Court orders ban on death penalty (01/09/00)

Court orders ban on death penalty

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Ukraine's Constitutional Court, ruling on a petition from 51 national deputies, decided on December 30, 1999, that the country's death penalty is unconstitutional and told the Parliament to pass laws to ban the practice.

It ordered that capital punishment be stricken from the Criminal Code of Ukraine and for laws to be enacted specifying its illegality.

The Constitutional Court, the country's highest judicial body, stated in its ruling that the Constitution of Ukraine clearly outlaws the death penalty. "The Constitution of Ukraine contains no provision for the use of capital punishment as an exception to the provision of part one of Article 27 of Ukraine's Constitution, which is the inalienable right of each human being to life," states the court's decision.

The court also cited Article 28 of the fundamental law, which states that "no person shall be subject to tortures, or cruel, inhuman, humiliating tortures or punishment."

The court commented that capital punishment incontrovertibly contradicts the Constitution because it impedes on the right of a person to human dignity.

"The inalienable right of every person to live is indissolubly linked to that person's right to dignity ... which cannot be either limited or abolished," said the court.

The ruling, which is not subject to appeal, comes after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe had brought repeated pressure to bear on Ukraine to live up to a promise it had made in 1995 upon taking membership that it would ban capital punishment by 1999. In the last several months PACE had repeatedly warned Ukraine that it faced censure and even expulsion at the end of this month if it did not finally follow through on the promise.

Ukraine has had a moratorium in effect against state execution for capital crimes since 1997, imposed by presidential decree, but the Verkhovna Rada, which must make the legislative changes to outlaw it, has refused to move on the matter.

Whether the Verkhovna Rada now will find the political will to do so is far from resolved. A large majority of legislators believe that capital punishment is still necessary in a country that has seen a rapid escalation of rapes and murders since the Soviet totalitarian regime was discarded in 1991. Better than 60 percent of Ukrainian citizens believe that the death penalty still is needed.

Yurii Karmazin, head of the Verkhovna Rada's Committee on Legal Affairs and Anti-Organized Crime Measures, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying: "I don't think that the decision on abolishing the death penalty will help make our society more humane and improve the crime situation in Ukraine."

The case for capital punishment crystallized further in the minds of many Ukrainians when Anatolii Onoprienko, a drifter who lived in central Ukraine, was convicted of the cold-blooded killings of 52 men, women and children between 1989 and 1996. In April 1999, a Khmelnytskyi Oblast court sentenced Mr. Onoprienko to death, a decision that found support with Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma. At the time the president said the case of Mr. Onoprienko was a good reason to keep the death penalty.

In a move to pre-empt any controversy over the Constitutional Court's decision - although in all likelihood that will occur - Volodymyr Lytvyn, head of the Presidential Administration, urged lawmakers to ensure the implementation of the ban on capital punishment. "For purely political reasons, a lot of people are unwilling to follow this decision," said Mr. Lytvyn.

Meanwhile, in Strasbourg, France, Lord Russell-Johnston, president of PACE, welcomed the decision of Ukraine's highest court.

"The decision of the Ukrainian Constitutional Court that the death penalty is unconstitutional and can therefore no longer be applied is a welcome step forward in the honoring of Ukraine's obligations and commitments as a member state of the Council of Europe," said Lord Russell-Johnston.

Since 1995, Ukraine has put to death about 180 people convicted of capital crimes. The last state execution took place in March 1997, when the current moratorium was enacted. But the country continued to hand down capital punishment for the most vicious crimes. In 1997 Ukrainian courts issued 129 death sentences and another 146 in 1998. No figures are available for 1999.

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