CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Nurse on drugs charges faces execution

By Greg Ansley New Zealand Herald

5:30 AM Wednesday Aug 1, 2012

The breaking wheel was used
during the Middle Ages and
in the 19th Century

A second Australian faces possible execution in Malaysia on drug trafficking charges, adding pressure to a campaign to end capital punishment in a country that has more than 800 prisoners on death row.

Melbourne nurse Emma Louise L'aigulle, 34, is alleged to have been arrested with Nigerian Esikalam Ndidi in a car with about 1kg of methamphetamine hidden under a seat.

Possession of 50 grams or more of the drug is considered trafficking and subject to a mandatory death sentence.

In November Perth man Dominic Jude Christopher Bird, 32, will go to trial charged with offering 167 grams of methamphetamine to undercover police officers.

The possibility of further death sentences will further burden Australian diplomacy as it tries to convince Asian neighbors to end capital punishment.

The San Quentin lethal injection suite

Last month Prime Minister Julia Gillard raised the death sentences imposed on Bali Nine heroin smuggling ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The two have sought clemency from Yudhoyono, their last chance of avoiding a firing squad by having their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

But Yudhoyono has already come under criticism for his decision to reduce the 20-year sentence imposed on former Gold Coast beautician Schapelle Corby by five years, which, with two years' remission earned for good behavior, brought her release date back from 2024 to 2019.

The governor of Bali's Kerobokan jail, where Corby was imprisoned after trying to smuggle 4.2kg of cannabis into the island, has confirmed she has been recommended for a further six-month reduction as part of this month's Indonesian Independence Day celebrations.

Renae Lawrence, a former Newcastle panel beater and the only female member of the Bali Nine, has also been recommended for a six-month reduction in her 20-year sentence, following good behavior remissions of more than two years.

The appearance of L'aigulle in a Kuala Lumpur court yesterday has swung attention back to Malaysia, which has executed three Australians for drug trafficking.

The hangings of Perth men Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers in 1986, the first Westerners executed under the harsh mandatory sentences introduced in the Dangerous Drugs Act, caused a serious rift between Australia and Malaysia.

In 1993 Malaysia executed Queensland heroin trafficker Michael McAuliffe.

Although the death sentence is also imposed for murder, treason and terrorism, most prisoners facing execution have been given mandatory death sentences under Section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act.

Anti-capital-punishment activists Malaysians Against Death Penalty & Torture say 860 people are awaiting execution. Amnesty International says two people were executed and a further 324 sentenced to die between 2001 and 2011.

L'aiguille and Bird face possible execution under an act that reverses the onus of proof by requiring alleged traffickers to prove their innocence rather than the state establishing guilt.

Bird was arrested at a Kuala Lumpur coffee shop in March after allegedly offering to sell 168.7 grams of methamphetamine to undercover agents.

L'aigulle was arrested last month when detectives searched a parked car in which she was sitting and claim to have found drugs beneath a seat.

But there are indications Malaysia is rethinking its laws on capital punishment. It has appealed for mercy for one of its nationals facing execution for drug trafficking in Singapore and has been concerned by death sentences passed on more Malaysians elsewhere in Asia.

Within Malaysia, activists, including the nation's Bar Association, are calling for an end to capital punishment, senior minister Nazri Bin Abdul Aziz has supported its abolition, and the Government told the United Nations in 2009 it proposed replacing death with life imprisonment.

Meanwhile, in Sydney, federal police and customs said yesterday they had seized drugs worth A$500 million ($619.6 million) after a tip from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

The drugs, concealed in terracotta pots imported in containers through Port Botany, included 306kg of methamphetamine and 252kg of heroin.

Seven men, four from Hong Kong and three Australian residents but also Hong Kong nationals, have been charged with conspiring to import and attempted possession of the drugs.

Peter’s Comment

State killing of convicted criminals is barbaric.

It is most disturbing to note that Malaysia has a law that requires an accused to prove his innocence or face death. That law is unspeakably vile.

Throughout history almost every country has had a death penalty for a variety of crimes, but crime has never been reduced by severe punishment, or by executing criminals.

States have tried every imaginable means of execution at their disposal but the tide of crime has never been turned, except by improving socio-economic conditions.
Continued below . . .

THE ASKER TRILOGY

The means of execution have included burning, boiling, crucifixion, crushing, decapitating, disembowelment, dismemberment, drawing and quartering, elephant stamping, flaying, impalement, sawing, slow slicing and stoning. But nothing ever worked they way the exponents claimed it would.

In theory severe punishment teaches a lesson and makes the offender think carefully before offending again. There are several things wrong with this theory. First, most offenders are incapable of careful, rational thought and that exactly is why they find themselves in trouble with the law in the first place. Second, if the punishment is so severe that the offender dies, then the punishment is pointless as well as useless because after death the offender feels nothing.

Some say that having a death penalty acts as a deterrent. There are several things wrong with that claim. First, a person committing, or planning, a violent crime thinks only of the crime and not at all about the likely consequences. Second, many people committing a violent crime actually welcome their own death and immediately suicide after the crime.

Then there are the really mean-spirited people who callously say that execution is better than wasting money keeping criminals in prison. But they have got their facts totally wrong. It costs more to process and execute a criminal, by millions of dollars, than it does to lock them up for a lifetime.

Eighty-eight per cent of academic criminologists say that the death penalty is not a deterrent. Unfortunately, the masses who think they know will never let the politicians do what is best and indeed many politicians make rash promises on crime reduction purely to get elected.

That has happened repeatedly in the USA. But America has executed 13,000 people since colonial times. Crime has reduced in America over a long period of time, but that has been due to better living standards rather than punishment. Meanwhile the USA remains one of 19 countries worldwide that supports the death penalty.

So to conclude, I return to my earlier statement about socio-economic conditions. The patterns are well established throughout history and clearly show that increases in crime can be directly related to levels of unemployment, financial stress, hopelessness and frustration.