Reflections on the hangman and his rope
A case against the noose
By Anne Ranasinghe

In the General Election of 1956, the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna, a coalition led by Mr S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, won an overwhelming victory.

At the first cabinet meeting in 1956 Mr Bandaranaike pressed a cabinet decision to suspend the death penalty for a period of three years, and in April 1958 the suspension of the Capital Punishment Act was passed by both Houses of Parliament. During the second reading, the Minister of Justice informed the Senate that the government proposed to appoint a commission to examine the whole issue thoroughly, and this commission was appointed in October 1958.

The Chairman was Dr Norval Morris, Dean of the Faculty of Law of the University of Adelaide, and the other members were Sir Edwin Wijeyeratne, a former Minister of Home Affairs, Professor T. Nadarajah, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Head of the Department of Law at the then Ceylon University; and Mr S. Canagaraya, Secretary of the Commission.

The Commission made a careful study of every aspect of the death penalty, and it was an ironical coincidence that its report was published just two weeks before the assassination.

All the more so, as Mr Bandaranaike in a last message to the nation just before he died, had asked the people not to revenge themselves on the man who shot him, but to have compassion. The government of the day however restored the death penalty almost immediately - less than a week after his death. There was a storm of protest, mainly because the death penalty was to be introduced retroactively.

The chief opposition speaker was Senator S. Nadesan, who though originally retentionist had changed his mind after reading an essay by Tolstoy; he declared that the government was prostituting the legislature of the country and was acting in a spirit of revenge that was unworthy of any government.

Throughout the recorded history of Sri Lanka, except for four, brief periods, a murderer was liable to execution. In the first century King Ananda-Gamini Abhaya abolished capital punishment, in the third century King Voharika Tissa, and at the beginning of the fourth century King Siri Sangabodhi (who secretly set free criminals who were condemned to death, and in their stead exhibited men who had died a natural death). King Parakrama Bahu the Second, who lived in the twelfth century, is also credited with abolishing or suspending the death penalty for the period of his reign.

Nearer our time, in 1928 Mr D.S.Senanayake, who later became the first Prime Minister after Independence, put forward a motion which was however defeated.

A second attempt in 1936 and a third in 1942 also failed. After Independence there were new moves, first by Mr Fred de Silva, M. P. for Kandy and later by Dr. G.P. Malalasekera who was President of the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress; as 1956 was the 2500th 'year of Buddhism and Buddha Jayanthi celebrations were scheduled for the following year he felt this was an appropriate moment.

Then occurred the Bandaranaike assassination, in the aftermath of which the Capital Punishment Act was repealed by the caretaker government headed by Mr W. Dahanayake. Executions resumed, but again fell into disuse after 1976, when President Jayewardene suspended them on humanitarian grounds.

And now, according to the media, there is a move to reactivate the death penalty.

The reasons cited are the horrendous crimes which have shocked the country (and the growth of organized crime, including large scale drug-trafficking and contract killings.)

There is no doubt that serious law and order problems are faced by the authorities. But the return of the hangman as part of our public 1ife is not the answer, nor is this, acceptable under any circumstances.

The state should not assume the role of the executioner -this will only make the national scene even more brutal than what it is.

There are the usual arguments in support of the death penalty: for particularly horrible offences it is the only fitting punishment; murderers and others who commit grave crimes should be executed to protect society; and the death penalty acts as a deterrent.

Actually there is a lack of convincing evidence that the death penalty has more power to deter than, for instance, a long period of imprisonment.

This was also the conclusion drawn by the Morris Commission; and a survey on the relation between the death penalty and homicide rates conducted for the United Nations in 1988 and updated in 1996 concluded that research has failed to provide scientific proof that executions have a greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment. Secondly, executions by whatever means, are a cruel, degrading and inhuman punishment. They degrade the executioner, and the system of justice in the name of which he executes.

And thirdly -and perhaps this is the most powerful of all the counter-arguments -the death penalty is irreversible.

It is decided upon by fallible processes of law which are administered by fallible human beings, and can be, and has been, inflicted on people who were innocent.

In this context I would like to quote Albert Camus who cited the Burton Abbott case. Burton Abbott was executed in March 1957.

He had been condemned for the murder of a 14- year-old girl, but although he protested his innocence, no one took any heed.

The night before his execution he was shifted to a new cell, as is customary in American prisons, thus letting him know what awaited him in the morning. His execution was scheduled for 10 a.m.

At 9.10 a reprieve was granted to allow the defence attorney to present an appeal. At 11 a.m. the appeal was rejected. At 11.15 Abbott entered the gas chamber. At 11.18 he began to breathe in the fumes of gas. At 11.20 the secretary of the reprieve board phoned the prison warden to say that the board had reversed its decision.

The governor had been called, but he had gone sailing, and they could not reach him on his boat.

So they called the prison directly. But too late. By the time Abbott was removed from the gas chamber he was dead. Camus points out that, had the weather been bad had the governor would not have gone sailing.

Abbott would not have died and might have proved his innocence. Had another kind of punishment been imposed there would have been a chance of renewal. Capital punishment does not allow for this.

The Norval Morris Commission observed, that the danger of innocent persons being sent to the gallows was much greater in Ceylon than in the UK or USA because of the high degree of perjury in the local courts, also because of the system by which a majority verdict of a jury was sufficient to cause conviction and capital punishment. It noted that the danger of perjury was aggravated by the long periods of time that elapsed between the commission of a crime and the trial.

It was only a very rare witness who could accurately recall events that had taken place eighteen months or more earlier.

In Sri Lanka - then Ceylon - it was perhaps the Maru Sira execution which highlighted the full horror of the death penalty. Maru Sira - his actual name was D.J. Siripala - took to crime and was imprisoned for various offences.

He became a folk hero by the daring and skill of his escapes. While he was in hiding after his third escape from jail he was sentenced to death in absentia for the murder of a man in March 1974. Elaborate security measures were taken to ensure that he would be hanged on August 5, 1975.

The prison wardens were aware of Maru Sira's history of escaping, and frightened by his threats of vengeance. So in order to forestall any untoward incident they gave him a sedative the night before the execution.

The Public Trustee later said that, having been given an excessive dose of Largactil, he collapsed into unconsciousness from which he never recovered. At the time of execution he was carried on a stretcher and laid across the trapdoor of the scaffold.

The noose was placed around his neck, and upon the trapdoor being opened, his body dropped 2 feet 2 inches. His death was caused by strangulation, by asphyxia caused by strangulation, and so there was no judicial hanging. Had Siripala stood erect he would have stood 9 inches above the noose, then would have fallen 7 feet 11 inches. There were other pathetic factors which added to the public horror. His father had tried to see him before the execution; but had been refused. His wife Ran Menika had visited him every month in prison, but was so poor that she had to sell her sugar ration in order to find money for the bus fare.

She had not been informed of the date of execution as she and Siripala had not gone through the legal process of marriage.

Now, nearly thirty years later, we are told that "The Death Penalty is on the cards again." It appears that officials had already inspected the gallows at Welikada prison - the last man to be hanged there was from Tissamaharama, in 1976. During the visit it transpired that the noose used for hanging had deteriorated, that the rope used was not available in Sri Lanka and had to be imported.

It was also decided that the gallows 'need a new look,' in order to be ready and functional when a decision on the death penalty has been taken.

It appears that 'certain religious dignitaries' had discussed the matter with the officials, and apparently a majority of them were in favour of the introduction of the supreme penalty.

It is to be hoped that before we revert to the primitive barbarism of execution, a serious and careful study is undertaken of crime, the problems of investigation and of law enforcement in Sri Lanka.

So momentous a decision should not be trivialized. Real solutions to violent crime, both short and long term, should be identified and meticulously pursued.

And the ultimate conclusion should be that executions must not be resumed under any circumstances.

"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for them." (John Donne)