[DAWN] LAHORE: The district and sessions judge on Thursday issued fresh death warrants for a 'mentally-ill' condemned prisoner Khizar Hayat for July 28 as temporary moratorium on executions also ended with Ramazan.See how he likes a good neck stretching...
Hayat, a former police constable, will be the first convict to be executed since the federal government had temporarily stopped hangings in the fasting month.
And from this point we descend into an argument regarding the death penalty...
Previously, the Lahore High Court had stayed Hayat's execution a day before the hanging.
And why delay the high jump for the poor fellow?
Justice Project Pakistain (JPP), a law firm working for prisoners' rights, represented the case of Hayat on behalf of his mother Iqbal Bano. It was pleaded that the jail authorities in 2008 diagnosed the 41-year-old inmate with paranoid schizophrenia.
Paranoid schizophrenia is a subtype of schizophrenia in which the patient has delusions (false beliefs) that a person or some individuals are plotting against them or members of their family. Paranoid schizophrenia is the most common schizophrenia type.... all of which sez he's a nutter, but a fairly common flavor of nut. If he's a nutter within the definition of the M'Naughten Rule ("like a wild beast, knowing not from right or wrong," if I remember it correctly) then shouldn't society be protected from his delusions by putting him down humanely, like we'd put down a dog that attacks people? Not that hanging him would be all that humane, but that's probably the closest approach to be found in Pakistain.
The majority of people with paranoid schizophrenia, as with most schizophrenia subtypes may also have auditory hallucinations - they hear things that are not real. They may also have delusions of personal grandeur - a false belief that they are much greater and more powerful and influential than they really are.
An individual with paranoid schizophrenia may spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking up ways of protecting themselves from their persecutors.
Typically, a person with paranoid schizophrenia has fewer problems with memory, dulled emotions and concentration compared to those with other subtypes; which allows them to think and function more successfully. Even so, paranoid schizophrenia is a chronic (long-term, lifelong) condition which may eventually lead to complications, including suicidal thoughts and behavior.
With proper treatment and support, patients have a very good chance of leading happy and productive lives.
Shadbagh police had tossed in the calaboose
Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try!
Hayat in October 2001 for killing a fellow policeman and the trial court handed him down death sentence in 2003.
If he's not a paranoid schizophrenic then he'd be your average Pak, raised and living in a culture where the inability to control one's violent impulses is regarded as a sign of manhood.
However,
a good lie finds more believers than a bad truth...
the court later revoked the stay after the jail authorities stated that Hayat was fit for execution.
"We're gonna hang you tomorrow morning, Hayat!"
"Please don't kill me!"
"That looks like a pretty normal reaction to me."
The JPP said the second mercy petition of Hayat was still pending before the president of Pakistain.
It needs some babu's stamp before it becomes official. Until then it's just "demi-official," as Huree Chunder Mukkerjee would have described it.
JPP Director Barrister Sarah Belal said Khizar Hayat's severe mental illness was well-documented and the jail's own records showed that he suffered from 'severe psychosis'.
I've got arthritis, my hair's mostly departed the top of my head, and I probably have halitosis. If I hot somebody my ailments wouldn't disqualify me from the death penalty.
She said it was deplorable, then, that the government still wanted to hang him. Executing mentally ill people was a violation of local as well as international laws, she said, and added that Hayat's execution must be halted and he should be shifted to some mental hospital immediately.
Good idea. Lock him away in a mental hospital, where in three or four years somebody will pronounce him cured and "mainstream" him. Then his victim won't be dead anymore, right?