Abstract

“I am a human being and nothing pertaining to human is alien to me, so said Karl Marx (www.sociologist.com)”

At the dawn of the 21st century, the death penalty is considered by most civilized nations as a cruel and inhuman punishment. While international documents have restricted and in some cases even banned the death penalty, its application is still not against customary international law. Much debate continues as to whether the death penalty constitutes an appropriate punishment, at least to the most heinous crimes. In recent years, the debate has been further fueled by the use of new technologies which have shown that a large proportion of people sentenced to death are, indeed, innocent. This paper will look at the trend towards abolition of the death penalty as it has emerged over recent decades, alongside examining both the sides of the debate regarding death penalty which requires a presentation of the theories of punishment and finally to arrive at a conclusion as to whether in the times of the 21^st century the death penalty should still be an adhered to practice or not it will trace the development of capital punishment as a human rights issue in the international forum and examine recent challenges to the death penalty. The structure that this paper adopts is discussed in short herein, any paper on death penalty in the current times would be incomplete without mentioning the Saddam Hussein execution, hence the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein is examined only from the perspective of the validity or not of the sentence of death penalty awarded to Saddam in the first section. In the next section, the researcher traces the abolitionist movement in the world and presents statistically the current stand of the world on the issue of capital punishment. The next section presents the jurisprudential analysis of the death penalty and therefore examines the various theories propounded on this subject starting from the theories of punishment to the arguments for and against capital punishment. The researcher finally goes on to establish that the death penalty intersects with international law and is challenged by it and therefore defining the death penalty as a Human Rights issue is imperative. For the purpose of proving the above proposition, apart from employing relevant primary sources in the form of treaty provisions, secondary sources in the form of treatises and articles, are also used and these are enumerated in detail in the index of authorities.

Key words: Capital punishment, human right, due process of law, Saddam’s trial.