Reactivating the gallows

Firoze SAMEER

The death sentence was implemented for over 130 years during the British rule in Ceylon, past Independence upto May 9, 1958, on which date it was suspended by Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike.

It was reintroduced on December 2, 1959 with retrospective effect which afforded law enforcement to hang Ven. Somarama Thera on July 6, 1962 for his crime of shooting premier SWRDB on September 25, 1959. President J.R. Jayewardene's Government of July 1977 suspended it once again. The last execution that of D.J. Siripala alias Maru Sira was conducted on June 23, 1976.

Reactivation

During Ranil Wickremesinghe's premiership between December 2001 and April 2004, Interior Minister John Amaratunga tried but failed to implement the death penalty for rape, conspiracy to murder and murder, and drug trafficking. At that time they were preparing Ricardo Bradley Keegal for execution with the usual crew cut and white outfit. Ricardo and a Chinese national called Sheik were sentenced to death sometime in 1985 for the murder of Tony Martin.

Reactivating the gallows will decidedly serve as a corollary to President Mahinda Rajapaksa's tremendous success in having wiped out terrorism followed closely by a sustained process of cleansing the Augean stables of crime. Justice Minister Milinda Moragoda's prudent move appears timely.

Horrendous crimes

Reminiscent are some horrendous crimes during our time. The barbaric gang rape and murder of Indian beauty queen Rita John Manoharan on that Mutwal coastline, October 11, 1998. The brutal gang rape and massacre of the six-member family of Withanage Lalanadasa, 56, at Hokandara in February 1999. The senseless murders of the Hamer family on May 7, 2003: Franklyn, 78, his son Dieter, 33, and daughter Daisy Anne, 29, at Frazer Avenue in Dehiwala. The gory clubbing, strangulation and throat slitting of Mallika Yatawara, 60, in Kurunegala last June... the list is long.

Contract killing

The spate of contract killings include the shooting of Colombo High Court Judge Sarath Ambepitiya and his bodyguard, Chief Inspector RA Upali of the MSD, on November 19, 2004; the perpetrators now languish in Death Row. The blatant strangulation of millionaire Bhanumathi Visvanathan in the presence of her gagged and tied-up domestics at Ettampolawatte Road in Hendala, March 1991, the killers never being caught, is another tragedy.

Alan Shelton Anderson, now sporting an aluminium crutch, admittedly served in Death Row for 22-years. While recounting some of his erstwhile antics, I saw no remorse or regret in this onetime killer's steely but smiling eyes set in a leathery face of torment. His last job was the heist at the L'Etoile Jewellery & Gem Merchants and gruesome murder of its proprietor, A.L. Mohamed, in the heart of Colombo Fort, September 23, 1970, high noon. On February 16, 1974, the High Court, presided by Justice Colin Thome, sentenced to death Anderson, then 44, and Elmo Rodrigo, 22, while George M.E. Jansen and I. Yasa Abeykoon were slapped with seven years' rigorous imprisonment.

Serious threat

Such dastardly acts of crime pose an extremely serious threat to society at large. A cause for concern in ensuring criminals, especially contract killers, are jettisoned from society in protecting the public. How safe will the next generation of adults and children walk on the highway?

Justice

Strong checks and balances provide for recommendations by the Attorney-general, the trial judge, the Minister of Justice and eventual ratification by President in the implementation of the death penalty, to doubly ensure innocent folk are saved from climbing the gibbet.

John Douglas

John Douglas, the model for Thomas Harris' Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, served the FBI for 25 years. Apart from his masterpiece 'Crime Classification Manual', this expert who has had extensive exposure to the criminal mind, in his first book, Mindhunter, states, "Quite clearly, some types of killers are much more likely to repeat their crimes than others. But for the violent sexually based serial killers, I find myself agreeing with Dr Park Dietz that, 'it's hard to imagine any circumstance under which they should be released to the public again.'"

Swindlers

Ms Du-Yimin from the Zhejiang province and Si-Chaxian defrauded investors of over U$125-million, which "seriously damaged the country's financial regulatory order and social stability," the Chinese Supreme People's Court ruled.

Li -Peiying, the former head of the state-firm which owns Beijing airport, was convicted on corruption charges - bribery and embezzlement - amounting to some U$16-million. All of them were recently executed.

Psychopaths

As at April 1, 2008, in the US the Death Penalty is authorized by 37 or almost 75 percent of the States, the Federal Government, and the US Military. The Oklahoma bomber Timothy Mc Veigh, 33, killed 168-people, April 19, 1995; he was executed by lethal injection, June 11, 2001. The genial-looking Ted Bundy, a serial sex-killer was sentenced to death on July 31, 1979, and eventually executed in the electric chair in Florida, January 24, 1989. This psychopath admitted, falsely or otherwise, to having hailed from a good Christian family but blamed his addiction to pornographic violence, which he said he found rooted in every diehard criminal in prison, which led to his criminal behavior.

Death Row

Sometime in May 2005 we had over 70 convicts in Death Row. Now we see that figure catapult to 273, an increase by 300 percent. The terrible physical and mental trauma suffered so tragically by rape and murder victims is in itself a cause for the government of the day to protect its innocent citizens from creatures of crime.

Arguably, law enforcement could perhaps monitor the number of hangings against the trend in crime and numbers being sentenced to death over a period to determine a correlation. In the meantime, the protracted process of educating society to prevent such calamities could probably get underway.

Ropes

In January, 2005 STC General Trading procured 20 metres of the hangman's ropes for the gallows from a supplier in Pakistan, and passed them to the present Justice Ministry Secretary Suhada Gamlath, subject to testing by the Prisons Department in keeping with technical specifications submitted by the Industrial Technology Institute (ITI).

The ropes are ready while the hangman hangs about idly in the welfare unit of the Prison Officers' Association, perhaps nonchalantly awaiting his call for action.