Post date: 25-Nov-2010 17:08:57
The proposed executions of two women Asia Bibi in Pakistan and Rizana Nafeek have galvanized lovers of justice and mercy throughout the world to protest the verdicts and plead for pardons. Asia Bibi was, in some ways, lucky that her misfortune occurred in a country whose Government had already responded to the brave criticism of patriotic Pakistani activists and campaigning journalists by empowering a Minister for Human Rights who informed the President that the verdict and sentence were unsound. Rizana Nafeek is, irrespective of guilt or suggested flaws in her arrest and trial, not so lucky and it appears she must rely upon the righteous protests of an outraged world, but have these been effective in other cases?
Karla Faye Tucker (November 18, 1959 – February 3, 1998) was convicted of murder in Texas in 1984 and put to death in 1998. She was the first woman to be executed in the United States since 1984, and the first in Texas since 1863. Because of her gender and widely-publicized conversion to Christianity, she inspired an unusually large national and international movement advocating the commutation of her sentence to life imprisonment, a movement which included a few foreign government officials. (Wikipedia)
Relatives of her victims watched as she was led into the death chamber at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia. Lewis was said to have appeared fearful, with her jaw clenched. She looked tensely at the 14 officials present before being bound to a gurney with heavy leather straps.
Moments before she died, her last words were to her stepdaughter Kathy Clifton. She told her: "I love you. I'm very sorry." (The Sun, 2010)
Tucker and Lewis found that despite finding religion, repenting their crimes, in one case being mentally incompetent and being the centre of international efforts to save their lives that democratically elected authorities remained unmoved and they were executed. In the UK the unconnected trials and executions of Ruth Ellis in 1955 and Derek Bentley in 1953 both generated unsuccessful protests, calls for mercy and are discussed to this day by opponents to capital punishment. So should Rizana Nafeek have much hope?
It may seem strange to critics of Islamic punishments but the answer is yes, Rizana does have cause to hope for a commutation of the sentence. First, although the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a reputation for harsh and speedy justice any Muslim leadership has a religious duty to consider repentance and pleas for mercy as mitigating factors to punishment. Second, the shari’ah has a mechanism by which the relatives of a murder victim may forgive the convicted murderer and block a judicial execution which is not an option in many civilised states. The victim’s close relatives may accept a compensatory payment known as diyyah, or simply forgive as an act of pious mercy.
Diyyah, like many Islamic concepts is often given a distorted popular meaning because of careless or inappropriate translation. Blood money has become associated with payments made to commission crimes or as bribes given to make a crime disappear however diyyah does not make a crime disappear but does avert vengeance, feuds and vendettas or mitigate lex talionis as the weregild did in Saxon society and as it might for Rizana Nafeek. While there is no replacement for the loss of a limb or a loved one compensatory payments to mitigate the effects of the loss or prevent further harm are a part of all civilised legal systems.
The questions for all of us who wish Rizana Nafeek to live is how much do we value her life or is she only of value as an opportunity to criticise another nation’s legal system?