Straftäter durch Freiheitsentzug zu sichern."
("Human dignity is not infringed when the execution of the sentence remains necessary due to the continuing danger posed by the prisoner and clemency is for this reason precluded. The state is not prevented from protecting the community from dangerous criminals by keeping them incarcerated".)
[173]Didcott J: I agree with Chaskalson P that our new Constitution (Act 200 of 1993) outlaws capital punishment in South Africa for the crimes covered by his judgment, and I concur in the order giving effect to that conclusion which he proposes to make.
[174]My grounds for believing the death penalty to be unconstitutional for the crimes in question are these. Capital punishment violates the right to life of every person that is protected by section 9 of the Constitution and contravenes the prohibition pronounced in section 11(2) against cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment, both of which bind the state and its organs in terms of section 7(1). The provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act (51 of 1977) that sanction sentences of death for such crimes are not saved from nullification in their consequent clash with sections 9 and 11(2). For they fail to satisfy the conditions which paragraph (a) of section 33(1) prescribes for their survival as exceptions to the general rule, the conditions requiring that they must be reasonable in the first place and, in a society of the sort described there, justifiable in the second. Nor do they pass the further test of necessity set by paragraph (aa) for any permissible invasion of section 11(2).
[175]Perhaps the essential content of the right to life is negated in addition, an effect not countenanced by paragraph (b) of section 33(1) which subjects the legitimacy of any encroachment on the right to the extra requirement that no such result may ever ensue. That point may be put aside, however, once the requirements of paragraphs (a) and (aa) are not met. Negating the essential content of a constitutional right is a concept less simple and clear than it may appear at first to be. Any definitive ruling on its import that was made now would have a profound bearing on other issues likely to confront us in the future, with implications for them which are difficult to foresee at so early a stage in the development of our jurisprudence. It is better, I therefore feel, not to go into the question on this occasion, but to leave that open for consideration and decision on a different one when it has to be answered.
[176]Nor, for much the same reasons, do I think it wise to venture at present a comprehensive and exact definition of what is encompassed by the constitutional right to life. It suffices for the purposes of this case to say that the proclamation of the right and the respect for it demanded from the state must surely entitle one, at the very least, not to be put to death by the state deliberately, systematically and as an act of policy that denies in principle the value of the victim's life. Those are hardly features of deaths which the state may happen to cause in the course of waging defensive warfare, quelling an insurrection or rescuing hostages, to cite some situations debated before us in which a constitutional protection of life was said to be inconceivable. Such hallmarks do, however, characterise every execution by the state of a criminal.
[177]Whether execution ranks also as a cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment is a question that lends itself to no precise measurement. It calls for a value judgment in an area where personal opinions are prone to differ, a value judgment that can easily become entangled with or be influenced by one's own moral attitude and feelings. Judgments of that order must often be made by courts of law, however, whose training
