Ineffective and dangerous: why the death penalty should not be returned

Exactly two decades ago, on August 2, 1996, Sergei Golovkin, a serial killer, maniac, pedophile and sadist, was shot. This was the last person executed in Russia whose name is known to the public. A month later, according to some sources, another criminal was shot. His name was not mentioned. This is where the history of the death penalty in Russia, at least for now, ends.

Is execution completely prohibited in our country, does it help to defeat crime, how do Russians feel about the ban, and is it possible to return the “exceptional measure of punishment” to court practice - in the TASS material.

Has the death penalty been abolished in Russia or not?

• In 1996, Russia joined the Council of Europe and pledged to sign the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Protocol No. 6 of the convention prohibits the use of the death penalty in peacetime.
• On April 16, 1997, Russia signed Protocol No. 6, but it was not ratified by the Russian parliament. The document is stuck in the legal space. However, according to the Vienna Convention, a country that has signed but not ratified any international treaty is obliged to behave in accordance with that treaty until its ratification.
• To date, Russia is the only member of the Council of Europe that has not ratified Protocol No. 6.
• In February 1999, the Constitutional Court declared a moratorium on the use of the death penalty due to the lack of jury trials throughout the country. According to the Constitution, the death penalty is imposed “until it becomes an exceptional punishment.”

Will the death penalty be introduced in Russia as the “highest measure of social protection”?

The high-profile and resonant case of the murder of a nine-year-old girl in Saratov, which shook the entire country because of its cruelty, has given rise to talk of a partial lifting of the moratorium on the death penalty in Russia. The State Duma even managed to conduct a survey of citizens through their official social networks, where the public spoke in favor of introducing “capital punishment” in the country in high-profile cases.

The topic of the expediency of returning the death penalty was fueled by a high-profile case in Yekaterinburg, where a trial is currently underway over a gang that was caught murdering a young mother while trying to sell a car. For the sake of profit, the criminals dealt with the fragile girl in cold blood, luring her to Uralmash, stabbing her to death and throwing her body into a well, and then selling her used and not very expensive car in neighboring Chelyabinsk.

Pavel Dorokhin confirmed Nakanune.RU correspondent that discussions are taking place on the sidelines of the federal parliament and the issue is being discussed .

“We discussed this, the discussion is still ongoing and I can’t say anything additional yet. The case with the girl is terrible and causes pain and emotions for everyone... The issue of partially lifting the moratorium in exceptional cases is being discussed, but it’s too early to talk about more,” said the people’s representative.

The famous Russian lawyer Dmitry Agranovsky Nakanune.RU in more detail and in detail about the topical topic .

– Do you think the government will agree to partially lift the moratorium on the death penalty?

– There is an argument that by applying the death penalty, the state, as a collection of decent people, puts itself on the same level as the criminal, the murderer. Firstly, the conversation is quite pointless, because the death penalty will not be introduced. That's all, they won't introduce it. Mark my words. No matter what happens. And the discussion will end in nothing.

- Why?

– Now the death penalty is not a format. You know, how music is not a format. European countries do not use it, but Russia is a European country, is completely in European culture and in the same format.

– Like the example of Breivik’s crime?

- Here you have an absolutely terrible example. The person absolutely deserves the death penalty, but some political decision was made not to apply it and is not being applied. And Russia, in this sense, will not conflict with Europe because of this. That is, there are some points that are fundamental for us. Crimea is the same, Donbass, Syria, Venezuela. There are issues in which we cannot meet the European Union halfway and act on the same wavelength. But in this matter we can. And the political costs of introducing the death penalty will be higher for the authorities than any negative consequences from not introducing it. People will be outraged and go do other things.

– You can always refer to America, it is a trendsetter.

- No one will get involved. Because there will be negative consequences. And our state does not need these negative consequences. They can interfere with trade ties, Nord Stream, and some other understandable and important commercial things. And the fact that the people are dissatisfied, excuse me, for 30 years now no one has been interested in the opinion of the people. In mathematical terms, the people in politics are a vanishing small quantity that can be neglected. But up to a certain stage. So the negative costs are higher than any positive ones, so they won’t introduce it.

– Why then do they conduct surveys?

– Some people want to earn political capital from this. This is a completely understandable desire; that’s why they are professional politicians. People who make money through politics. They should look for such initiatives in order to promote themselves. Promoting politicians and this campaign are no different from promoting Danone yogurt.

Therefore, it is not worth taking it seriously. But someone is making political capital out of this. He has the right, that’s how it works. I personally am a supporter of the death penalty in some ideal society or in my beloved Soviet Union, where the percentage of errors was truly minimal.

I believe that the state not only can, but is also obliged to take the life of a certain lost soul when this soul is dangerous. In this regard, I like how the death penalty was called in the Soviet Union in the 30s. It was not called capital punishment. It was called the “highest measure of social protection.” In this way, it was shown that society was protecting itself from certain subjects who did not need this worthless life. Only harm to yourself and others. This is how, for example, this guy from Saratov can see that he neither needs this life nor does anyone else need it. It would be safe to take it away. But today, in addition to the European Union, there is still a really low quality of investigation, so the percentage of errors at the current stage is high.

As a practitioner, I am against irreversible punishments. How they propose chemical castration of pedophiles. Some “hot heads” propose cutting off arms and legs, as in Saudi Arabia. Our president flew to Saudi Arabia, and now he is our partner. But in fact, this is an absolutely wild country. Today, the optimal sentence is life imprisonment. Conditions there are difficult. I visited almost all of these colonies. This is not a resort at all. As a lawyer, I want to say that a percentage of innocent people are sitting there. As long as they are alive, they can hope for a revision. I deal with some people and represent their interests in the European Court. And in the Supreme Court. For now there is hope for a revision. If there was a death penalty, they would have already been executed. Unfortunately, the error rate is high. And this is a very serious argument. In my opinion, this is the argument that outweighs all others.

The use of the death penalty will not be limited to this guy from Saratov. It will spread wider and wider. And with 99.9% of guilty verdicts, such a system cannot be trusted with the death penalty or indictments in general. In general, let me emphasize once again, I am not an opponent of the death penalty. I believe that in the 30s our state acted generally correctly. And it was necessary to apply the death penalty to all Banderaites. This was a forced social protection measure. But now, today, it is unreal and no one will cancel it.

– There is a myth that imprisonment is difficult and many people prefer the death penalty.

– Those I talked to were people who hoped for something. Naturally, they don’t want to die for this reason. On the other hand, Russia came out on top in the number of suicides among men. Not criminals, normal people completely voluntarily die in large numbers. So life in freedom can be a hell worse than life imprisonment.

– Well, here we can cite Belarus as an example.

– In Belarus, too, over the past three decades, only three death sentences have been carried out.

– Do you remember there was a scandalous interview with the boss who carries out these executions? But he did not repent.

– What is there to repent of? They did absolutely the right thing, absolutely. I don't see anything wrong with this job. And again, in the 20-30s, during the war years, post-war - this was a completely justified measure. I don't see anything wrong with her. In general, these fairy tales: “Oh, he killed, now he has mental damage!”... Yes, it’s all bullshit. There are villains who belong in hell. They must be destroyed. And in this sense, I agree with the absolute majority of our people. The death penalty, ideally, is needed.

But there are also other manifestations. You all know them very well from films and books. If you give the example of Salman Raduev, he did not live long in the colony. We don't know what happened there. But it is quite obvious that in some peak cases there are other methods. These methods are on the verge of lynching, even beyond...

In addition, our system of psychiatric care, crime prevention system and everything else is now completely destroyed. They say “punitive psychiatry”. And in the Soviet Union, this guy was in a psychiatric hospital after the excesses that he had. And he did not pose a danger to society. I would glue the boxes. We live in a completely sick society.

– The last example is Yekaterinburg, the murder of a young girl who went to sell a car. And there, one of the suspects drove around Yekaterinburg for a month in a stolen car.

- Weapon trafficking. My father is a lawyer with extensive experience, and I remember that if weapons were discovered in Soviet times, it was an emergency for the entire region, for the entire Moscow region. Everyone was put on the spot. And if a pistol was found in the possession of one of the criminals in a huge region once a year, it was simply an emergency. Now what? Is it this society that people now want to entrust with the death penalty? Yes, they will be very disappointed. The wrong people will be executed. And all the pedophiles, drug dealers, murderers, they will somehow come to an agreement.

Note that a similar point of view is shared by the Russian journalist, National Bolshevik Party [National Bolshevik Party banned in the Russian Federation], a person involved in the famous “Altai case” of Eduard Limonov - Sergei Aksenov , who knows firsthand about prison and people who were sentenced to life imprisonment after introduction of a moratorium.

“It was in Saratov, there was this “gypsy”, I don’t remember what his name was, he was already in prison for some murders, and he was brought back to court in the city on another case. And he attempted to escape right in the “escort room” in the basement of the court. According to the rules, either two or three should have accompanied him, but they relaxed, and he physically “overwhelmed” his escorts and managed to run out of the building and even run to some construction site, where they overtook him. Then they threw him back, through the door we heard how they were beating him so hard that it’s unclear how he survived,” recalls Aksenov and brings him to the main idea: there is a suspicion that many criminals are ready to take on other people’s crimes for the sake of “prison tourism,” Having already had a life sentence under his belt and taking into account the absence of the death penalty, there is, in fact, nothing to lose.

“They are ready to take on any crime. Because if you are sitting on a wad, then you will be taken to the investigation, and this is a break from the very harsh conditions and regime of prisons for life. But they are always kept separately. They have nothing to lose and they can kill anyone and nothing will happen to them for it. Therefore, I think that, of course, people want to live. Those people who say that life imprisonment is the worst punishment, they simply do not understand life and do not understand how everything works. And even such a life. But if it’s some Chechen militant against whom the state has a grudge and doesn’t want him to live, somehow they still die,” the interlocutor adds and concludes that the problem will only grow.

“Apparently, there will only be more such crimes and people. There will be tens of thousands of them and the problem will grow. Someday the moment will come. Many even say that they should all be evicted somewhere, for example, to Novaya Zemlya. Even the movie was so scary. It seems that the problem will arise sooner or later. But, of course, the death penalty will not be introduced, and not even so much for humane reasons, but based on the fact that our government is inert, protective and does not like to change anything. This is the last thing they will do,” Aksenov is sure.

Does the death penalty help in the fight against crime?

• There is no direct connection between the introduction of the death penalty and a decrease in crime rates. Moreover, in those countries where the death penalty is in force and criminal legislation is clearly repressive, crime rates and levels of violence in society tend to be quite high. In countries where the death penalty is prohibited and the criminal law is “vegetarian”, both the crime rate and the level of violence are significantly lower.
• The only developed country where the death penalty is actively used is the United States. Only 19 states (out of 50) have abolished executions. And it is in the United States, unlike European countries, that a consistently high level of street crime is recorded. In the United States, there are 4.7 murders per 100,000 people per year, versus 0.6 in Norway and 0.7 in Switzerland.

Who was executed by mistake?

• One of the main arguments of opponents of the death penalty is the impossibility of correcting a judicial error. In 1987, official data were released in the United States, according to which 349 death sentences were erroneously handed down by courts, of which 23 were carried out. For example, in 1927, anarchist workers Nicolo Sacco and Bartolameo Vanzetti were executed in the electric chair for the murder of a cashier at a shoe factory. 60 years later, the authorities admitted a miscarriage of justice.
• In 1949, Timothy Evans was hanged in Great Britain on charges of murdering his wife. Four years later, it turned out that the crime was actually committed by serial killer John Christie. The Evans Case and the public debate that followed the discovery of the error led to the abolition of the death penalty in Great Britain in 1965.
• In the USSR and Russia there are no statistics on executions by mistake, but it is known that, for example, another person, Alexander Kravchenko, was mistakenly executed for the murder committed by Andrei Chikatilo.

Arguments for the return of this preventive measure

According to the data received, the request to restore such execution as an exceptional punishment in the Code of the Russian Federation is dictated mainly by the following factors:

1. From an economic point of view, maintaining a large number of prisoners sentenced to life on particularly serious charges has an extremely negative impact on the state of the state treasury;
2. Moral aspect. "An eye for an eye". The people sentenced to this method of punishment were mostly serial killers, pedophiles, terrorists and other antisocial elements, many of whom, as a rule, were responsible for the death of two or more people. Maintaining and feeding a person who allowed himself to take other people’s lives, according to many respondents, is a mistake;
3. Primitive fear of death and the inevitability of punishment. The criminal’s awareness of the fact that he can be punished in the form of a lethal injection, “frying” in the electric chair, a banal execution, or inhalation of toxic fumes in a gas chamber should become a powerful barrier to the commission of especially serious crimes.

Thus, the death penalty will be a subject of discussion and debate for a long time. On the one hand, everyone has the right to life, but on the other, some people, committing crimes of monstrous cruelty, deserve death.

Do Russians support the death penalty and why?

• According to most sociological surveys, our fellow citizens consider the use of the death penalty acceptable in relation to terrorists, pedophiles, and murderers. But at the same time, the number of supporters of “exceptional punishment” is constantly decreasing. If in 2001, according to the Public Opinion Foundation, 80% of Russians were in favor of the death penalty, then in 2006 – 74%, and in 2014 – 63%.
• According to sociologists, the majority supports the death penalty because of the horror of the crimes committed. According to the FOM, 73% of those Russians who are in favor of the death penalty consider its use fair when it comes to sexual crimes against minors.

Can the death penalty be brought back if it has already been abolished?

• Many Russian politicians, including the most senior ones, are calling for the return of executions and in this way are trying to gain popularity with voters. Recently, the leader of A Just Russia, Sergei Mironov, proposed lifting the moratorium on the use of the death penalty against terrorists. Representatives of other parties made similar statements.
• There are no procedural obstacles to the return of the death penalty to the practice of Russian legal proceedings. To do this, Parliament must vote not to ratify Protocol No. 6 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Or you can simply revoke Russia’s signature from the document.
• Another way is to start a war and introduce martial law in the country. The restriction is provided only for peacetime.
• There are precedents for the return of the death penalty in the world. According to the international organization Amnesty International, since 1985, more than 50 states have abolished the death penalty. During the same period, four countries that had previously abandoned the death penalty reintroduced it. These are Nepal (where the execution was later canceled again), the Philippines, Gambia and Papua New Guinea.
• The Pakistani government spoke about its intention to abandon the moratorium on executions in 2015 after a series of terrorist attacks, and in 2016, after a failed military coup, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced his readiness to return executions “at the request of the people.” For Turkey, this is an extremely important and painful issue, because until very recently the country intended to join the EU, where the death penalty is prohibited.

Ineffective and dangerous: why the death penalty should not be returned

User arguments

The topic of the death penalty has become one of the most discussed in our publication’s social networks over the past year. The majority of respondents (63%) are against the return of such a punishment. MSLA graduate, lawyer Ilya Danilushkin argues that the death penalty in itself does not have sufficient property of general prevention: “As the experience of the same USA and numerous experiments and observations shows. The criminal does not think about being caught or hopes that this will not happen, so the death penalty will not reduce the number of crimes. Another thing is private prevention. Once a pedophile has committed a crime, he will not commit the same again, and this is definitely correct. But private prevention can be achieved without the death penalty. Life without parole, chemical castration, tracking devices.”*

And lawyer Ivan Petrishchev adds that in our country “an insane number of thoughtless sentences and decisions are made every day”: “Such bills can ensure only one thing - genocide throughout the country. But even during the formation of socialism, Gustave Lebron wrote that the soul of the crowd is not driven by reason, for the crowd is not characterized by reasoning, but by images that arise from external influence on this crowd.” Graduate of the Moscow University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, lawyer Ivan Chudakov, is also unequivocal in his assessment: “No. No one has the right to take a life. In addition, in the modern world there are other punishments.” Violetta Molostova, managing partner of the Equilibrium Law Center, agrees with her colleagues: “Such a discussion is possible only in an ideal justice system, where there is no corruption, and the possibility of a miscarriage of justice tends to zero. In the modern conditions of our country, what kind of death penalty can there be?” User Konstantin Andreev warns: “They will start with the death penalty for murderers of children, and will end with the murder of political opponents.”

Almost a third of voters support the return of “capital punishment.” Among them is ex-adviser of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation Vadim Balytnikov. A graduate of the St. Petersburg Law Academy, Ekaterina Konotovskaya, assures that “not only serial murders, but also those of a manic nature are becoming more and more common”: “I say yes to the death penalty, I think that this is the only way out for our dissolved country. It is possible that many, I can’t call some of them people, will think before killing and maiming a baby, child, teenager, woman.” User Olga Smirnova proposes returning the death penalty, but with a delay of execution for five years: “To avoid mistakes.” Olga Sedneva, another reader, insists that in fact the death penalty is necessary for those who are especially serious: “Without it, the bandits lost their fear.” She believes that “you can’t stop the killers without fear for your own life”: “They are sociopaths, they have no remorse.”

Opinions of senior officials

There is also no consensus among politicians on this issue. At the end of 2015, the chairman of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, said: “I am in favor of the death penalty, first of all as a person.” In his opinion, those who commit serious crimes have no place on earth (see “Bastrykin spoke out in favor of lifting the moratorium on the death penalty”).

And last summer, the head of the Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption, Vasily Piskarev, proposed imposing death sentences on terrorists, but with a delay until the ban on them was lifted in Europe. “We are moving towards humanization, but I would like it to be written in the sentence that in cases where we are talking about especially serious crimes, when a huge number of people suffer, when people die from explosions, from terrorist attacks, that this particular measure of punishment must be applied, but to delay execution until there is general awareness that this measure must be applied,” he said (see “The Duma proposed applying the death penalty with a delay to terrorists”).

Several politicians spoke out on this topic in October of this year. The head of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building, Andrei Klishas, ​​spoke out categorically against the return of the death penalty to the Russian Federation. He recalled that the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation has repeatedly expressed the impossibility of returning the death penalty: “The court motivated this by the fact that as a result of a long moratorium on the use of the death penalty, stable guarantees of the human right not to be subjected to the death penalty have been formed.”

I am a categorical opponent of the death penalty. Obviously, it does not affect the crime situation.

Pavel Krasheninnikov, head of the State Duma Committee on State Construction and Legislation

Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko also agrees with her colleague. According to her, at one time Russia made a civilizational choice: “And I am a supporter of the fact that the vector does not need to be changed, that there is no need to introduce the death penalty. This cannot be done." Former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev shares a similar point of view: “I am against the death penalty. A lot of mistakes. Ineffective. And it's pointless."

State Duma deputy Yevgeny Primakov spoke out for the return of the “capital punishment”: “I want the death penalty to be restored in our country for violent crimes against children and the helpless, terrorism, betrayal of the Motherland and corruption on a scale that threatens the country, which is tantamount to betrayal.” His point of view on lifting the moratorium was supported by Sergei Mironov and Gennady Zyuganov, leaders of A Just Russia and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

The first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on State Construction and Legislation, Yuri Sinelshchikov, even advocated holding a referendum on this issue in Russia. He himself believes that we are talking about using the death penalty in very limited cases: “According to my estimates, the court could pass five, maximum 10 such sentences. I just take things into account in my mind and say that this would not be so often, but this measure should exist.”

Well, how are we left without the death penalty for people who blew up houses, killing dozens, hundreds of people in Moscow! Well, why should this person stay on earth, breathe the same air as us, why should he still be on our budget, why should his people feed him? This is a complete anachronism in general. Why does this person have to exist? This is not a person, this is some kind of biological creature that is not a person, because elementary morality is incomprehensible to this person.

Yuri Sinelshchikov, first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on State Construction and Legislation

The parliamentarian added that the death penalty should exist for terrorists and pedophiles who re-offend. At the same time, Vladimir Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov emphasized that the issue of abolishing the death penalty is not being discussed in the Kremlin.

• Alexey Malakhovsky

• State Duma
• criminal process