Abstract:

“Death Penalty and Humans Rights” is MOOC leaded by The International Academic Network for the Abolition of Capital Punishment (REPECAP). Constituted by the academics, institutes and University Departments, REPECAP’s main aim is to encourage the development of the scientific work on death penalty issues. This MOOC is thus conceived as a modest contribution from the university and academia to the progress and the possibilities of the abolitionist project. Since public opinion is not informed about certain questions surrounding this punishment, this MOOC is a means of disseminating historical, legal, cultural and social information on death penalty. Judge Marshall of the North American Supreme Court, in the well-known case Furman v. Georgia pointed out that support for capital punishment depended on the information that the public had on its application. In fact, numerous studies would proliferate on the basis of this judgment that precisely demonstrated an indirectly proportional relation between the amount of such information available to society and the extent of the support in society for the death penalty: the greater the awareness of information on the death penalty, the fewer the number of people that support it. In other words: support for the death penalty is nothing other than a direct consequence of society’s ignorance of such problems as discrimination, arbitrariness, and judicial error associated with its application.

By becoming aware of the unfair circumstances under which executions are carried out, this MOOC aspires to make public opinion empathize to a certain degree with prisoners sentenced to the death penalty. It is a matter of bringing the convicted people into society, presenting details of their lives, their place of origin, their families and their personalities, to dispel myths and mistaken tendencies that mean the criminal is considered a totally different being from the rest of humankind.

In reality, the debate over the death penalty encapsulates a general discussion on criminal policies and the criminal and justice system that are found in contemporary societies and which they aspire to have in the future. From that perspective, a devaluation of criminal policy may be observed that becomes apparent from very many different perspectives: states are increasingly repressive; greater social control is required; victims are used to support controversial political decisions; expert knowledge and opinions are no longer taken into account; feelings of vengeance reemerge; resocialization as the fundamental purpose of the punishment loses weight all the time, giving up its place to long prison terms bordering on life imprisonment. Thus, effort should centre on exposing the social communications media, on organizing and mobilizing pressure groups that are contrary to this model of public security, and on restoring once again a long forgotten aphorism: politicians are opinion formers and not mere conveyors of opinions generated in the community. Applied to the death penalty, it means that political leaders cannot contend that public opinion because capital punishment is a cruel and inhuman penalty.

Keywords:

MOOC, death penalty, criminal policy, empathy, public opinion, transparency.