The recent sentence by our Constitutional Court against the life sentence contemplated in our criminal law, without the knowledge of a timeline to the possibility of parole, on the basis that it goes against Article 3 of the European Convention on Human rights might have opened the proverbial Pandora’s Box. Yet this is considered as a basic tenet of human rights, yes on par with the right to life.
My purely layman’s view on this judgement could tend to be prejudiced and distorted in more than one way. At first, I would say that in today’s society with a sound identity and commitment to human rights it becomes inconceivable to accept a life-till-death sentence as being nothing less than an irrational and outright cruel punishment.
But then I would tend to certainly have a completely and diametrically opposed opinion if the victim or victims happen to be my close relatives. Of course here emotion overtly surpasses and suppresses reasoning to the extent that it verges on the vengeful.
Yet we have seen, yes seldom instances, where very intimate family members of the victim have openly expressed a heightened level of altruism and mercy and pardoned the perpetrator. But let’s admit that these were the exception rather than the rule.
What scope or hope would you have to rehabilitate yourself when locked until dead between four walls?
On a purely emotional level I can never give a truly objective opinion simply because, I have not been subjected to the murder of one of my dearest and closest relatives. Here a lingering sorrowful feeling that one cannot rewind the clock back to at least, have some contact, a quick hug with my loved one even for one second shrouds my rationale.
Then there’s the numerous unanswered questions the relatives face like how and did the victim suffer, was it over quickly, what deadly fear overcame the victim. And was there a last chance and time to reconcile with his higher power.
And then what about the victim, a human being full of life and expectations, possible the mother or father of a family, a brother or a sister all with perhaps the start of a working life they had toiled so hard to achieve. What about the cost incurred by the State in sustaining the health care and education of the victim. And I could go on with this lament forever.
But life, and I mean an absolutely life sentence, until you are dead is really a non-starter when one comes to gauge its destructive impact on the possibility of rehabilitation. I can truly dread this state of mind, what scope or hope would you have to rehabilitate yourself when locked until dead between four walls.
Yet there are many instances in other countries where criminals even awaiting a certain death sentence have truly and apparently rehabilitated themselves, some achieving very prestigious academic degrees, yet the State proceeded in the name of justice with their execution.
And how’s that for rehabilitation and parole? It is relevant to note also that a number of countries apply the principle of parole to very lesser crimes and minor sentences.
But then shouldn’t the condemned have thought of this, controlled his emotions before he committed his crime, because life is normally a sentence associated with those who have committed some of the most cruel crimes in the criminal history of Malta.
On moral ground murder is considered as a very serious sin which I am sure that God the giver of life despises. Of course it’s the act that God despises and not the perpetrator who according to our belief can, if one truly repents the vile deed committed, still be eligible to eternal salvation.
I can recall a number of verses from the Bible which tells us that murder is a terrible thing and a serious sin and that God commands us not to murder. Many are familiar with the story of the first fratricide in history when Cain slew his brother Abel. A narration over-spilling with symbolism, showing how vice can lead a man to murder, even his brother.
In my school days and if memory serves me right ancient interpreters were apt to change the story and ending of Cain to fit in with their sense of justice, ensuring that he was adequately punished, with some attributing Cain’s ending to being murdered by his great grandson. But there was no parole at the time since it was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
But the laws of God and the rule of law of us mere mortals do not converge at all at least on the reparatory aspect of mercy. And perhaps this is one of the values that we mortals do not fully understand; otherwise I would tend to think that we would be more amenable to accepting parole from a life sentence.
The following are some excerpts and reflections on article 3 of the convention. “A whole life prisoner is entitled to know, at the outset of his sentence, what he must do to be considered for release and under what conditions, including when a review of his sentence will take place or may be sought.”
A very learned ruling since one cannot be expected to entertain hope and sustain efforts to reform without seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a possible parole.
“Consequently, where domestic law does not provide any mechanism or possibility for review of a whole life sentence, the incompatibility with article 3 on this ground already arises at the moment of the imposition of the whole life sentence and not at a later stage of incarceration.”
These stress the inalienable fact that this basic human right is infringed immediately upon sentencing and not accrue with the passage of time on serving sentence.
Article 3 gives the condemned the right to ask for a review of the life sentence after a lapse of a specified time. And it is here that an application for parole and its review must be the subject of a structured and stringent process as yet to be studied, structured and documented in the case of our tiny microcosm.
I am not qualified to say anything on the legal treatment of such request other than a very watertight process with stringent conditions which will allow some form of hope of reprieve to those who are scrupulously considered eligible.
I shudder to think what the dent to the perception of our penal system would be should a reprieved person commit another crime, anything damnable, worst so murder. And it is on this that the European Court was emphatic in stating that it did not want to see its declaration construed as interfering in criminal case sentencing policies adopted in contracting states. It did not consider it its task to prescribe the form that the review should take and when it should take place, but provided a lapse of 25 years as a rule of thumb.
And in my parting comment I risk attracting boundless criticism. Presumably a person who is allowed a commutation of a life sentence and eventually is freed on parole would in the natural progression of time be in the middle age segment. How are we going to monitor his progress and assist in his integration back into society after such a long period locked up because 25 years is a long time? Will he be able to fully and truly integrate and support himself otherwise he would be better off left inside.
Carm Vassallo works with a local financial institution and has a keen interest in local and global current affairs.