THE HORRORS OF DEATH SENTENCE
“There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none of which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
History entails that back in the 18th Century B.C in the code of King Hammurabi of Babylon, death penalty laws were established. But again, in the Seventh Century B.C the draconian code of Athens made death penalty a punishment of all crimes. Death sentence were carried out by means of Crucifixion, Drowning, beating to death and Burning alive. All in all, the end point was death.
Death sentence is inhuman and unfair. Why do we justify depriving an individual of his life while we possess no power of depriving death from the same individual?
Death sentence is not only about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they have committed. But whether as mortals we deserve to take life away from them.
As human beings we need to ask ourselves if there is any justice in exercising the death sentence. Does this deserve to be part of our laws? As legal students we were taught that Law is a sacred thing and the Constitution is almost a holy book. With all that said, how can we allow death penalty to originate from these very same Constitutions.
In Tanzania, there are four major offences that maintain death sentence. The offences are Murder, Treason, Terrorism and in Military punishment. For over 20 years there has been no execution of death sentence in Tanzania. But is this enough? Does this justify having this punishment as part of our laws?
In October 2017 the Legal and Human Rights Center (LHRC) published information about death sentence in Tanzania. The statistics showed that there were at least 472 inmates pending death sentences in Tanzania.
Currently there is a moratorium against executing the death sentence in Tanzania. But what will happen when the moratorium comes to an end is not stipulated in any of our laws. There is a necessity of determining the answer of this question.
Some countries have gone ahead to abolishing these inhuman laws and punishments of death sentence Example: Burkina Faso abolished death penalty in its penal code. As a country, Tanzania needs to abolish the laws that provide deaths sentence as well. Laws that provide for death sentence infringe the right to life that is provided for under Article 14 of the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania.
The dilemma of whether those who made orders to wipe out hundreds and thousands of lives deserve to live still bother many of us. But shouldn’t the question of whether we deserve to take life from a human being without the ability of taking death from the same human being should bother us even more?
Friedrich Nietzsche was simply calling for our consideration in ending death sentence. He was asking us not to deprive a fellow human being of his life if you cannot deprive him of his death
I believe we are now in the quest of making the world a better and safer place for all human beings, criminals or not. Let us all join hands in the quest of eliminating the death sentence in all levels, nationally and globally. For this will not be a success for us only but for the coming generations as well. They will have the chance of understanding we guaranteed to create the right to life even to those who seemed not to deserve. And that as mortals, we never found justification of acting as immortals.
