A Cruel May

Never ending discussions on the necessity of a death row are on the agenda yet again, especially after data was published that in the last month and a half in Serbia four death sentences have been pronounced. All four cases were crimes in which the victims had not threatened their executors. Namely, the killings were enacted for a few hundred dinars, necklaces, sneakers or a belt taken off the victim’s trousers, i.e. without any special motive. It can easily happen that the number of prisoners sentenced to death (four) in a short period of time could easily rise. In the district court in Belgrade towards the middle of last week a trial had just been completed. The indicted 26-year-old young man had viciously murdered his girlfriend, and the deputy district attorney demanded that he be sentenced to death.

According to the Penal Law of the republic of Serbia, a death penalty is otherwise foreseen for the most severe cases listed as "qualified murders", and viscous robbery cases. It is interesting to note that federal law does not include provisions for capital punishment. Identical crimes which induce a death sentence according to the republican law are listed in the federal law as twenty year jail sentences.

Those who have delved into this topic seriously in the last couple of days have ascertained that as of 1975 not a single death sentence has been executed in Yugoslavia. A few candidates for the firing squad have been waiting in jail for years for the execution of their sentence and in the meantime, in fast succession, new ones have arrived.

The fact that in the last month and a half four death sentences have been pronounced is viewed by many of those who oppose such punishment as new proof of the repressiveness of our judicial system. However, others deduce that the issue lies in a higher rate of penal activities, which rose during the war, a large number of weapons on the streets and a fierce moral crisis. On the other hand, others claim that it has nothing to do with the war but rather with government behavior which often ignores classic criminal activities. In the category of the number of unresolved murders, Belgrade is at the top of the European capital cities list which is why it was nicknamed the "Danube Palermo" some time ago.

The topic - "for" or "against" a death sentence - has been broached a number of times in the last few days in the United States as well. A death sentence has been recently pronounced there for Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran, who had planted a bomb near a federal building in Oklahoma, killing 168 people, including 19 children. The case of "the US vs. McVeigh" has been described as one of the biggest challenges for all those who oppose the death penalty in America. Those in favor of it have asked - "if not McVeigh, then who", or "if not now, then when". Newsweek Magazine has conducted its independent research on the subject in which 67 percent of those polled were in favor of a death sentence for the "Oklahoma bomber", while 21 percent were against it. More than half of Newsweek’s research participants (56 percent) otherwise believe that a death sentence should be applied to people who commit crimes for ideological reasons.

For our story the most important issue would be to ascertain how such frequent death sentences truly can prevent potential criminals who are killing others more and more only to get a hold of a couple of hundred dinars or money for their sneakers. Discussions on this topic should include answers to the question - why is the number of those sentenced to death in FRY amazingly higher than in all other parts of former Yugoslavia. Officially, other cities were also at war, yet the number of severe criminal acts isn’t as high as here. What would have happened if the police had managed to solve at least one tenth of all those "qualified murders" as stated in the law, and which still occur on a daily basis on the streets of Belgrade?