CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

After being incarcerated on death row for 35 years, and after surviving a multiple hours long botched lethal injection attempt 16 months earlier, on January 25 Kenneth Smith became the first person in the world to be executed with nitrogen gas. Alabama state officials described his execution as a model for other states looking for alternatives to lethal injection. Even though most witnesses to this morbid event, which took 22 minutes, described it as profoundly disturbing, several states began considering laws to adopt the use of nitrogen gas in their executions. A moral person might ask not how, but why? What really is the objective when we, as a society, decide to carry out a death sentence as punishment for crimes, even for those that cause irreparable harm like murder, sexual crimes and crimes against children? Typically, we recognize four purposes for punishment: deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and retribution. Deterrence is rooted in the idea that incentives modify behavior. If a crime is followed by a severe enough punishment, the offender will think before committing that crime. However, if people perceive that the odds of getting caught are low, they are less likely to be deterred. Incapacitation involves physically preventing an offender from committing a crime. Opportunities are limited in prison. They are expensive and temporary. Rehabilitation aims to change offenders into law abiding citizens through education, vocation training and other programming. However, some behaviors and individuals are more susceptible to rehabilitation than others. Retribution, really the only objective attributable to the death sentence, is effectively "an eye for an eye." It strives to impose a proportionate punishment validating victims and expressing societal condemnation of behavior beyond the pale. It is essentially "revenge." Thinking about the purpose for punishment can be a powerful mental tool to discuss whether something should be a crime and, if so, what type of punishment will effectively serve the interest of society. American culture assumes that crime deserves punishment. But if punishment is not tailored to serve a purpose it ends up being pointless suffering. Suffering for the offender and expensive for the tax payer. Over the centuries political elites have used the threat of punishment to control their adversaries. From the Roman and Greek time to the Middle Ages potential culprits faced the threat of stoning, burning, quartering, whipping, drowning and other violent acts. Subsequently, well into the 18th century, dominant elements used horrifying torture methods, like "brazen bull," "iron maiden" and "the rack" to force confessions, punish the accused and strike fear in the minds of potential offenders. Governments became gradually more civilized in their approach to punishing crime. For a long time the primary focus of state administered punishment became banishment or exile. Incarceration was not widely used to detain prisoners before trial or for imprisoning people without judicial process until relatively recently. In 1689 England even adopted a Bill of Rights which prohibited "cruel and unusual punishment." In December of 1791 the Eighth Amendment to our Constitution did the same. Today we are one of 55 countries in the world which still imposes the death penalty. We are joined by China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt as the countries that execute the most people. Several other states, especially in Africa and Asia that apply a Sharia-based criminal code also continue the process - sometimes even for offenses like homosexuality. Most countries in our sphere of influence have rejected the practice. The European Union routinely reaffirms its "strong and unequivocal opposition to the use of the death penalty at all times, and under all circumstances." None of its member states will even consider extraditing criminals to the United States if they could face the death penalty in our system. Twenty-seven U.S. states still keep the ultimate punishment on their books. They tend to argue that it is legal punishment, which deters crime, and that, essentially, retribution is appropriate. Although opponents vehemently disagree, the Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty does not violate the Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual punishment." (1976 - Gregg v. Georgia). It is difficult to argue, however, that the mere ability of the state to execute offenders for certain crimes is a deterrent. Typically, death row inmates spend a decade or more on death row prior to execution. (Kenneth Smith was incarcerated for 35 years before he was killed.) Nearly a quarter of inmates on death row in the U.S. die of natural causes while awaiting execution. And then there is the issue of convicting innocent people - in some cases to satisfy the need of a prosecutor to show results regardless of the facts. Since 1973 at least 197 people who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. have been exonerated. According to the Academy of Sciences, 4.1% of people currently on death row are likely innocent of committing the crimes they have been sentenced for. Again, revisiting our objectives when establishing the type of punishment we mete out for certain crimes should generate a wake-up call. Case in point is the situation in The Netherlands. For the past two decades crime rates in that country have fallen spectacularly thanks to its approach to law enforcement which prefers rehabilitation over incarceration. Dutch prisons are being converted into hotels and apartments because of the lack of prisoners. According to Rene van Swaaningen, professor of criminology at the Erasmus School of Law in Rotterdam: "The Dutch have a deeply ingrained pragmatism when it comes to regulating law and order. Prisons are very expensive. Unlike the U.S. where people tend to focus on the moral arguments for imprisonment, The Netherlands is more focused on what works and what is effective." Theo Wierdsma

NAVALNY'S ASSASSINATION FOLLOWS WELL ESTABLISHED PATTERN

Seventeen years after he began his anti corruption, anti Putin campaign in Russia, Alexei Navalny was murdered on February 16 in the "Polar Wolf" penal colony in Kharp, about 1200 miles north east of Moscow. Those who revile the dictator ultimately responsible for this crass assassination used social media and political commentary to utter their venom about this, not entirely unexpected, turn of events. For those who revere the Russian dictator, silence has been deadly. A photograph depicting Navalny on a protest poster asked succinctly: "Who is next?" It is quite clear that Vladimir Putin is no longer concerned about keeping lethal pursuit of his critics and political opponents under wraps. This was already apparent when, in 2020, during a flight from Siberia to Moscow, Navalny collapsed after being poisoned with the nerve agent novichok. The entire world watched. Navalny's longevity in Russian detention centers may well have benefited from his strategic use of public media. Many others were not so fortunate. Putin's blatant, consistent and, to some extend traditional approach to silencing his critics profited from his career in the KGB (currently FSB). His rank of Lieutenant Colonel provided access to a cadre of professional assassins, and he made use of them. Some of his lethal targets included: Alexander Litvinenko - a former Russian spy who defected and became a prominent Putin critic. He was poisoned with Polonium 210 and killed in London. Boris Nemtsov was shot dead on a bridge near the Kremlin. Human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Barburova were assassinated. Pavel Antov, a Russian tycoon, fell from a hotel window in Rayagada, India. Yevgeny Prigozhin, mercenary leader of the Wagner group and failed coup leader, was killed in a plane crash. Mikhail Lesin and Dan Rapoport were both killed in Washington D.C.. And the list goes on. Putin prides himself on being the second longest serving leader of his country since Joseph Stalin. He has no qualms about using political assassination as a means of silencing his critics. His approach is considerably more subtle than that used by Stalin, who openly executed 750,000 during a two year period in the mid thirties and sent a million more to the Gulags. However, he is still effective. His political apologists in the U.S. seem to care less. After all, San Francisco is 6,000 miles away from Moscow. Political assassinations have been part of social reality since the emergence of communal social frameworks, as the leaders of tribes, villages and other types of communities constantly needed to defend their privileged status. The Egyptian pharaoh Teti during the 23rd century BCE, is thought to be the earliest known victim of assassination. During the Roman Empire, which lasted about 1,000 years, 37 known emperors - including Caligula, Claudius and Julius Caesar, were assassinated. During the Middle Ages several European monarchs and other leading figures were killed during religious wars or by religious opponents. We are obviously also not immune to this method of eliminating political adversaries. After the Civil War a wave of political violence swept the nation. Between 1865 and 1877, 34 political officials were attacked, 24 fatally. All in all, nine of our presidents have been targets of assassination attempts, along with one president-elect and three presidential candidates. Although the CIA has steadfastly denied that neither its personnel nor their directly controlled foreign agents, personally killed any foreign leader, it is undeniable that the agency featured prominently in deposing a string of political leaders outside of our borders. Some of the most notorious of the CIA's operations intended to eliminate foreign leaders included attempts on the life of Fidel Castro. During that ultimately failed operation operatives became very imaginative , using exploding cigars and a poison-lined scuba diving suit. Other attempted, but not executed plots, involved Patrice Lumumba, prime minister of the Congo, who was later assassinated by Belgian partisans, President Sukarno of Indonesia, Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein. After a Senate investigation, President Gerald Ford, in 1976, signed an Executive Order banning political assassinations. Subsequently, the CIA redefined their efforts by coining assassination as "murder for religious, ideological, political or emotional gain," prohibited under U.S. law. International assassination attempts were hence identified as "targeted killings - intentional killing by a government or its agents of a combatant who is not in custody, either out of self defense or because the target is a combatant in armed conflict." Our currently preferred method of execution is with the use of drones. Estimates are that we have killed hundreds, if not thousands of militants in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Libya. Exact numbers are difficult to come by. However, the method is not always precise and many non-combatants need to be counted among those killed by these modern weapons. So yes, Putin is an unprincipled killer. His termination of political opponents speak to our sense of civility. During a different century he might have gotten away with it without anyone noticing. Today, social media, even in Russia, will keep his feet to the fire. Somehow, however, we are more confident calling out individual situations. Navalny's murder is a focal event, much easier to concentrate on than the 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers that were killed and the 90,000 Russian soldiers he sent to their deaths, for which he is solely responsible. We tend to turn a blind eye to mass killings. Too many for us to consider, or have we become numb to these statistics? Sadly, there are those among us, elected or not, who apologize for this wannabe czar. By doing so, they are complicit. They should be held accountable. Theo Wierdsma