Angola a group of people I live with will decide to watch that very movie, a total coincidence. I had to get up at 6am Friday morning but I decided to make a date with destiny and just watch it.

For obvious reasons I can't write about the names or the details of the conversations that I had with those three men, but I will write about the effect that it had on me. Angola sits on the border of Mississippi and Louisiana and is one of the biggest state prisons in America. It's not what you'd expect if you just arrived there out of the blue. It's a giant chunk of land with farms and animals on one side, and on the other concrete buildings, high fences and row upon row of razor wire. It takes nearly 1o minutes to drive from one end of the prison to the row, which sits right at the end of the facility.

The rooms in which you sit are a little bigger than a telephone booth. Thick plate glass separates you from them and a phone exists as your link of communication. When you first enter the room you're alone for awhile as the guards retrieve the man from his quarters. The glass is so dense you can see your reflection in it as you wait. Your own image sits, staring back at you, perfectly in line with the empty chair on the other side. At this moment I was hit with the most overwhelming feeling of isolation. How easily I could be sitting in that chair on the other side. How incomprehensible it is that an inch of glass can distinguish the living from those condemned to die. The feeling of helplessness is difficult to deal with when it's just sympathetic, and so it is impossible to imagine how it must feel when it is the cold reality you wake up to every morning.

This is a life experience I hope to never have to live through, but it is certainly one that I can't help but wish I could understand. A strange respect and deference grows from this sort of inability to comprehend. They must be incredibly brave to keep pushing forward every day when others are working hard to kill them. It's so easy to admire someone for what they have endured in their life. The stress and anxiety that is created when you live everyday with the thought that there are people who hate you and want to kill you is something we appreciate in our ANZACS, both dead and living. We revere them for sacrificing their peace and safety for turmoil and violence. We vow every year, lest we forget, that their sacrifices were not in vain nor will they ever go unappreciated. Our Diggers are respected for what they accomplished, but more importantly, they are considered heroes for what they endured.

There is a fine line between respecting peoples sacrifices, and glorifying warfare. The same goes for these men on the row, after all they are men who endure the threat and fear of death every moment of their lives. Are they heroes too? It's easy to get romantic, to get carried away with the injustice of it all and to treat them like heroes. They aren't heroes, nor are they martyrs. It's unhelpful to take the bleeding heart approach and treat them like helpless victims, and god forbid pity them. I hate that word, pity.

It's easy to justify why I would fight for the life of someone on Death Row, but it's hard to stop yourself from putting them up on a pedestal. It's hard to fight for the rights of people who did not respect the rights of others. It's hard to believe that the person sitting across from you murdered someone. It's even harder to believe that someone intends to murder them in the future. I didn't look up the crimes committed by the men I visited because I didn't feel like it should matter. I wanted to treat them with the respect and dignity I'd give anyone else. Their punishment lies in the arresting of their liberties, not in being treated like something less than human. At the same time I have to always remember how important it is that these people be held responsible for their actions. It's difficult to give your heart and mind to a cause which demands that you curb your compassion at the same time.

In "Dead Man Walking", Helen Prejean, a nun living in New Orleans, battles against the values and expectations of those around her. Matthew Poncelet is a man convicted of double murder and sentenced to death, but still professing his innocence. The movie depicted the struggle of her urge to save the mans life with the fact that he was entirely unrepentant. It's hard not to feel a great deal of sympathy for a man who says with great conviction that he is innocent. The movie tricks you into believing fully in Poncelet's innocence by showing the moment of the crime in a flashback, with another man committing the murder. But the message in the film isn't that the Death Penalty is horrible because it could possibly execute an innocent person, that doesn't go nearly far enough. Moments before his execution he admits to the murder and it's as if the director has pulled the supports out from under you. The movie is no longer about innocence or guilt, but life or death. The viewer is forced to watch the execution of a guilty man, but a man nevertheless. The scene of his execution is cut intermittently with the true version of events during the crime, which confirm that he did indeed commit the murder. The message seems, at least to me, to be that no man deserves to die, but that such compassion or sympathy should never forget or forgive the crimes that they committed.

The experience of meeting those men on Death Row was incredibly challenging and confronting and something I would struggle to forget. They spoke about their experiences with the sort careful consideration that we so rarely afford ourselves in our modern, hectic lives. I'll finish this post off with the words of one of the guys I spoke with. It's not the last time I'll speak to them, and it's certainly not the last time I'll walk away from that prison feeling absolutely humbled.

Quote of the day:

"We're not monsters. We're just people, people who have made really stupid choices but people nevertheless. No-one can take that away from us."

Reprieve and New Orleans

2007-11-28T13:58:00.000-08:00

For those of you who don't know, I've just left Australia to undertake an internship with the LCAC through Reprieve. I've mentioned Reprieve in this blog but never in a huge amount of detail. They have essentially placed me here to work as a volunteer for three months. I'll be working in the Trials division which deals with the cases from conviction. The LCAC generally work with indigent clients who are unable to afford adequate representation and the cases are always those that attract the death penalty, ie. capital cases.

The work hasn't started filtering in yet. I've been absolutely knocked dead by the 14 hour time difference, so it's likely I'll be out of commission until next week. I'm not going to fill this blog with my random musings about life in "The Big Easy", but no doubt my experiences with the American legal system and the people on death row will draw from it.

My role will involve working with the investigators by interviewing witnesses and, of course, filing concisely to make the work easier for the lawyers. I'll also being assisting the lawyers with trial preparations etc. The last and most important role we play is a purely humanitarian one. The Center frequently sends us out to visit the prisoners on death row to just talk to them and keep them company. It's no surprise that on death row they aren't treated with the respect and dignity that everyone deserves, and it's hoped that our visits help restore a sense of humanity to the criminal justice system.

It's not going to be easy and it certainly won't be fun, but breaking the law doesn't make them any less of a human and it just as easily could have been me on the other side of that glass.

Quote of the day:

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.
-Oscar Wilde

In The News - 30 October

2007-10-30T02:03:00.000-07:00

The decision was handed down by the Constitutional Court today. The mood was tentatively hopeful but that was quickly dashed at the beginning of the hearing. The Court immediately rejected the grounds of appeal for the three Australians, stating that foreigners could not enact provisions of the Indonesian Constitution.

This wasn't a killing blow, however, and there was still hope that the appeal would be carried by the two Indonesian women joined to the appeal.

A few hours later the judges handed down their final decision. It wasn't what I was hoping for and it was nothing short of disappointing and at best it wasn't crushing. It was ruled the right to life made out in the Constitution was not absolute and would bend under considerations of the damage done to their society by drugs. The decision was split 6-3.

That's where there is perhaps the greatest progress to come from the case. 1/3 of the bench in favour of the proposition is certainly more than just a modest amount of support. Also, there was a recommendation by a majority of the judges to create a 10 year probation of good behaviour. Julian McMahon summarised it as:

"Instead of just going out and pursuing the death penalty they are really saying... we hope that in the future the law can be changed and that there can be a 10-year probation period so that if after 10 years you've reformed, then your penalty can be reduced to a 20-year penalty,"

At first I thought this would be a strange outcome and I still don't quite understand the intricacies of it. Will it mean that lawyers will have to do everything in their power to keep their client alive for 10 years? Wouldn't this encourage time wasting and vexatious appeals? I'm not too sure, but it's certainly encouraging and shows that they are very focused on some sort of law reform in the area. And like a friend of mine said earlier, you can't change a country's values over night.

The next step is to follow on with the planned Judicial Review, albeit without the support of the majority of the Constitutional Court. This will be an incredibly challenging stage as it will essentially involve asking the Court to reconsider their previous decision, however thie time it is done with not only three justices' minority support, but also an Indonesia with a less dogmatic Attorney-General and 2 years of political and social change.

There is currently another appeal taking place for some others of the Bali 9 on death row through Judicial Review. The outcome of that case will be crucial in determining the success for Sukumaran, Chan and Rush.

Hopefully after the election, when there is a less pressure to say what everyone wants to hear, the Australian Government will be able to form a consistent approach in support of the Bali 9. On that note, the executions of the Bali Bombers seems to be imminent. If it occurs before the election you can be sure it will be twisted every which way for political purposes and so I really hope that there is as little conditional support for their executions as possible. Ideally there could be some really strong resistance by the Australian Government, even if just to tell them that we do not support their executions. Whatever happens it will have massive consequences for Australians on death row in Indonesia.

"I can't help that, I can't help that"

2007-10-09T18:02:00.000-07:00

So it's all over the news in Australia at the moment, the death penalty. The Attorney General in Jakarta has softened on the issue and has agreed to enforce whatever verdict the Constitutional Court of Indonesia hand down. This could mean, at best, that the the Indonesian Constitutional right to life, Undang-Undang Dasar cl. 28 (i), will be upheld and applied to not only citizens but foreign nationals and that it will apply retrospectively. I have been saying for months to keep your eye out for this decision, and the lawyers are telling me that it should come any minute now, but no one can really say exactly when it will come.

This entire issue comes at a painful time for many Australians with the anniversary of the bombings. Perhaps with the assurances of the Attorney General in Jakarta that the Bali bombers will not be executed soon will mean that some respite on the issue can be given to those in mourning. When both political parties are fighting tooth and nail for this next election it perhaps isn't helpful that the issue is being thrown around carelessly, both by Howard and Rudd. I think it was a real fear amongst like-minded abolitionists that the Bali bombers would be executed on the 12 October as a symbolic act of retribution.

However, don't let me tell you that this isn't something that needs to be discussed urgently. If the Indonesian government is showing signs of slowing then we should re-double our efforts.

___________________________________________________________________________

Beyond the political issues that are at hand, I found something incredibly touching and honest in a statement to The Age from, Dave Byron, the father of one of the victims of the Bali bombings, Chloe Byron. To have lost his 15 year old daughter must have been no doubt traumatising and it is tragic to see that he still suffers so greatly from the scars of his loss. He is calling for the death of the Bali bombers to "protect" his daughter and he is also asking for political rhetoric on the issue to stop.

This really struck me though...

"Realistically, for me, it is just vengeance and vengeance isn't good, but I can't help that, I can't help that."

The victims of capital punishment don't stop at the death of the condemned. The family and friends of the condemned suffer for the rest of their lives from images of the execution and the loss of their loved one. It must be unbearably traumatic to watch a State slowly and systematically put a loved one to death. The prison wardens are put in a situation where they witness death every week. And finally, the other side of the spectrum, the families of the victims who are left to indulge their urge for revenge in the blood of the condemned.

There is book I read a year ago called "Don't Kill In Our Names" which examines personal stories of loss at the hands of a criminal which ultimately ending in forgiveness, sometimes after their execution and sometimes before. The book depicts some incredibly difficult and moving journeys towards ultimately quelling the urge for revenge. One quote from the book is particularly applicable,

"To say that vengeance and closure can exist together is a contradiction... the other side of vengeance is anger and as long as we hold onto our anger, our grieving isn't over."

Dave Byron wants to protect the memory of his daughter by exacting revenge on the three murderers who took her away from him. Perhaps we should also try protecting him from something he "can't help".

Quote of the day:

"Revenge is a confession of pain."

-Latin proverb

In The News - 8 October

2007-10-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

Finally there is a strong voice coming from Australian politics that it is totally and unashamedly opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances. Robert McLelland of the Australian Labor Party has made it clear that under no circumstances, here or abroad, will a Labor Government condone State sanctioned executions. This means both Saddam Hussein and the Bali Bombers.

Watch closely now as John Howard gives a text book definition of double standards. He would have us believe that we, as a Nation, prohibit the death penalty in Australia and from being exacted upon Australians overseas, yet, we are entirely in support of the execution of foreign nationals in their own countries. This sort of approach smacks of, at worst, racism and at the absolute best, hypocrisy.

To think that somehow Indonesian lives are worth less than the lives of Australians overseas seems quite blatantly racist. Perhaps it is driven by ideas of sovereignty, that Indonesia has a right to enforce its laws on its own constituents, but leave ours out of it. For starters, most Indonesians are undoubtedly more appalled by drug traffickers than terrorists. Drug trafficking has been a massive economic and social burden on nearly all the South and East Asian countries. Drugs are a far greater scourge than terrorism and so the disgust is understandable. Watching Howard suggesting with a straight face that the lives of Australians are to be held to a higher standard than the lives of foreigners is completely in conflict with any attempts to try to save the lives of the Bali 6. I understand that as our Prime Minister he is supposed to have our best interests at heart, but if he was truly interested in protecting Australians then why would he so cooly condone the use of capital punishment in a country where 6 Australians face that very fate.

"What other countries do is ultimately a matter for those other countries..."

What messsage does this send to Indonesia? When we suggest that the use of the death penalty is degrading and inhuman yet we support it in some cases. It completely undermines any attempt by other Australians to saves the lives of the Bali 6. John Howard's hate mongering for the Bali bombers is disgusting and is quite frankly racist and hypocritical.

"I find it impossible to argue that those executions should not take place when they have murdered my fellow countrymen and women."

I simply don't understand what line John Howard is drawing to justify the Bali bombers' execution. It could not possibly be the act of murder which he is condeming as worthy of death, for surely in such a case Martin Bryant should be executed for the Port Arthur Massacre (barring his possible psychological problems). So if it isn't the crime, then all I can isolate this to is the race and nationality of the offender. John Howard feels that the life of an Australian is worth more than the life of an Indonesian, quite simply. This sort of approach is entirely consistent with his xenophobic foreign policy in regards to refugees and asylum seekers.

We are a nation either absolutely opposed to the death penalty or we are a nation who support it. If we want to have any chance of helping to encourage the legal systems of our neighbours to consider abolishing capital punishment then it is imperative that we form a united and unconditional opposition to the death penalty. We can't come to the steps of Indonesia asking for them to spare the lives of Australians simply because they are exactly that, Australians.

Prime Minister, should those 6 boys be executed in Indonesia then the blood is on your hands.

I can only pray that a Labor government can hastily undo the damage you have already done to the prospects of saving their lives.

Values At Any Price

2007-10-03T20:12:00.000-07:00

That title doesn't really make sense, but who really cares?

I'm now officially travelling to America for 3 months to do an Internship. I'll be doing a placement as a volunteer with the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center in New Orleans, leaving on 27 November '07. I always thought New Orleans was the capital of Louisiana but I was surprised to find out that it's a city called Baton Rouge. The capital is more industrial and less populated than the Home of Jazz though! I think the center I am working in is on the border of the French Quarter which was saved from Hurricane Katrina because it rests on an elevated part of the land.

I applied for the Internship early this year and went through a huge application process of forms and interviews etc. My final interview was with Richard Bourke and if you remember he was the member from Reprieve who held the lecture on the death penalty at Melbourne University which first got me to really engage with the issue. Richard is quite famous amongst the interns for being able to systematically break you down during the interview process and challenge every reason you have for opposing the death penalty. I haven't met anyone who said their interview with him was a cake walk. Well, he did exactly that to me and I actually came away from the experience quite humbled.

The point he was trying to emphasise to me during the whole interview was that the only thing that separates me from anyone else who supports the death penalty are my values. I'm not answering to some higher moral calling that other people are to simple or too barbaric to understand. Now, that's not to say that I can't believe that the death penalty makes its constituents more brutal and unfeeling, but its an understanding that it does not necessarily make them bad people. And this is something that I realised I had never really considered. By acknowledging that the only difference between myself and a supporter of the death penalty are our values, not some inherent goodness or badness within us as human beings. If I had been born in Houston Texas to a typical family then it is more than likely that I would have been an avid supporter of the death penalty because that is the status quo I have been brought up in.

That sort of understanding and humility when dealing with your own values on any subject is actually something that is incredibly important. You can't win an argument with someone if you treat their standpoint as barbaric and inhuman, and you certainly won't convert them to your opinion. But if you can come to understand that it is something as simple as your values that separates you and that you might just have easily carried their values then you can approach the issue with the sort of humility that you need in a conflict of opinion.

Not only that, but it is also central to the issue of capital punishment and revenge. The systematic demonisation of people on death row is not uncommon at all. By dehumanising the condemned we are able to very simply classify them as unfit to live. Much like Camus' Outsider, if someone flaunts society's most basic standards and mores then they become a "heart that is so empty it threatens to engulf society." And this is where the basic concept of understanding comes into play. Sentencing someone to death shows an inability or unwillingness to understand what drives the person to do what they do, which would in turn require you to acknowledge them as a human. To acknowledge that, however, requires humility because it is in an uncomfortable thought to so closely associate yourself with someone that does not carry your same standards or values. Humility is the ability to admit that you have no right to say whether that persons actions have forfeited their right to life, or that you are any more of a human being than they.

A good example of this can be found in one of the greatest atrocities in human history, the Jewish genocide. Hitler and Himmler were not the men in the field murdering millions of Jews, they simply imparted their views and values on the men and women who would listen. And they did listen, because Hitler was an incredibly captivating and zealous speaker who could rouse crowds of thousands into a frenzy of passion. One of my school teachers was at a Nuremburg Rally and he was so overcome by the mass of people screaming "Zeig Heil" that he couldn't help but do the same through a stream of tears. So the question is, are the police and soldiers who instituted Hitler's Final Solution to the Jewish Question normal human beings? Consider this passage from Daniel Goldhagen's "Hitlers Willing Executioners" that describes the massacre of Jozefow where the victims were taken from the city to the outlying woods and executed one by one to prevent a panic amongst the masses who waited in the town center.

“The walk into the woods afforded each perpetrator an opportunity for reflection. Walking side by side with his victim, he was able to imbue the human form beside him with the projections of his mind. Some of the Germans, of course, had children walking beside them… Did he see a little frail girl, and ask himself why he was about to kill this little, delicate human being… After the walk… the Germans had to raise his gun to the back of the head, now face down on the ground, that had bobbed along beside him, pull the trigger, and watch… the little girl, twitch and then move no more.”

To understand what could drive human beings to such lengths is a question that is both difficult to tackle and impossible to comprehend fully. Some people would suggest that the soldiers were systematically brutalised to a point that they were inhuman, but I would counter that brutalisation is an incredibly human response to an excess of violence. Much like our ears are able to adapt to frequent loud noises, or our nose is able to stop receiving certain scents, so to is the brain able to adapt to brutality. What could possibly be more human that such a response? If I was a normal German 22 year old in 1942 I have very little doubt that I could have been in a similar position. Most people would like to think they would never be capable of mass murder and given our upbringing and values it is likely we would be incapable. But change the context in which we live and you change our values and thus we are capable of completely different actions.

If you can understand that you are not dissimilar to those that carry different values to yourself then you are far more able to comprehend what drove them to do whatever they did and the beliefs that they held at the time. A quite famous historian, Browning, once said that "Explaining is not excusing; understanding is not forgiving". By acknowledging the human elements of any action or belief, rather than labelling it as inhuman, we are able to explain and understand the why and the how, and so we are better able to deal with it in the future. Perhaps if we had acknowledged that normal human beings are capable of genocide the International community would have been quicker to acknowledge it in Rwanda.

So, my hope is that by understanding that what separates me from a supporter of the death penalty in Louisiana is actually very little, I can perhaps present an alternative set of values and put them into practice in a way that will benefit my cause.

Quote of the day:

"We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force."

-Ernesto "Che" Guevara

In The News - 30 September

2007-09-30T19:45:00.000-07:00

The Bali Bombers are to be executed now that their pleas for clemency to the Supreme Court of Indonesia have been refused. What drives a heart to become so cold and so callous that it conceives a plan to murder hundreds of innocent people

Amrozi, the smiling assassin they called him, didn't show any remorse. He laughed when they handed down the death sentence. It's for that reason that he should be executed because any sort of being that shows no remorse for cold blooded mass murder shouldn't be allowed to exist. But hold on, Texas alone has executed around 50 people this year. What could be more cold blooded than a state sanctioned execution. Who is setting the examples for how to properly deal with human life? If the Western world chooses to continue to disrespect the right to life then how can we expect the same in return.

When I see photos of Amrozi smiling away at the cameras I feel anger and frustration. It's difficult to comprehend and to be quite frank, it's quite scary. To look death, the great equalizer, in the eye and smile is something that few of us could understand. I think it's what makes suicide bombers so confronting to Western society. That sort of single minded devotion to a cause is something that the freedom loving people of the Western world could never demonstrate. At the same time you have to understand what is driving them to do what they do. Look for the underlying reasons and you no doubt find alot of pain and suffering that has hardened their hearts and made them forget their compassion.

I read in the newspaper that the victims' families were horrified to find out that Amnesty International is pushing for their executions to commuted. At a time when 6 Australians are on death row in Indonesia, Australia's stance couldn't be more crucial. Do these family members realise that by "vindicating" their lost loved ones, they are effectively condemning 6 young Australians to death as well? I wouldn't say this is selfish, and I wouldn't expect them to understand the point I'm trying to make and I guess that is the nature of grief.

"There certainly couldn't have been anyone from Amnesty International walking through the morgue like I did, trying to sort through body parts trying to identify my mates."

An execution isn't going to make those images go away, nor is it going to soothe the pain. If you hold onto your anger that hard then you are bound to lose your humanity as well.

I'm not going to suggest that they shouldn't be executed because it's what they want. I don't care if they become Martyrs or if they really do get 50 black-eyed virgins. I'm not interested in seeing them rot in a prison for the rest of their lives. Don't get me wrong, I want them to be punished for their crimes, but it simply doesn't need to be death.

Who are we doing it for? The victims? It's not going to bring them back. The family? Perhaps, but should they left to cling on to their anger and grief to the point that another corpse is added to the mix? It might be for the sake of civilised society, but it's not going to deter more terrorism and it will certainly make us that little bit more cold hearted. One step closer to what we are running from.

___________________________________________________________________

A decision on the Bali 9 Constitutional Appeal in Jakarta is imminent. If successful mandatory death sentences for drug traffickers could be ruled unconstitutional and the Bali 9 resentenced.

The Body Is The Last To Sigh

2007-06-12T08:49:00.000-07:00

Since the execution of Ronald Ryan in Australia we have been a country strongly opposed to the death penalty. The collective memory of those who were alive at the time of his hanging is so influential that many would equate it as the single greatest turning point in political and social thought in Australia.

I recently attended a panel discussion, organised by Reprieve Australia and hosted by DLA Phillips Fox, that involved a speaker by the name of Brian Morley, who was one of the journalists that was invited to witness Ryan's execution. He spoke at length about the political background of Ryan's execution, the massive protests and the desperate attempts of his lawyers to stay his execution. He told us about the invitation to witness the execution that he received, and recalled that it seemed almost like a cocktail party invite. He remembers sitting in the press room with the other journalists, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and talking feverishly about the news they would soon have to report on. However, his tone of voice changed drastically when he spoke of what he witnessed. After his hanging there was almost perfect silence in the press room, except for one reporter who was throwing up in the corner. Some men in the media room have since passed away, some committed suicide and the others refuse to speak of what they witnessed. Brian Morley told us this story as he choked back tears; "No one should suffer the way that man suffered." It was incredibly powerful watching a man like Morley, well into his 60's with a sturdy build and strong presence, failing to hold back the tears spurred on by a single moment in his life that had long past.

His pain was emphasised by the words of another speaker, Andrea Durbach, who told about her nervous breakdown nearly 10 years after she saved a large group of African men sentenced to death for the murder of only 1 man based on the doctrine of "common purpose". Even though she had been successful, she was so torn by the experience that she suffered from post-traumatic stress. A friend of hers told her that "The body is the always the last to sigh..." and that it was simply her body catching up with her mind. That her experiences could make such an incredibly powerful impact on her life 10 years later only serves to highlight the mental anguish she must have buried during the appeal process.

The daughter of George Hodson, the prison officer shot and killed by Ronald Ryan during his escape, then also spoke of the great pain the entire event had caused her over the last 40 years. She spoke of her forgiveness for the family of Ryan, specifically his daughter, and about the suffering she must have gone through when her father was executed. It seemed so clear and so tragic what these two women had in common. They had both lost their fathers at a young age and the both understood one another's suffering. The consequences of their fathers' deaths, although directly linked, could not have been more different, yet the two women were united through their pain. Both of them realised that all Ryan's execution had achieved was to compound the suffering of others, and do nothing to alleviate their own, while even Hodson and his colleagues still suffer to this day.

As we move further and further away from 1967, and as that day slips back into the recesses of our memory, we are more likely to forget the reasons behind why we are a nation that holds the right to life as irrevocable.

Austin Sarat puts the question to us, "We must ask what the death penalty does to us, not just what it does for us."

What is the death penalty doing to us?

It is closing our eyes to understanding the person, the human being, behind the crime. By holding on to our anger and seeking the ultimate revenge against a crime committed against us we are unable to understand the pain we are suffering. As Freud says, there exists a "time lag between experience and understanding", something that explains what occurred to Andrea Durbach and Brian Morley.

By executing it's criminals a community is denying itself the chance to understand what caused the person behind the crime to do what they did. "State killing offers us a way out. Those acts are "their" fault, not our problem."

But it is not simply affecting our understanding but it is also brutalising our society and is essentially a fearful aversion to one kind of violence which results in a fearful embrace of another. The death penalty leaves a trail of suffering behind it, causing unimaginable grief in not only the condemned but also his family and friends. An execution is a punishment that goes beyond simply the condemned man. As Albert Camus observed, "The relatives of the condemned man then discover an excess of suffering that punishes them beyond all justice... the brief moments spent with the condemned man, the visions of the execution are all tortures."

It's a punishment that spreads its barbs deep within society, far beyond simply those who are proximate to it. I don't think I could ever word it better than the lawyer from the landmark American death penalty case, Illinois v Leopold and Loeb.

(Synopsis: Two rich Jewish boys who were both Law students believed that their superior intellects meant that they were some sort of Nietzschean supermen who were capable of committing the perfect crime. This is the epitome of cold blooded, motiveless murder. They killed for the thrill of proving their superior intelligence.)

If these two boys die on the scaffold, which I can never bring myself to imagine,--if they do die on the scaffold, the details of this will be spread over the world. Every newspaper in the United States will carry a full account. Every newspaper of Chicago will be filled with the gruesome details. It will enter every home and every family .

Will it make men better or make men worse? I would like to put that to the intelligence of man, at least such intelligence as they have. I would like to appeal to the feelings of human beings so far as they have feelings,--would it make the human heart softer or would it make hearts harder? How many men would be colder and crueler for it? How many men would enjoy the details, and you cannot enjoy human suffering with out being affected for better or for worse; those who enjoyed it would be affected for the worse.

What influence would it have upon the millions of men who will read it? What influence would it have upon the millions of women who will read it, more sensitive, more impressionable, more imaginative than men (I'd like to add here that this case is from the early 1900's, so you'll have to forgive this potentially credibility destroying throw in). Would it help them if your Honor should do what the state begs you to do? What influence would it have upon the infinite number of children who will devour its details as Dicky Loeb has enjoyed reading detective stories? Would it make them better or would it make them worse? The question needs no answer. You can answer it from the human heart. What influence, let me ask you, will it have for the unborn babes still sleeping in their mother's womb? And what influence will it have on the psychology of the fathers and mothers yet to come? Do I need to argue to your Honor that cruelty only breeds cruelty?--that hatred only causes hatred; that if there is any way to soften this human heart which is hard enough at its best, if there is any way to kill evil and hatred and all that goes with it, it is not through evil and hatred and cruelty; it is through charity, and love and understanding.

I don't think I could ever put it better than this. Upon hearing the evidence regarding the cold-blooded nature of the murder Darrow, the barrister, became infuriated.

Cold-blooded? Why? Because they planned, and schemed.
Yes. But here are the officers of justice, so-called, with all the power of the State, with all the influence of the press, to fan this community into a frenzy of hate; with all of that, who for months have been planning and scheming, and contriving, and working to take these two boys' lives.
You may stand them up on the trap-door of the scaffold, and choke them to death, but that act will be infinitely more cold-blooded whether justified or not, than any act that these boys have committed or can commit.
Cold-blooded!
Let the State, who is so anxious to take these boys' lives, set an example in consideration, kindheartedness and tenderness before they call my clients cold-blooded.

When we fail to understand, when we refuse to explain, when we hold onto our anger, when we push towards revenge, we serve only to perpetuate the suffering we try to protect ourselves from.

Quote of the day:

"There is violence at both ends, there is much death, there is tremendous suffering, but there is also a person at the center who you will not be able to dismiss as a monster or a demon."

-Austin Sarat

In The News - 7 June

2007-06-06T22:17:00.000-07:00

John Forbes has been found not guilty on appeal in Sudan.

This is great news for the poor guy, who described the experience as mind numbingly terrifying. I think that really goes to show just how difficult it really is to live with the prospect of an impending execution. I can't imagine how relieved he must feel.

Anyway, I was speaking from ignorance more than hope when I said "He might even be innocent" but there you have it. To be honest, a few days after I made that post I was reading a newspaper article that was outlining his charges, and it seemed pretty outrageous at best.

In some other news, 3 of the Bali 6 have been forbidden from making a statement before the Supreme Court hands down their decision.

Keep your eyes on the headlines over the next month in regards to the Bali 6. There should be a decision handed down by the Supreme Court very soon regarding the appeals for the above 3. On the other side, the Constitutional Court will make a decision on the appeal of the other 3 within a month I'm sure. Geez, I'm actually getting butterflies.

Till next time.

To Err Is Human...

2007-05-31T20:12:00.000-07:00

To a person who has lived a privileged and sheltered life it is difficult to understand the feeling of sheer desperation and helplessness. We've all made stupid mistakes in our lives but some circumstances breed greater consequences for those mistakes. To put your life on the line to traffic drugs is no doubt foolish, to put a price on your life is certainly greedy and shortsighted. But in life we live and learn, we all make our own mistakes and usually we are given the opportunity to pick ourselves up and move on. People who traffic drugs through countries that uphold mandatory death sentences are no doubt foolish, often young and hot blooded. But what pushes them to make such a huge mistake? Are they less sensible than the rest of us?

I think the answer is quite simple, of course they aren't, they are simply more desperate. It is difficult for someone with a privileged lifestyle to understand how anyone could abandon all reason and put their life at such risk, but I think that many people are incapable of understanding what it feels like to be falling deeper and deeper into despair. I, for one, have absolutely no idea. The worst consequences I have ever suffered for my actions are short-term punishments from parents for ridiculous little things, or perhaps that $360 fine and 3 demerit points for running a red light by 3.6 seconds (oops). I refuse to believe that no matter how desperate I could possibly become I would never put myself in so much risk. Like I said, the context of my life means the mistakes I make result in minor consequences.

The Bali 9, Van Nguyen, many of these kids are and were around my age when they made the biggest mistakes of their lives. Yet there are people who feel that some mistakes do not deserve a reprieve, that some acts of foolishness carry a higher price than a human life.

I guess this is a good opportunity to tell you about one of my first serious involvements which was December 2006 working with the Reach Out Campaign as volunteer. Nguyen Tuong Van was convicted of drug trafficking by the Singaporean High Court and sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out 6:07 am 2 December 2005. Australian barristers Lex Lasry and Julian McMahon worked tirelessly in support of Van throughout much of his appeal process. Australian's rallied behind Van and showed their support through the Reach Out Campaign by tracing their hands on a piece of paper, similar to a gesture Van himself made to his mother, Kim. The campaign, started by two of Van's close friends, Kelly Ng and Bronii Lew, created a focus point for an incredible amount of support for Van to flow into. Tens of thousands of traced hands reached out to Van at a time when not even his mother was allowed close enough to hold him. The hands were then displayed on the lawns at the State Library in Melbourne which created even more local support and drew international interest.

In December 2006, the campaign was restarted in commemoration of the 1 year anniversary of Van's execution and to remind people that Australia is a nation that stands firmly opposed to capital punishment. Here are some photos and videos from the event.

The day ended up being an incredible experience and we achieved a lot in a short amount of time. Perhaps this year they will even be displayed again.

Thanks for reading.

Quote of the day:

"...this man has completely rehabilitated, this man has completely reformed, now they're goin' to kill him."

- Julian McMahon

In The News - 30 May

2007-05-30T02:00:00.000-07:00

Being an Australian myself, I am more closely involved with cases of Australian's sentenced to death overseas. Hopefully I will find the time to make a post on my involvement thus far in this area, but for now you will have to be content with some recent newsworthy developments.

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More foreigners sentenced to death for drug trafficking in Indonesia.

You might already be aware the 6 Australians are facing execution in Indonesia. These 6 come from the renowned "Bali 9". Renae Lawrence, Michael Czugaj and Martin Stephens have all been given lengthy sentences in Jakarta for their role in trafficking heroin out of Indonesia and into Australia. The 6 that are sentenced to death, Myuran Sukumaran, Andrew Chan, Si Yi Chen, Scott Rush, Tan Nguyen and Matthew Norman are all fighting for their lives in any way possible (I'll refer to them as the Bali 6). I'll go into more detail about this case another time, but for now, that's a very brief summary for those who don't know about it. They are all Australian citizens.

Now it seems that many more countries will be dragged into this fight for the Australian's lives.

Seven sentenced to death in Indonesia

AN Indonesian court has sentenced two Europeans and five Chinese nationals to death for running a large ecstasy factory outside the capital Jakarta.

The Supreme Court today ordered the sentences against a French and a Dutch national who were found guilty late last year of producing dangerous substances, court spokesman Djoko Sarwoko said.

Dutchman Nicolaas Garnick Josephus Gerardus, 61, and French national Serge Areski Atlaoui, 43, have not yet been informed of their sentence, he said.

Five Chinese nationals were also given the death penalty after they were convicted in a separate trial last year of helping organise production of drugs at the same factory, said Sarwoko.

"The Supreme Court decided at 3pm (18:00 AEST) today that ... seven ecstasy experts should all receive the death penalty," he said.

"The seven experts are one Frenchman, one Dutch and five Chinese men."

"We decided to deliver the death penalty because it is related to international organised crime which is very dangerous," he added.

Two owners of the factory are already on death row after their conviction last year, officials have said.

The tough penalties came after appeals were lodged against life sentences handed to the two Europeans, and jail terms of 20 years given to the Chinese, following their convictions, Sarwoko said.

Prosecutors said during their trials last year that the plant was among the largest ecstasy factories ever found in southeast Asia, and recommended the judges pass the death sentence.

- Correspondents in Jakarta

This news is potentially huge for Indonesia and for the Bali 6. Firstly, 3 more countries have been brought into the playing field, France, Netherlands and China. This will bring Indonesia's system of mandatory death sentences for drug traffickers into the international spotlight even more, thus increasing the pressure.

The approach for the European nations is quite straight forward. They are both abolitionist and thus would appear hypocritical if they did not attempt to save their citizens from execution. However, it becomes complex for China, the biggest state sanctioned killer in the world, according to Amnesty International, in how they may or may not approach the fate of their citizens. I don't hold much faith that the government will rally to their aid, however, some sympathy may be raised amongst the Chinese people, thus creating some friction around the issue.

Whatever the case, this is a huge development in the battle to save the lives of the Bali 6 and to reform the Indonesian system of mandatory death. I'll keep you updated on any developments.

____________________________________

Australian convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Sudan.

An Australian man who could face the death penalty in Sudan will today appear in court to appeal his conviction for murder.

George Forbes, 46, a construction manager with Kenyan firm Trax International, could be executed after he was last week convicted of killing Ukrainian flight engineer Mykola Serebrenikov, who was found hanging from a towel rack in the Trax compound in the southern city of Rumbek in March.

A High Court judge last week found Mr Forbes and three colleagues guilty of the killing, despite a post-mortem examination finding the death was suicide.

The case was transferred to the country's Court of Appeal after Australia's ambassador to Sudan, Dr Robert Bowker met with local officials including the Chief Justice of South Sudan.

A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman said Australia's Vice Consul had travelled from Cairo to Sudan to support the Australian at his appeal hearing, which was scheduled to take place in Rumbek today.

Australian lawyers for Mr Forbes last night submitted a brief to Dr Bowker which will be used in his defence.

The court of appeal had agreed to accept the Australian lawyers' contribution, the spokesman said.

Melbourne barristers Julian McMahon and Lex Lasry, QC, who represented Melbourne man Nguyen Tuong Van before he was hanged in Singapore in 2005, are working on Mr Forbes' case on a pro-bono basis, along with Alex Danne, a solicitor with Allens Arthur Robinson who has expertise in Sudanese customary law.

Mr Forbes yesterday received medical treatment at a United Nations hospital in Rumbek, after Dr Bowker intervened to secure his release from the town's squalid prison.

He is staying at Trax's Rumbek compound.

Gerald Taylor, a relative of Mr Forbes who is helping to coordinate his defence, said local officials initially demanded a payment of more than A$180,000 for the release of Mr Forbes and his colleagues, but the men were eventually released without payment.

Mr Forbes became dehydrated in Rumbek's overcrowded prison, which exacerbated a malaria-related kidney condition.

He contracted typhoid while in custody in the lead up to his trial.

Parliamentary secretary for Foreign Affairs Greg Hunt welcomed Mr Forbes' release and praised Dr Bowker, who is shuttling between a tent in Rumbek and a mud hut in the southern capital Juba as he makes representations on the Australian's behalf.

"Whilst these developments around both the health of Mr Forbes and the legal case are positive, we remain cautious about the final outcome and will be completely vigilant until the legal process is finished and his rights have been fully preserved and protected," Mr Hunt said.

- The Age

This case seems really interesting in the sense that there appear to be many grounds for the appeal that is now being run in Sudan. I know very little about this case so far, but when I find out how the appeal process develops, and perhaps what grounds they are appealing on, I will update.

Perhaps he will be found innocent...?

Quote of the day:

"Till the infallibility of human judgments shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the death penalty."

- Marquis de Lafayette

"Killing Me Softly..."

2007-05-29T08:26:00.000-07:00

No, this isn't a post about the Fugees; It's about an issue which I have seen becoming more and more prevalent in the politics and language used by nations and individuals who support capital punishment.

To put it quite simply, there is a growing discourse in certain States of America, and indeed other countries, concerning the violence of executions. When I say "violence" I am talking about not only the pain and suffering that the condemned goes through, but also the visual (both imagined and witnessed) impact it has on the community. This differentiation is important when examining the reasons for searching for a more "humane" form of execution. Is it an issue of compassion or merely a form of self-delusion?

To give a bit of a modern context, some States in America have currently imposed a temporary moratorium on the death penalty after a man took 2 hours to die and was seen convulsing violently as his body went into cardiac arrest. Other problems have been reported by the media, from attendants being unable to find the vein, to vein's collapsing entirely, and even to another dosage being administered due to a prolonged death. Also, in Indonesia, the Attorney General has stated that he will not execute the 6 of the Bali 9 sentenced to death by firing squad, but rather by lethal injection. No doubt a political compromise aimed at lessening the outrage from the Australian people.

This moratorium in America creates an incredible opportunity for a real discussion on the humane issues behind capital punishment and for the topic to gain a platform in the forefront of the minds of people around the world. However, I am not so enthusiastic about this development because I feel like it is a massive diversion from the real issue. My contention is that when it comes to the humane issues of capital punishment, this approach is looking in the wrong direction and asking the wrong questions. They are focusing on how the execution impacts on our own sensibilities, rather than the cruelty with which it is imposed on the condemned. These two elements are difficult to distinguish, but I'll try my best to make it clear.

Let me use a bit of an historical example from the French Revolution. The predominant method of execution in France in 1792 was the guillotine. The guillotine was lauded by many revolutionary French philosophers and politicians as "the great equalizer." It was an instrument that made all men equal, both practically and symbolically. This idea that all men are created equal was predominantly pushed into mainstream thought by Rousseau and later enshrined in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (La Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen). Where this idea of equality becomes important to the context of executions is found in the privileges of the Noblesse Oblige preceding the revolution. When convicted of a capital offence they could choose to be executed by a sword through the heart which was generally seen as a more noble form of death. On the other hand, your common peasant would suffer from all manner of torments, most commonly a simple, often blunt, axe to the back of the neck.

It's clear that the difference between the two forms of execution are separated by the social and cultural mores of the time, more so than the humane nature of the execution. But the guillotine changed this unequal system drastically. All men would be executed by the same instrument. No single man delivered the killing blow, the natural force of gravity brought the blade to its inevitable conclusion. All men were laid down flat upon a platform that sat at eye level. Everything was equal, everything was balanced. Kings, Queens, nobles and peasants all met the same end. It is not hard to see why this invention was praised as a moment of enlightenment and progression for the people of France and their justice system.

The French Revolution changed the Western world forever, and there is no doubt that the guillotine was a huge step towards realising the cruelty that can be involved in capital punishment. But are we being directed away from the real issue when we focus on making executions more humane?

Our reasons, as human beings, for attempting to sanitise executions are quite simple, but extremely misguided and selfish. Quite simply, it is absurd to talk of "humane" executions, when the issue is not one of humanity. It is about keeping our own hands clean by killing as furtively as possible. The less seen and the less heard, the less it impacts on our psyche. In essence, it is purely selfish.

It is not an issue of cruel and unusual punishment as we are so often told. Let me bring you back to the example of the guillotine to make this point clearer. The guillotine would cause death by decapitation. The razor sharp blade would drop at a tremendous speed and deliver a direct and precise blow to the neck, severing arteries and nerves instantly. If the victim does not die instantly from massive blood loss to the brain, they would almost certainly be rendered totally unconscious from the force of the blade. However, imagine if you will, the massive amounts of blood that would burst out of the neck after the decapitation. The horrible crunching sound of the blade slicing through the spinal cord and the incredibly thick and sturdy neck muscles. This gruesome sight is something that would no doubt send most of us running to our mothers sucking on our thumbs. It is easy to be disgusted by such a nightmarish spectacle and it is therefore no wonder that it is no longer a method used in the Western world.

However, if the issue is truly the pain and the suffering of the condemned, how could we possibly look further than a swift decapitation? While there is some medical uncertainty in the area, the majority of medical thought suggests that unconsciousness would be instant and brain death 30 seconds subsequent. There are, however, unethical medical reports of dismembered heads responding to their names for almost 1 minute. Not to mention the famous tale of the execution of the greatest betrayer of the French Revolution. The execution of Charlotte Corday, the lover and murderer of French revolutionary writer Jean-Paul Marat, involved a scandalous moment when the executioner slapped her decapitated head, at which moment her eyes snapped open and her face assumed a look of absolute indignation. However, there are countless medical explanations for such an happening, but the truth was no doubt sensationalised to make the event far more gruesome and the stories more morbidly fascinating. The difference between decapitation and lethal injection is the palpable sensations that they create. You can see, smell and hear the brutal conclusion of the guillotine, yet it is quite the opposite with what the lethal injection tries to achieve. The killing agent is invisible, their suffering is muted and sterile. Totally silent in most cases.

No, it is not an act of compassion or humanity to spare the condemned from a cruel and unusual suffering. No matter what the method of execution, be it crucifying, hanging, gassing, shooting, electrocution or lethal injection, the same inhuman torture is still imposed on the condemned. What I am talking about has nothing to do with the method itself, it is the torment of waiting. The agonising and gut wrenching sense of impending death which can be prolonged over months and even years. The terrifying visions of the execution and the absolute torment of solitude. It is difficult to imagine the psychological impact of being confronted with being executed. The anxiety experienced in waiting for the moment of execution is so powerful that Ann Boleyn's executioner thought it compassionate when he said "Where is my sword?" and then quickly beheaded her without any more notice, all simply to make her think she had more time to live and to spare her the fear for even just a moment.

The reasons for killing softly and subtly are two fold. We kill gently to make ourselves feel more human, we kill quietly to make them seem less human. By showing them some compassion we are able to sanitise the violence and thus find it far less confronting. By killing them in a silent manner we are able to stop them from "raging against the dying of the light", we are able to stop them from exhibiting one of the most natural and human responses to death, we are able to make them "go gently into that good night". When no blood is shed we are shielded from the sobering realisation that when we bleed, we bleed the same. It is simply an issue of humanising ourselves and dehumanising the condemned.

Why are we so obsessed with sanitising the state sanctioned death of others? Why do we seek to find ways to kill as softly as possible?

The answer is simple: "Whatever helps you sleep at night..."

Quote of the day:

"Yet, once again, the mechanism demolished everything: they killed you discreetly and rather shamefacedly but extremely accurately."

- Meursault, Albert Camus' "The Outsider"

Welcome!

2007-05-28T03:27:00.001-07:00

So, where to begin?

I suppose a welcome is in order, for myself and anyone else reading. I've been intending to start a blog for a long time, but I always felt that they were extremely self involved! But then again, who isn't? So, I've decided to start a blog that focuses less on myself and more on an issue I am quite passionate about, capital punishment.

Maybe a little bit of background about myself and how I came to be involved with this issue. I am a 5th year Law student at Melbourne University. The first time I ever really interacted with the efficacy of the death penalty as a form of punishment was in the 2nd year of my degree. During a class on Criminal Law we had a visit from Richard Bourke, one of the senior fellows for Reprieve Australia.

I suppose at this point I should tell you a little something about Reprieve. They are a pro bono organisation that bring lawyers together from all over the world to fight capital punishment in America. They operate by adopting and conducting the appeals of convicted criminals on death row. These men and women may well be guilty of their crimes, but more often than not are incapable of finding proper representation to fight their sentence through the appropriate appellate courts. Reprieve appeals the cases vigilantly with the ultimate goal being, to lessen the sentence of the condemned. Beyond working within the system, Reprieve is involved in many international extra-legal movements to push for the abolition of capital punishment. Enough about Reprieve and back to my story.

We watched a movie which followed the final month of an African-American man on death row. The appeals, the plea for mercy, the desperation and finally the execution. For some, the saddest point of the movie was the posthumous exoneration which came all too late. For me, however, this seemed to merely compound the injustice of the execution in the first place. Simply watching this movie or listening to Richard Bourke speaking on the topic was not what really forced me to engage with the issue. It was the guy in the back row, just behind me, who raised his hand and asked "But what if they are guilty?"

My reaction to his comment was the impetus that forced me from my inertia on the issue. Being confronted by someone who seemed so blind to the real issues behind what makes capital punishment such a devastating form of justice made me take on an equally absolute, albeit the polar opposite, opinion. I suppose it's just like Newton's laws on motion.

I know this seems like quite a weak and reactionary approach. My Dad always told me as a kid, "Act, don't react." At the time I did react, I formed an opinion on the issue solely because I felt the need to even the imbalance created by his blind and absolute support for the death penalty. That was three years ago. I decided a few years after that moment that it was time to act on my opinions to prove to myself that I could be more than an idle reactionary. Since then my opinions have developed significantly, and I hope they will continue to do so.

So, there you have a brief prelude to what brought me to engage with this topic, but by no means what has brought me to create this blog. I'm sure I'll find the time to write about my involvements up until this point.

I guess I should outline my aims and goals for this blog as well. My beliefs on the issue are quite simple, but at the same time it's an incredibly complicated topic. I believe that capital punishment is absolutely wrong. I know it's dangerous to ever talk in absolutes, and in some ways this often detracts from the point you are trying to make, that's why I aim to be as unbiased and as rational in my posts on this blog as possible. But, like everyone else, I have a strong opinion on the issue which I won't go into details on now. I don't want my posts to be long lectures on what I believe, far from it. My aim is for this blog to not only canvass the many issues that surround the death penalty as a form of punishment, but also to develop my own opinions on the issues and to have a place where I can record this development. I want the way I present the issues to be as clear, concise and approachable as possible. I want to encourage and facilitate thought and constructive discussions on the issue, if it should come to that. My posts will be not only about certain issues concerning capital punishment, but also about any international developments and whatever I may be involved in at any given time, past/present/future.

In the future I would like to get this blog onto it's own domain and open some forums to further facilitate an open discussion, but that is a long way off.

There you have it, a mission statement!

Wish me luck.

Quote of the day:

"It's easy to know what you're against, quite another thing to know what you're for."

- The Wind That Shakes The Barley