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November 6, 2009

Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Will Russia Bring Back

Capital Punishment?

Introduced by Vladimir Frolov

Russia’s Supreme Court has filed a petition with the country’s Constitutional Court asking for a ruling on whether Russia should continue with its self-imposed moratorium on capital punishment. Russia has maintained a moratorium on capital punishment since 1999, when the Constitutional Court ruled that the death penalty should be suspended until trials by an independent jury become available in every region of Russia. Does Russia really need to reintroduce capital punishment? Why are the Russian public and political parties so strongly in favor of this cruel measure?

In January of 2010 Chechnya will introduce jury trials, making it the last federation subject to introduce this regime. This effectively eliminates the legal preconditions for a countrywide moratorium on capital punishment. Abandoning capital punishment by 1999 was a condition Russia had to fulfill in order to join the Council of Europe and its institutions. Russia also signed (but failed to ratify) the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, which explicitly bans capital punishment. Reintroduction of capital punishment will put Russia on the brink of expulsion from the Council of Europe, the oldest European institution.

Today, Russian public opinion is split on whether the country needs to reintroduce capital punishment. Opinion polls show that a strong majority of Russians (63 to 70 percent) favor capital punishment and even want to expand it to a wider range of crimes. However, Russians are increasingly skeptical about the court system, with barely 38 percent saying that the courts are unbiased in their decisions, while over 45 percent do not trust the police. The Kremlin is equally uncertain about how to proceed. While he was still president, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin always spoke out against capital punishment, while President Dmitry Medvedev has not made his feelings on the matter quite clear yet.

Russia’s political parties, from United Russia to the Communist Party, strongly favor the reintroduction of capital punishment, with only a handful of liberal politicians speaking in support of the current moratorium. It is most likely that the Kremlin will seek to postpone making any decisions on this issue, sensing serious political repercussions both at home and abroad. Evidence on whether capital punishment is a strong deterrent for criminals considering serious crimes is hazy, while evidence of mistakes being made in court decisions is much stronger.

Capital punishment is banned in Europe, while the United States maintains it for some federal crimes like terrorism, and certain states administer capital punishment for less serious crimes. It is widely practiced in China, where it is even used to fight corruption by government officials.

Does Russia really need to reintroduce capital punishment? Why are the Russian public and political parties so strongly in favor of this cruel measure? Is it an issue where Russia could still “join Europe,” or should it follow the American and Chinese models? Will capital punishment become a serious political issue for the Russian election cycle in 2012? Why is Vladimir Putin, the KGB hardliner and a man of the past, according to the Obama administration, against capital punishment?

El Paso's small step

Sep 24th 2009 | EL PASO From The Economist print edition

Reform advocates want an honest and open debate on drug policy.

IN JANUARY the city council in El Paso, Texas, decided to pass a resolution expressing support for its neighbour on the Mexican side of the border. In recent years Ciudad Juárez has become one of the bloodiest cities in the world, wracked by turf wars between Mexico’s vicious drug cartels. Beto O’Rourke, a young city representative, thought the resolution could say a bit more about America’s role in the violence. He added an amendment: the city of El Paso was calling for an “honest, open national debate on ending the prohibition of narcotics.”

The city council approved, on an 8-0 vote. That was unusual, says Mr O’Rourke, because normally they bicker over where to put a speed bump. But the resolution hit a speed bump of its own. The mayor vetoed it, saying that El Paso would be a laughing-stock. Silvestre Reyes, the city’s powerful representative in Congress, warned that if the council tried to override the veto it might be hard for the city to get its fair share of federal funding.

The mayor’s veto was sustained. But if the goal was to stimulate debate, the effort has not been wasted. This week the University of Texas at El Paso held a conference on the costs and consequences of America’s drug policy. Speakers pointed to the carnage in Mexico and the corruption and graft funded by a huge black market. They mentioned the hundreds of thousands of Americans in jail on minor drug offences, and the millions of children with at least one parent somehow yoked to the criminal-justice system. They spoke of the cost of enforcement, and the courts gummed up with trivial possession cases.

“To just deny that and say it’s all working—it’s morally wrong, it’s politically wrong, and some day it’s going to come back to haunt us,” said Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the university. On the first day of the conference there were eight murders across the bridge in Juárez, including one beheading.

Around the country, various noises are suggesting that Americans are tiring of their 40-year war on drugs. In particular, people are becoming more critical of marijuana prohibition. A Zogby poll found in May that a narrow majority of Americans agreed it would be sensible to legalise marijuana so that it can be taxed and regulated. That is not a surprising result. The drug is widely available and mostly benign. Yet it is a highly profitable crop for the cartels, and in 2008 there were more than 750,000 arrests for simple possession.

Continuing the discussion will require political will, which is in short supply. Advocates of reform were heartened by Barack Obama’s choice for the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Gil Kerlikowske was formerly the police chief in Seattle, where marijuana is officially low on the list of priorities, and he announced that he would stop talking about a “war” on drugs. But soon after that he announced that “legalisation” was neither in his vocabulary nor that of the president.

A handful of national figures have called for a debate on legalisation, including Arnold Schwarzenegger in California and Terry Goddard, the attorney-general of Arizona. Reform advocates pin their hopes on Jim Webb, a Democratic senator from Virginia, who has called for a commission on prison reform. But compared to debating the legalisation of drugs, that was a doddle.