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Political crime and punishment
It was predictable and in many ways understandable that opponents of the former military junta in Greece would react strongly against the present government’s decision to commute the sentences of death imposed by the Court of Appeal in Athens on three members of the junta. However, their protests that the commutation of the death sentences would represent “a blatant intervention in justice” on the part of the executive are misconceived, though that fact is likely to be obscured by sympathy for what is the real motive underlying the protesters’ objections, namely their desire that the wrongs done by the junta should now be avenged by capital punishment. The point needs to be made for the benefit of those also outside Greece who were, rightly, bitterly antagonistic to the Colonels. For, in present circumstances particularly, the attitudes of those outside Greece who are known to be strongly in sympathy with the democratic movement there are likely to be noted and respected by its leaders.
It is certainly true that the Greek government’s commutation of the death sentences is not motivated merely by considerations of clemency or a concern to avoid what it has called “extremism and barbarity.” The government is clearly anxious also to avoid antagonising the Army, whose allegiance to the regime of the Colonels cannot be reversed overnight, but whose support is vital to the stability of Greece. Equally clearly, the present government would like to reassure world opinion that it is not going to celebrate its accession to power with a series of judicial murders and other harsh recriminatory measures which might be regarded, and not only by junta sympathisers, as outrages not unlike those for which the Colonels themselves were condemned.
Be all that as it may, the opposition protests against
“ intervention in justice” by the Greek government are misconceived, because in almost every democratic society the prerogative of mercy—the power to substitute some alternative sentence for a sentence of death imposed by the courts—is vested in the ultimate political authority in the State. In the days, for example, when the death penalty was in force in this country for murder, there were many cases in which, for one reason or another, that penalty, imposed by the courts, was commuted by the Crown. The power of commutation vested in the head of State or some other constitutional authority, so far from repudiating or even circumventing the jurisdiction of the courts, is intended to operate in addition to and independently of it. It represents, as the Greek government have put it, the “ final phase” in the process of bringing offenders to justice.
In relation to political offences, commutation would seem to be particularly appropriate and indeed in many instances advisable, because, while there may be no doubt about the facts of an individual’s complicity in the activities on which his conviction was based, there may nevertheless be room for doubt about the precise degree of his involvement, in terms of subjective responsibility. An additional difficulty in the Greek cases is that there is, it seems, some difference of opinion between the government and others (including, apparently, the courts) as to whether the offences of the accused are “political offences” for which under the constitution the death penalty may not be imposed.
To suggest that the government are right to commute the death penalty in respect of the three members of the military junta is not to seek to excuse in any way what they did while they were in power. There are, however,
