Military Death Sentence

Bailey & Peterson (1997), observe that the president carries the sole authority to communicate a military death sentence. An execution can never be performed without direct approval form the president of that particular state. Most presidents have continually viewed the death penalty bringing ones life to an end prematurely and have hesitated to approve the executions. The high ranking commanding military officers have no option but to respect the highest authority in the country. To this effect, they have since avoided issuing capital punishment to offenders.

All military capital cases are supposed to be resolved before a panel that is made up of at least five service members who are normally selected/ picked by the convening authority, normally a high ranking commanding officer. This fact has come under criticism and is one of the reasons that the military has often not used capital punishment. It has for a long time become the centre for those against death penalty all over the world. It is argued by the opponents that it violates the rights of the defendants as many of cases of this kind that have been witnessed in the past and today, make use of less than twelve (12) panel/ jury members. This is in contrary to civic capital cases that utilize a different number that is relatively higher. For fairness, the number has to be increased. The military judicial system has no such provisions. It is due to this that the officials have weighed the options and the number of capital punishment in the military jurisdiction today is very dismal (Foreman & Mary, 2002).

Some amendment was made to the Uniform Military Code of Justice and consequently adopted. The amendment allowing for a life sentence without the parole possibility has helped lower the number of military death sentence (Foreman & Mary, 2002). A good strategy the clause has served as, for doe to this, mot offenders that were to be executed for committing various offenses can now escape death in military. This is an option that many have turned to as a means of replacing the capital punishment.

In conclusion, capital punishment has to be completely done away with in the military judicial system due to violation to violation of both the constitution and the rights of humanity.