The Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a non-government organisation working for legal advocacy for the poorest Pakistani prisoners, has found that Pakistan has sentenced 4,500 people to death and executed almost 821 persons at the rate of almost two inmates for every 11 people sentenced during the last 14 years.
"Since 2004, Pakistan sentenced 4,500 people to death at an average of almost one death sentence per day," notes a recent study titled "Counting the Condemned" conducted by the JPP earlier this month. In December 2014, Pakistan lifted a de facto moratorium on death penalty to execute 496 prisoners. The country now ranks globally as one of the most prolific users of the death penalty, it adds.
According to the study, at least 19,767 people have been sentenced to death globally since 2009. Till date, Pakistan's courts have sentenced 2,705 people to death which accounts for 14 percent of death sentences worldwide. As 3,659 executions from 2015 to 2017 were carried out globally, Pakistan accounted for 13 percent of those with 479 executions.
It claims that every fourth person on the death row in the world is a Pakistani. Every seventh person sentenced to death in the world is a Pakistani citizen. Every eighth person executed in the world is a Pakistani citizen. Pakistan sentences people to death eight times more than the world average. "Pakistan's execution rate and death row is much higher than India's - a country that is almost six times larger in population than Pakistan," the study claims.
In its second section titled "trial and error: Pakistan's broken justice system", the report points out that a death row prisoner used to live 11 years in confinement. Out of 546 murder cases heard by a Supreme Court bench, 467 condemned inmates were acquitted or had their death sentences commuted since 2014. The apex court has overturned 85 percent of death sentences during appeals primarily on the basis of "faulty investigations and lack of evidences".
While a majority of death row inmates comprises of people accused of murder and related crimes, Pakistan continues to sentence and execute people for crimes that do not cause death. Giving instance, the report referred to a very heartbreaking incident which led to the hanging of two "innocent" brothers at the hands of jail authorities.
In October, 2016, the report says, a SC bench headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa had acquitted two brothers Ghulam Qadir and Ghulam Sarwar and issued their release orders. Subsequently, when the orders reached Bahawalpur Central Jail, the prison authorities informed the court that they had been hanged a year before.
According to official figures of 2012, Pakistan's death row stood at 7,164. Since 2013, Pakistan sentenced at least 1,692 people to death while 496 people have been executed since 2014 which means that Pakistan's death row should have had a net increase of almost 1,200 to total about 8,400.
However, the federal ombudsperson submitted before the Supreme Court that Pakistan's death row population now stands at 4,688. This indicates a drop of 2,476 prisoners. Despite this surprising reduction in the official number of Pakistan's condemned prisoners, it is worth noting that Pakistan continues to add prisoners to its death row, the second largest in the world at an average of 351 death sentences annually since 2004.
"Despite a 35 percent reduction in death row since 2012, Pakistan accounts for 26 percent of the world's death row." However, a decrease in the death row population seems to have taken place in Punjab, falling from 6,604 to 3,890. Other provinces have seen their death row increase at a consistent rate, from 560 to 798, congruent with their respective sentencing and execution ratios. Despite this unprecedented reduction, Punjab still accounts for 81 percent of the 496 executions that have taken place and 89 percent of 1,235 death sentences awarded countrywide since the moratorium was lifted in December, 2014.
For Punjab, there appears to be a disconnection between the sentencing courts and the appellate courts. A major factor influencing the number of prisoners on death row seems to be the institution of a special Supreme Court bench to decide murder appeals headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa in 2014.
While deciding 546 appeals, the bench acquitted or commuted sentences of death row prisoners in 467 appeals on the basis of wrongful convictions. "An analysis of 144 cases of overturning death sentences by higher courts between 2017 and 2018 indicates that a person has to spend 11 years on death row before his sentence is overturned," the study observes.
According to the report, an analysis of 150 executions from 2015 indicates that civil disputes are a dominant factor leading to homicides in Pakistan. This suggests that many Pakistanis have "no trust in the judicial system" to resolve domestic issues, particularly property and money.
The extraordinary delays (often lasting for decades) in resolving such conflicts in civil courts means that the likelihood of violence as means of extralegal settlement among contesting parties is very high.
It further states that an overview of the past two decades of per-capita GDP growth, terrorism and homicide rates demonstrate a strong correlation between economic inequality, political violence and murder rates. In years where the growth rate of per-capita GDP is less than two percent, the homicide rate tends to be 7.5 murders per 100,000 or above while it is generally lower in years with higher percentage growth. It also indicates that the years marred with political violence and instability also had higher murder rates.
The report recommended the concerned quarters to reduce the scope of death penalty by excluding non-lethal crimes. The judicial academies must train newly appointed trial court judges on the use and application of the death penalty in line with "the most serious" offences standards. The trial and sentencing proceedings must be bifurcated to determine (a) whether the defendant has committed the crime, and (b) what is the appropriate punishment.
The authorities should reform the method of adjudicating civil disputes to decrease the length of time it takes to resolve them and constitute a committee to review mercy petitions comprising of representatives from respective ministries to reduce number of wrongful executions.
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