Van Tuong Nguyen

I can see, dimly, how doing this kind of thing could be a crime against Cambodia, and a crime against Australia, but I can’t see how this kind of action could justifiably be punished by Singapore, when he hadn’t even passed through passport control into Singapore and clearly had no intention of doing so.

By this logic, a man from country A who commits a murder in the transit area of country B’s airport (“hadn’t even passed through passport control…and clearly had no intention of doing so”) against someone from country C (so it’s not a resident of B that is harmed) can’t be charged by country B. The offense took place on Singapore soil; ergo, it is subject to Singapore’s jurisdiction –bracketing the appropriateness of the laws themselves for now.

Let us not forget the role Westerners played in promoting heroin/opium addiction thoughout Asia, espcially in China during the time of the Opium wars.

To think Asians will take Western values on drug use seriously is ridiculous.

Yes, go ahead and apply your pressure to Singapore. Soon, when China is a great nation, maybe it will be the one applying pressure to Austrailans to change their laws in accordance with Asian values. “See how you like it then.”

Imperialism is a dangerous game, as the US is finding out. Hopefully you will be smart enough to not find out.

Brian, van Nguyen’s crime was not that he was “changing planes while carrying 396 grams of heroin,” and it’s misleading to represent it that way.

His crime was that he was involved in trafficking enough heroin to harm the lives of 26,000 people. In this case they would have been Australians.

He knew what he was doing and the consequences if he was caught.

Spare us the anguish.

Maybe they do think drug dealing is worse than murder. By certain lights, it could be argued that a drug dealer is participating in the multiple murder of an indeterminate number of users. Furthermore, maybe their entire point is to effectively put up a big, international sign over Singapore saying “Drugs? Not welcome here! Keep them the fuck out.” A rather Chinese way to handle things, but hardly an invalid one. I didn’t make their moral calculus, so I can’t attest to its structure. But I would hardly refer to their position as nonsensical. Draconian? Absolutely. Misguided? Perhaps. But I see all too well their sense.

Yeah, this would’ve been more interesting if that was a small bag of pot or something – 400 gramms of heroin really is a kinda big deal, y’know.

Heroin is not as destructive as people make it out to be. Heroin addiction becomes harmful when it takes place in a context where the supply is of poor quality, the addict is forced to deal with criminals in order to get the drug, and the associated drug culture is heavily criminal. Heroin addicts have lead successful careers despite lifelong addiction.

Opiates are fundamentally different from intrinsically destructive drugs like meth, inhalants, tobacco, or alcohol. The latter destroy health no matter how pure they are or the context in which they are consumed. Addiction is bad, but hamfisted drug policy can make it vastly worse.

If someone is murdered in the transit area, then there is a clear sense in which a harm has been perpetrated on Singapore’s soil. The nationality of the victim is irrelevant – if I killed a New Zealander while in America there’s a perfectly good sense in which I’ve committed a crime against America.

It is hard, to say the least, to see what the equivalent harm is in this case. Let’s agree, for the sake of the argument, that drug trading is a Very Serious Crime. Nguyen didn’t trade *any* drugs while in Singapore, there’s no reason to believe he intended to trade any, and indeed excellent reason to believe he intended not to do so.

It’s worthwhile reviewing how we got to this odd stage. Drug trading was concluded to be a Very Serious Crime. But it’s very hard, in the ordinary course of things, to catch people in the commission of the crime. So many jurisdictions concluded that they’d take possession of a large quantity of drugs to be conclusive evidence that the person intended to trade them, and would punish accordingly. Now this is already a bad idea – we don’t normally punish partially completed criminal plans as strongly as actually completed plans, but let’s bracket that. The problem here is that although possession of a large quantity is normally good evidence of intent to trade, that evidence doesn’t work here, because we have separate evidence that Nguyen had no intent to trade drugs within Singapore.

So we have three choices here. Either we say that mere possession of the drugs in Singapore is such a grave harm to Singapore that it deserves hanging. Or we can say that Singapore is justified in hanging someone merely on a general principle (people carrying lots of drugs in Singapore usually trade them in Singapore) that we know doesn’t apply in this case. Or we can say that Singapore is justified in hanging someone for preparing to commit a major crime in another jurisdiction. To say that none of these options reflect well on the Singapore government is to mildly understate matters.

Singapore’s reaction is much like Mao’s solution for opium — kill all elements of the opium trade. Actually, this is the only effective way to fight the war on drugs. But if one has a dimly democratic view of things, or even a tolerance for markets in the capitalist sense, the hopelessness of suppressing drug markets should be clear by this time. Aldous Huxley said so as long ago as 1930, when the League of Nations created the first, brainless international bans on narcotics.

The miseries caused by many products — cigarettes, alcohol, asbestos insulation, petroleum — are a hundred fold worse than narcotics. The drug warriors don’t even bother to claim any more that they can successfully ban the drugs they wish to suppress — instead, they take the suppression itself as a sign of morality, which is about the stupidest argument I can imagine.

Singapore’s planned murder of Van Tuong Nguyen is merely the extreme end of one of the twentieth century’s worst experiments in social control.

Do people take plutonium voluntarily and with great pleasure? Maybe I should score some…

A ‘crime against Singapore’ is a violation of Singapore’s laws, on Singapore’s soil. Singapore has the right to enact laws regarding drug possession in Singapore, and it is for Singaporeans or their government to judge what constitutes harm to Singapore. People who, for whatever reason, fancy carrying around huge quantities of heroin around with them are free to avoid the town. This seems to establish that Singapore may punish people for possession of drugs on Singaporean soil, assuming it does so in conformity with established standards of the rule of law.

This argument would certainly not justify any behavior on the part of Singapore. I believe that hanging violates a fundamental human rights standard. However, this point has nothing to do with whether the person we’re talking about caused harm to Singapore or not. It would apply even to the murderer.

So there are really two different issues here. The first is whether Singapore is entitled to punish people for ‘mere’ drug possession and the second is whether Singapore is entitled to punish such possession with the death penalty. Brians ‘three options’ fudge these two issues. According to his argument, Singapore simply doesn’t have any authority over the person since he didn’t harm Singapore, in Brian’s enlightened view. Singapore’s actions would be just as unconscionable, it would appear, if Singaporean authorities only jailed the person or, say, confiscated the drugs. But this view seems considerably less plausible than the claim that someone should not be hanged for drug possession. Brian, however, talks about ‘hanging’ to make his point about Singapore’s lack of authority stick. I find this somewhat disingenuous. And I wonder whether moves like this are what leads some Asians to resent Western interference.

roger wrote, kill all elements of the opium trade. Actually, this is the only effective way to fight the war on drugs. But if one has a dimly democratic view of things, or even a tolerance for markets in the capitalist sense, the hopelessness of suppressing drug markets should be clear by this time.

I disagree.

For example, I don’t see why a policy of “you can own and use marijuana, but selling it is a felony” wouldn’t work. The stuff is easy enough to grow that demand would be satisfied, but there would be no profit incentive on the supply side to grow a market.

For a drug like heroine, it would be reasonable for the state to keep it illegal. On the other hand, heroine users would be able to receive free heroine from the state if they could prove they were addicted. This might remove quite a bit of the profit incentive, and as poster togolosh says it would be a big improvement for the lot of users (if they were compelled to use the state-supplied allotment in a state-regulated clinic).

Drugs like meth might be difficult to deal with, though Mark Kleiman has discussed some interesting strategies recently.

abb1 wrote, you really believe that someone caught with 400 grams of plutonium in Newark on his way from Moscow to Rio would’ve been extradited, huh?

But if the plot involved the authorities in Moscow and Rio, the US could argue that it has suffered a harm, because the US could claim it has an interest in Brazil not developing a nuke.

liberal, interestingly, when regulators ban durable products in the US for health reasons, they have to do a search on possible substitutes.

Banning a consumer good that has an elastic supply (unlike, say, the feathers of a nearly extinct bird) and a high enough demand by a core group of users to make the risk of producing and selling it rational makes banning the worse regulatory solution to the health problem it may pose. iT makes police the regulators — but they should be the regulators of last resort. And it practically hands over regulation of the business to the businessmen — in this case, drug dealers — which leads to widespread and debilitating violence, since trade disputes can’t be taken to court. State experience with, say, selling methadone has not been exactly a bright spot. I actually see no reason for the state to monopolize sale of heroin any more than of tobacco. The state has every reason to regulate drug sales, and could probably even avert certain drug mutations that way — dealers would have an incentive not to make certain drugs more potent, or sell them in certain forms, if they could make legitimate money dealing in conventional drugs. The incentive to self-regulate drives the alcohol industry, and while it is far from perfect, it is much better than prohibition.

I detest capital punishment, but Singapore has a famously harsh drugs policy to create strong deterrence. The message is blunt: Don’t mess with any banned drug in any way if you want to come near my border. To speak of “evidence” and “intent” abstractly without this legal context seems unfair.

Another problem: “But it’s very hard, in the ordinary course of things, to catch people in the commission of the crime.”

That’s just as true in an airport transit lounge, isn’t it? Changi Airport sofas become ideal transaction points if we make the exception Brian suggests. At least one party in trafficking could never be punished.

Brian, I like and respect you, but you’re wrong about this. Jurisdiction is a fairly well settled field of international law. And legally, Singapore is completely within its rights. You may find this intellectually or philosophically repulsive, but every regime is going to have troubling border cases, and the alternatives are worse.

Also, even philosophically, you’re not making all that strong a case. If an Australian quietly and discreetly murders another Australian in the transit lounge of Singapore airport, Singapore is in no way harmed. (I say quietly and discreetly in order to snip off the “public order” argument.) Yet there’s unanimous consent that, in such a case, Singapore would be justified in arresting and trying the murderer.

This isn’t an abstract hypothetical, BTW. Crimes are committed every day on ships offshore, but within the territorial jurisdiction of some nation or other. I was once slightly involved in a case where a Korean captain was brutalizing some Filipino employees on a fishing boat just offshore from a US territory. Specifically, he wasn’t paying them the wages they’d been promised, was beating and torturing them (we’re talking stuff like tying one worker up with wire hangers for hours, leaving permanent scars), locking them in their barracks, and threatening to shoot them and throw them overboard if they dared complain.

The ship stopped at a US port to take on water and fuel. One alert Filipino recognized where they were, slipped over the side and swam (several hundred meters, through rough surf) to shore. The US Coast Guard came on board a few hours later and arrested the captain. He was then indicted in the local US federal court.

Following your reasoning, the US authorities would have to look on helplessly while the captain terrorized his helpless employees. Jurisdiction doesn’t work that way, and a good thing too.

I hold no brief for the death penalty, and I tend towards the libertarian position on drugs. And it appears there are mitigating circumstances in Van Tuong’s case… he had no prior criminal record, he promptly admitted his guilt, and he cooperated fully with investigators. (The last point in particular should carry some weight, since apparently Singapore’s criminal code includes provisions for relative leniency if the criminal cooperates.)

So there’s a serious case to be made for clemency. But jurisdictionally… no. Complete red herring.

Doug M.

abb1 wrote, Well, similarly Singapore could claim that it has an interest in heroin producers not profiting from heroin trade.

Yes, that’s the obvious rejoinder, but note the Pu trade isn’t very similar to the heroine trade.

Don’t get me wrong, though—I think there’s an argument to be made against Singapore, but I don’t think it’s a strong one.

Why do you think the US government feels the need to send weapons and troops to Colombia?

The US “feels the need” because the War on Drugs (at least as presently constituted) is completely irrational.

Despite my uncharitable reply to poster roger, I presume he’d argue that it’s hopeless to try to contain suppliers in Columbia and elsewhere, and I’d completely agree with him.

Not to mention that Columbia’s biggest problem isn’t the drug trade, but sickenly evil landowner privilege.

jake mcguire wrote, But I don’t understand the argument that states are not allowed to establish the laws within their own borders.

“Allowed” by whom? States can indeed do whatever they want within their borders. Other states can of course do whatever they want to oppose those actions. Whether its wise for the latter to oppose the former is another matter.

In this particular case, I vote for “leave Singapore alone.”

I do think doug m.’s rejoinder is the strongest so far…

I’ve obviously been rather sloppy in what I was trying to say, since a number of people have been ascribing points of view to me that I didn’t mean to be defending.

I do think states have a legitimate interest in punishing those who perpetrate harms either against their nationals or within their territory. As I said in the previous post, America has a legitimate right to punish those who commit murder in America, even if the victim is not American, and even if there is no further ‘public order’ problem.

And I think, more tentatively, that in the case of some drugs, including heroin, states can legitimately view trading the drug as perpetrating a harm.

So I think it would be legitimate for Singapore to punish someone for *trading* drugs in their airport. And I think it is legitimate for America to punish someone for torturing people in American jurisdiction. The problem here is that Singapore wants to punish someone for, at best, preparing to commit a crime in another jurisdiction.

I think the appropriate response would be to secure the drugs (which, as the Age article I linked to notes, they didn’t do a great job of) and either alert the Australian police to arrest Nguyen when he gets off the plane, or, if they are feeling nasty, extradite him to Cambodia where he really did commit crimes.

liberal, I’m not a libertarian at all. I have no problem with the state regulating drug production and retail. I think banning, on the other hand, is at the limit of regulating — it actually entrusts regulation of the market to the market makers and the police. It can succeed with certain industrial products that are durables, components of other goods, or that are produced industrially for a consumer market that seeks a service rather than a particular product — which is why banning DDT succeeded. There is no special police to crack down on DDT sales. You can use pyrocanthus based insecticides, and that is the end of the story.

But if you recommend banning a good, you have to be realistic and ask: is the ban going to succeed? And what are the mechanisms of success? If it requires wholesale slaughter, as under Mao, or extensive jailing — much more extensive than even in the U.S. — than I call that a non-solution.

Recognizing the power of markets is not a libertarian stance, but facing up to the real world. Liberalism, as I understand it, is finding and encouraging countervailing powers to remedy the injustices of poverty, inequality, etc. that come with the market.

As to the sale of heroin as opposed to tobacco — far from being an ad hominem, states like Sweden have established government monopoly over the sale of alcohol. I don’t think that has succeeded in its point, which, I think, is to control alcoholism. So — why institute a solution in selling heroin that actually doesn’t succeed in negating the black market in heroin (since to be a customer is to be noticed by the government), and will not negate the ill effects that occur with some users of heroin? It doesn’t make sense.

roger wrote, I don’t think that has succeeded in its point, which, I think, is to control alcoholism.

Heroin is not alcohol.

So—why institute a solution in selling heroin that actually doesn’t succeed in negating the black market in heroin

I disagree with your premise.

(since to be a customer is to be noticed by the government),…

That’s certainly an incentive to buy on the black market. Doesn’t mean that (a) that incentive will trump the price difference (the government’s being free) and (b) the possibility of setting the system up to mitigate the ill effects of being noticed by the government.

roger wrote, …or extensive jailing—much more extensive than even in the U.S.—than I call that a non-solution.

Furthermore, my solution (decriminalizing use but not selling) wouldn’t involve jailing as many people as you suggest.

“The problem here is that Singapore wants to punish someone for, at best, preparing to commit a crime in another jurisdiction.”

Singapore enacts these laws against drug trafficking because they are dissuasive. If its laws were to become more nuanced, such as banning trafficking only in the cases when it impacted Singapore residents, then by creating doubt, it would lose some of its dissuasiveness.

The Singapore government is entirely in its rights, to execute or not does seem to be a decision about which values a society considers to be most important, and yes it is arrogant for others to think their values are better. Clayton says: “It isn’t arrogant to try to engage someone in argument and tell them they’re wrong.” Sure it is, when the “engage somene in agrument and tell them they’re wrong” is (as Brian was suggesting) just writing them and telling them they’re wrong.

Clayton is right that Brian hasn’t called for the Aussie navy to intervene, but what about some sort of special forces op? If it were considered that an SAS operation could safely rescue/kidnap this guy from Sinaporean custody, would this be justified?

This would seem to abolish Clayton’s distinction between imposing a view and simply arguing in its favour, but I tend towards “yes”, at least before knock-on effects are considered.

I see no difficulty with people expressing a view to a foreign government. If, for example, there were a powerful nation that engaged in systematic torture, one would expect humane and thoughtful people everywhere to condemn that. I do get a little worried when one government is urged to pressure another, but given that Van Tuong Nguyen is an Australian citizen a role for the Australian government is not outlandish, though I’d want to see the “not doing more favours” bit explained more carefully.

And of course Brian did *not* phrase this in terms of “Western values,” a phrase which is more or less void of meaning in any case — it’s clear from the discussion above that plenty of Westerners are comfortable with the idea of hanging as a punishment for drug possession, and I’m sure there’s a variety of opinion within Singapore as well. One has only to think about the roots of Singapore’s legal code, or the Flor Contemplacion case, to see that East/West is not an interesting way to think about this.

I think Brian has a point.

Nguyen’s crime isn’t possession but trafficking. If by that what is meant is smuggling drugs over borders for economic gain, then I don’t think a crime has been committed against Singapore. It seems to me that someone who formally enters a country (i.e. goes through passport control) is committing a different crime than someone who simply hangs out with drugs in an airport lounge before they switch planes.

It would also be interesting if the plane had been diverted to Singapore, and Nguyen had not known he would be going there and would not have been given a say in the matter. If that were the case then he clearly couldn’t have intented to commit that particular crime.

I generally agree that any country that sees one of its citizens being threatened with execution should intervene diplomatically on his/her behalf. Other than that the case falls flat on its face. By and large country B has no incentive to interfere in a case of smuggling from A to C. It is mostly C (and in some but not all cases A) which wants B to interfere. Which gives C very little leverage in telling B how to interfere. Ideally C would like B to extradite, but if B makes native prosecution a condition of collaboration it might very well be in C’s interest to go along. You should go back to the drawing board and ask yourself if you’d argue identically if a. country B were Switzerland instead of Singapore, and b. if the smuggled commodity were slaves instead of drugs.

Dear God, the moral relativism in this thread sickens me. Sure Singapore is within its rights to deal with criminals as they see fit, but should that stop anybody from passing criticism of their affairs? Substitute Singapore with America, I wonder how many people in this thread will continue with nonsense of “America is within its sovereign right to execute drug dealers” . Or maybe America is within its rights to torture people who are suspected of being terrorists after all the safety of a nation rests on the shoulders of those pesky terrorists. America is within its right to fight a war in Iraq. America is sovereign, is it not?
Apparently I cannot say that Singapore executing drug dealers is wrong or do anything like persuade the singaporean authorities against it because I am imposing my “western belief of compassion and fairness” on eastern singaporeans, what a load of poppy cock. The self serving moral-relativism in this thread is sickening.

Brian, your view has some strange implications. For instance, on your logic it would seem that drug traffickers who are caught with 5 kilos of heroin on the New Jersey turnpike but with no intention to sell it in New Jersey should be extradited to the state they are heading to. But it doesn’t work that way at all. Also, what about those who found heroin in a garbage can and were passing through New Jersey without yet deciding in which other state they would like to sell it. Where should they be extradited to? Guantanamo Bay?

I think you would make life easier for yourself and everyone else if you admitted that you were simply wrong. Is this such a difficult thing to do for a philosopher (lover of wisdom)?

One of the things missing in this discussion is the mandatory nature of the penalty. That is, once Nguyen was caught with a certain amount of heroin, he was automatically subject to the death penalty and all other matters became irrelevant. Thus his remorse, cooperation with authorities, his previous record (entirely clean) were not (and as I understand it) could not be taken into account at the point of sentencing.

Even granting that there might be a case for the dealth penalty in relation to some kinds of crimes, and even granting that in some circumstances that drug trafficking might be one of them, I think anyone with a basic sense of justice ought to have qualms about one so bluntly applied.

Brian,

get a grip. The PM has done all he is able to do in the circumstances–pretty well covered in the comments above. The PM does not engage in Amnesty International letter writing campaigns; that’s not his job. John Howard, private citizen, may choose to do so, but that’s a different matter. As for not ‘doing more favours’ for the Singaporean government, what precisely were you on about? The Australian government has made its displeasure clear, but short of actions potentially damaging to the relationship, it’s gone as far as it could, and should, go. And yes, it will no doubt continue to make clear its dislike of the death penalty in these circumstances. Unpleasant though this particular case is, international relations do not revolve on the life or death of one drug courier, regardless of his nationality.

My favorite post quote here is from post #45: “yes it is arrogant for others to think their values are better”. Its awfully hard for me to buy that anyone actually believes this. If your values aren’t better than why do you hold them?

I appreciate John Emerson’s comments in post 48. Asian societies have perhaps the worst ground of anyone to make those types of relativist claims.

Also, I’m wondering- why is it so hard for you law and order types to recognize the difference b/w what Singapore has the legal right to do and what we should try and convince them to do?

Also, I’m wondering- why is it so hard for you law and order types to recognize the difference b/w what Singapore has the legal right to do and what we should try and convince them to do?

Because Brian, perhaps realizing that the purely moral argument was not going to carry the day, tried to frame the matter in terms of what Singapore had the “right” to do.

I can’t get too worked up over this. The guy’s guilty, and not very bright. It isn’t as if this is the first time Singapore has hanged someone for drug possession. So going there with heroin was a rather foolish decision.

The death penalty, like abortion , is not attractive, but there are times both are appropriate. Australians are welcome to their values, and so are the people of Singapore. If you go a country that has capital punishment, then it would be wise to avoid doing anything that might get you a new neck-tie.

This man has a history of crime. Sorry folks, but the only way I could feel for him is to feel for his left ear.

sfb

1. What is a constitution but a system of fundamental laws–however you might define it and differentiate it from particular statutes, still of the genus law. So does what you meant to entail also that: “If you’re going to follow the constitution at all times and not have the strength to oppose it because it is law, that’s just weak”; or “Constitutions are made to be broken”?

Besides, which constitution is at issue–that of Australia? (Why is that relevancet?)–that of Singapore? (Which provides for the death penalty, and the last attempt to challenge the constitutionality of the mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking was dismissed by the Privy Council; Ong Ah Chuan v. PP [1981] AC 648–in case you are interested.)

Or perhaps what you are saying is “the laws of a puny Asian country like Singapore are made to be broken by Australians”?

2. Let me get this straight: you are conceding that the man did break the law, a law that provides for a mandatory death penalty? Sure there are plenty of plausible arguments against the death penalty, against the mandatory death penalty, against either for drug trafficking, but the fact that he was a “doesn’t seem to be that bad bloke” and that he broke the law “in an effort to help his brother” are not among them.

Or perhaps yours is a plea for clemency, which presupposes that he does ‘deserve’ the penalty (given the law)?

3. Try logic for a while, it might be good for the rest of us.

Jake-

It may just be a case of different people reading Brian’s argument differently, but when he talks about what Singapore has the ‘right’ to do, I still think he is talking about moral rights. There is a sense I get from his argument that Singapore should be given a certain latitude to decide how to administer the law in their own country, but their are boundaries on what we should tolerate w/o significant objection and that is a normative question not a legal one.

As a point of information, when entering Singapore, every plane passenger is given a form that states in big, bold letters (I think they are in red) that those bringing drugs into the country will be killed.

Brian was clearly using the legal terms in his argument, and claiming that not only was Singapore wrong in applying the death penalty for drug possession, but that they couldn’t even justifiably make it a crime.

But sadly for Mr. Nguyen, it would appear that his time is up, and this issue will recede until the next Westerner comes up for execution.

why should people have to take care of this man in prison for almost selling drugs to our children ???
Hang his butt and make people understand it is time to stop this madness. BOO HOO
You do the crime …. you do the time!! airports have to protect all of us!!!!

I still don’t understand the transit lounge juristiction arguements.

Consider someone who buys a substantial quantity of Tylenol with Codeine in Canada (because it is cheaper) and passes through Singapore on the way back to Australia. Codeine is legal without prescription in Australia and Canada(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codeine). The person never enters Singapore and never passes through Singapore customs. Does this allow Singapore to arrest and hang them if they find a bunch of pills during a routine security check?

Nguyen’s dead now.

Why should tax payers in Singapore “feed” a drug trafficker for 2-10yrs. Is Australia Govt gonna fund his “stay” in Singapore Changi Prison? Based on Brian’s comments, if someone from Singapore transit in AUS to NZ killed a American at the transit lounge, he shdn’t be charge by AUS govt? Means people can use the excuse of transit to do whatever hell they want? That is a “free area” to do anything? Why there wasn’t any pledge for clemency for Bali Bombers for 2001 by Aussies? That guy deserved death sentence becauase he killed Aussie. Who and what makes Aussies think they are superior to decide who should die and who should not?

I cannot believe you people, NO ONE deserves to die, Drug trafficers Don’t kill people, it’s the people who take the drugs who kill themselves if you want to stop drugs you need to stop where it is made and all the Rich bastards that get away with it because they have the money and power, He made a mistake and you have not?
When desparate people do stupid things…
Having to STILL kill shows that we humans are still lacking intelligence, we are certainly a world with too many narrow minded people in it.
Death sentence is utter crap and makes us just as bad as the person who commited the crime.