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Bill: RWP Capital Punishment Bill - Kill off the death penalty!
Details
Submitted by[?]: Revolutionary Workers Party
Status[?]: passed
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: October 2801
Description[?]:
| Introduced by Martha Rennie, spokesperson for justice on behalf of the Executive Committee of the Revolutionary Workers Party. PREAMBLE: 1. Current Rutanian law states that capital punishment is under the jurisdiction of local government, by region or otherwise. 1.1 Rutanian law is presently exeptionally inconsistent in balancing and mandating regional and centralised government legislation 1.2 That this creates an inconsistency of justice being applied throughout Rutania. 2. It can be argued that where the death penalty is applied in Terra, it is overwhelmingly biased against working class and ethinc minority communities. It is our contention therefore, that capital punishment is racist. 3. The current message from the Senate is one that washes its hands of this fact by leaving matters up to regional governments. 3.1 That, therefore, the state of Rutania condemns crimes such as murder, yet goes on to murder in the name of the law. 4. Studies show that capital punishment has never been an effective deterrent. 4.1 Capital punishment is in some areas seen as the solution to crime problems, when in fact it merely tries to (wrongly) compensate for a full and robust debate about the nature of the justice system, and avoids any reforms which in practice have been effective in other areas of Terra. 5. Rutania currently has a principled stance with regards to torture being forbidden. 5.1 However, various human rights organisations have explicitly described capital punishment as being a cruel and deliberate method of torture, especially with regards to mental health. VOTING: In light of this, The RWP proposes to the Senate that: 1. The death penalty is immediately made illegal and abolished for all crimes in Rutania. 2. That anyone presently sitting on Death Row to have their sentence automatically communted to life imprisonment, until a time that a further hearing can be made to consider a newer sentence. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change Government policy with respect to the death penalty.
Old value:: Local governments may choose whether or not to administer the death penalty for capital crimes
Current: The death penalty is illegal and is never to be applied.
Proposed: The death penalty is illegal and is never to be applied.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 14:24:44, August 11, 2009 CET | From | Rutanian Heritage Party | To | Debating the RWP Capital Punishment Bill - Kill off the death penalty! |
| Message | We oppose this legislation in full, for several different reasons: Firstly, why do penalties necessarily have to be 'consistent' or uniform throughout Rutania? The very purpose of allowing local governments the autonomy to determine policy with regards to capital punishment on behalf of the communities they represent is so that differences can be allowed between regions - what may be morally and culturally acceptable in one region may not be in another, and so on. We see no need to enforce a uniform policy in this area, and a satisfactory one has not been presented by the RWP in this bill. Secondly, we do not necessarily wish to dispute the RWP's claim that capital punishment has not been proven as an effective deterrent for severe crimes - in fact, we would agree with this to some extent. Having said this, we fervently support capital punishment, not for its alleged deterrent affect, but because it is a retributive punishment commensurate to serious crimes, such as murder, rape, terrorism, child sex offences, and so on, as well as - to put it simply, criminals who are executed can no longer pose a risk to the people of Rutanian society. Essentially, to the RHP, those who have proven themselves incapable of living in a civilized society and obeying its most basic laws without committing atrocities against their fellow man should be removed from it permenantly, as well as being punished in a manner that ensures retributive justice is served. Compared to life imprisonment, capital punishment is preferable - if nothing else, life imprisonment is an unnecessary burden on tax-payers, who essentially have to foot the bill for individuals who have committed crimes against their society and its members. Thirdly, in response to the RWP's comments on capital punishment being classified as a cruel form of torture, we ask only this: why should we have any moral quandary with the suffering of a criminal who has inflicted similar if not far worse forms of suffering on innocent, law-abiding citizens? To the RHP, this point is morally irrelevant - we have zero sympathy for those who have committed such atrocities that would warrant the death penalty, and we have much more sympathy for the victims of these atrocities. We would suggest that the RWP's priorities lie with the wrong individuals. In sum, we strongly oppose this legislation and support the retention of the status quo. |
| Date | 14:25:42, August 11, 2009 CET | From | Rutanian Elitist Party | To | Debating the RWP Capital Punishment Bill - Kill off the death penalty! |
| Message | I have to congratulate the RWP Mrs. Rennie on the consistent and well-documentation of this bill. I have to say that the REP and the whole Rutanian government is in favour of devolution and we are not willing to abandan this policy. However, some of the arguments convinced me and my colleagues that the current legislation is not in harmony and coherence with the whole legislative system of the country. Mrs. Rennie mentions that torture is forbidden while in some places death penalty is allowed. This is a clear example that death penalty is inconsitent with our legislation. Therefore, the REP will support this piece of legislation. Eleanor Bozarburg, Minister of Justice |
| Date | 15:13:09, August 11, 2009 CET | From | Revolutionary Workers Party | To | Debating the RWP Capital Punishment Bill - Kill off the death penalty! |
| Message | We would firstly like to thank Ms Bozarburg and the MEP for their consideration and support of this proposal, despite our political opinions obviously being at polar opposites. Furthermore we would like to clearly state that the RWP supports a proportional balance of legislation on issues being devolved to local government. However, we are purplexed at the response from RHP. Their first argument is one of no real need for consistency (we imagine a stronger argument for devolution), yet the sheer inconsistency shows when a Bill proposed by them this very month wants to issue a uniform no-sex education policy throughout ALL schools in Rutania! It is on this point we need to challenge, and by so we wish to ask a question to the current government on the policy of cross-federal state crime. If, for example, a crime of which the death penalty in some states is currently supported is committed over several territories, under which jurisdiction is the citizen to be tried - his/her home state, or indeed the state in which the crime was committed? Again, there is a strong challenge to be made if several murders were committed in several different states: and a legal challenge to which the arrested individual can make to be tried in a certain state or court. It is our contention that the individual would need to be tried in a federal court, yet the current legal stature has nothing to say on this. On this point we must stress that there is no line for death penalty being applied in national courts due to this current devolved legislation. Therefore we find this proposed argument by RHP members to be full of holes, and our bill goes somewhat to remedy these holes, even though the desired outcome is not to the RHPs pleasing, it nonetheless saves the state money on costly legal challenges and an exceptionally vague remit of law. |
| Date | 02:43:04, August 12, 2009 CET | From | Rutanian Heritage Party | To | Debating the RWP Capital Punishment Bill - Kill off the death penalty! |
| Message | The answer to the RWP's question is simple - the criminal should logically be trialled in the state or region in which the crime was committed, as the people of the region in question are those whose safety and security has been violated. As for criminals who have committed crimes in several different regions, each with their own different policies on capital punishment, this would become a matter for the federal court to resolve, as the RWP have suggested - in this scenario, we would suggest that, once a ruling has been made, the criminal would be sentenced in accordance with the laws of the region in which he resides permenantly. We admit that there is currently an ambiguity surrounding this issue, but it is not one that has arisen since capital punishment policy was first devolved, and it is not one that will come up often, certainly. In any case, the solution to this problem is not for the federal government to seize control of capital punishment laws and enforce a uniform policy, undermining local and regional autonomy and state's rights. |
| Date | 01:06:04, August 13, 2009 CET | From | Rutanian Heritage Party | To | Debating the RWP Capital Punishment Bill - Kill off the death penalty! |
| Message | We are dissapointed to see that the REP have abandoned their firm stance of devolution on this issue. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | |||
| yes | Total Seats: 91 | |||
| no | Total Seats: 76 | |||
| abstain | Total Seats: 68 |
| Random fact: Particracy has been running since 2005. Dorvik was Particracy's first nation, the Dorvik Social Democrats the first party and the International Greens the first Party Organisation. |
| Random quote: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." - Dwight D. Eisenhower |