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A first of its kind report, Deathworthy, presents empirical data on mental illness and intellectual disability among death row prisoners in India and the psychological consequences of living on death row. The report finds that an overwhelming majority of death row prisoners interviewed (62.2%) had a mental illness and 11% had intellectual disability. The proportion of persons with mental illness and intellectual disability on death row is overwhelmingly higher than the proportion in the community population. The report also establishes correlations between conditions of death row incarceration and mental illness and ill-health. Led and conceptualised by Maitreyi Misra (Head, Mental Health and Criminal Justice, Project 39A, National Law University Delhi), the study was conducted under the guidance of Dr. Pratima Murthy (Director, NIMHANS), Dr Sanjeev Jain (Senior Professor, Deptt of Psychiatry, NIMHANS) and Dr Gitanjali Narayanan (Associate Professor, Deptt of Psychology, NIMHANS).

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list India
• Themes list Mental Illness

This is a report about the role of official misconduct in the conviction of innocent people. We
discuss cases that are listed in the National Registry of Exonerations, an ongoing online archive
that includes all known exonerations in the United States since 1989, 2,663 as of this writing.
This Report describes official misconduct in the first 2,400 exonerations in the Registry, those
posted by February 27, 2019

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list Innocence

This brochure was developed by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty with the Commission on the Human Rights in the Philippines. It explains why the death penalty risks returning in the Philippines and the reasons against its resurgence. It is available in 11 languages of the Philippines, plus French and English.

• Document type Campaigning
• Countries list Philippines
• Themes list Drug Offenses

This brochure was developed by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty with the Commission on the Human Rights in the Philippines. It explains why the death penalty risks returning in the Philippines and the reasons against its resurgence. It is available in 11 languages of the Philippines, plus French and English.

• Document type Campaigning
• Countries list Philippines
• Themes list Drug Offenses

This brochure was developed by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty with the Commission on the Human Rights in the Philippines. It explains why the death penalty risks returning in the Philippines and the reasons against its resurgence. It is available in 11 languages of the Philippines, plus French and English.

• Document type Campaigning
• Countries list Philippines
• Themes list Drug Offenses

This brochure was developed by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty with the Commission on the Human Rights in the Philippines. It explains why the death penalty risks returning in the Philippines and the reasons against its resurgence. It is available in 11 languages of the Philippines, plus French and English.

• Document type Campaigning
• Countries list Philippines
• Themes list Drug Offenses

A recent article in Mother Jones examines lingering questions in the determination of which inmates are exempt from execution because of mental incompetency. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Ford v. Wainwright that a person could not be executed if he or she was “unaware of the punishment they’re about to suffer and why they are to suffer it.” The 2007 ruling in Panetti v. Quarterman updated that decision, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing, “A prisoner’s awareness of the State’s rationale for an execution is not the same as a rational understanding of it.” Scott Panetti (pictured), the inmate involved in the 2007 case, knew that the state of Texas planned to execute him for the murder of his in-laws, but also sincerely believed that he was at the center of a struggle between God and Satan and was being executed to stop him from preaching the Gospel.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Intellectual Disability,

This brochure was developed by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty with the Commission on the Human Rights in the Philippines. It explains why the death penalty risks returning in the Philippines and the reasons against its resurgence. It is available in 11 languages of the Philippines, plus French and English.

• Document type Campaigning
• Countries list Philippines
• Themes list Drug Offenses

This brochure was developed by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty with the Commission on the Human Rights in the Philippines. It explains why the death penalty risks returning in the Philippines and the reasons against its resurgence. It is available in 11 languages of the Philippines, plus French and English.

• Document type Campaigning
• Countries list Philippines
• Themes list Drug Offenses

This brochure was developed by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty with the Commission on the Human Rights in the Philippines. It explains why the death penalty risks returning in the Philippines and the reasons against its resurgence. It is available in 11 languages of the Philippines, plus French and English.

• Document type Campaigning
• Countries list Philippines
• Themes list Drug Offenses

This brochure was developed by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty with the Commission on the Human Rights in the Philippines. It explains why the death penalty risks returning in the Philippines and the reasons against its resurgence. It is available in 11 languages of the Philippines, plus French and English.

• Document type Campaigning
• Countries list Philippines
• Themes list Drug Offenses
• Available languages Maintenir l'abolition de la peine de mort aux Philippines (Français)

This brochure was developed by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty with the Commission on the Human Rights in the Philippines. It explains why the death penalty risks returning in the Philippines and the reasons against its resurgence. It is available in 11 languages of the Philippines, plus French and English.

• Document type Campaigning
• Countries list Philippines
• Themes list Drug Offenses

This brochure was developed by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty with the Commission on the Human Rights in the Philippines. It explains why the death penalty risks returning in the Philippines and the reasons against its resurgence. It is available in 11 languages of the Philippines, plus French and English.

• Document type Campaigning
• Countries list Philippines
• Themes list Drug Offenses

This brochure was developed by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty with the Commission on the Human Rights in the Philippines. It explains why the death penalty risks returning in the Philippines and the reasons against its resurgence. It is available in 11 languages of the Philippines, plus French and English.

• Document type Campaigning
• Countries list Philippines
• Themes list Drug Offenses

In 2021, The Death Penalty Project and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, in partnership with the Australian National University commissioned Prof. Carolyn Hoyle, Director of The Death Penalty Research Unit, at the University of Oxford, to undertake research in order to provide accurate data on attitudes towards the death penalty in Kenya and facilitate a constructive conversation on the future of capital punishment. The research examined the views of both the general public in Kenya and also opinion formers, those considered influential in shaping, and responding to, national views.

Key findings:

– 40% in favour of abolishing the death penalty, 10% did not know either way
– 51% in favour of retaining the death penalty, only 32% strongly in favour
– Those against the death penalty believed that criminals deserved the opportunity for rehabilitation.
– Knowledge of the death penalty appears to be limited, just 66% were aware Kenya retains the death penalty and just 21% knew no executions had take place in the past 10 years
– The public expressed concerns around the possibility that innocent people could be sentenced to death: 61% of the public – including retentionists – thought that ‘many’ or ‘some’ innocent people have been sentenced to death in Kenya; only 8% thought that ‘no innocent people have been sentenced to death’
– Public support fell from 51% to 31% when considering abolition in the region
59% of the public, who were initially in favour of retention, said that they would accept a new policy of abolition

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Kenya
• Themes list Public Opinion 

In this report, Mai Sato and Paul Bacon go beyond the simple results of opinion polls conducted
recently by the Japanese government, which show very high levels of support for the death penalty.
Using a similar methodology and sample, the authors reveal that the majority of the population form
their views on the death penalty with limited information and based on often inaccurate perceptions
– for example, believing that the crime rate is increasing. Sato and Bacon also demonstrate that
people have a relatively low level of ‘psychological ownership’ when it comes to the future of the death
penalty: the majority think that the government and experts should decide. Furthermore, discussions
about the death penalty among participants increased tolerance towards those with different views –
which, in turn, facilitated potential reform and change.

• Document type Academic report

The Reverend Russ Ford, who served as the head chaplain on Virginia’s death row for eighteen years, raged against the inequities of the death penalty—now outlawed in Virginia—while ministering to the men condemned to die in the 1980s and 1990s. Ford stood watch with twenty-eight men, sitting with them in the squalid death house during the final days and hours of their lives. In July 1990 he accidentally almost became the 245th person killed by Virginia’s electric chair as he comforted Ricky Boggs in his last moments, a vivid episode that opens this haunting book. Many chaplains get to know the condemned men only in these final moments. Ford, however, spent years working with the men of Virginia’s death row, forging close bonds with the condemned and developing a nuanced understanding of their crimes, their early struggles, and their challenges behind bars. His unusual ministry makes this memoir a unique and compelling read, a moving and unflinching portrait of Virginia’s death row inmates. Revealing the cruelties of the state-sanctioned violence that has until recently prevailed in our backyard, Crossing the River Styx serves as a cautionary tale for those who still support capital punishment.

• Document type Book
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Death Row Conditions 

“No one believed me” is a quote from Merri Utami, who was sentenced to death for drug trafficking in Indonesia in 2002. Her quote reflects the injustices faced by women accused of capital drug offenses around the world: many decision-makers disbelieve women’s plausible innocence claims or discount the effects of relationships and economic instability on women’s decisions to traffic drugs.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Drug Offenses / Women
• Available languages

Published on March 5, 2024

This report has been drafted by Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) with the support of ECPM (Together Against the Death Penalty). Since 2012, Iran Human Rights and ECPM have been working together for the publication, international release and distribution of annual reports on the death penalty in Iran.

The 16th annual report on the death penalty by Iran Human Rights and ECPM (Together Against the Death Penalty) provides an assessment and analysis of the 2023 death penalty trends in 2023 in the Islamic Republic of Iran. It sets out the number of executions in 2023, the trend compared to previous years, the legislative framework and procedures, charges, geographic distribution and a monthly breakdown of executions. Lists of the female and juvenile offenders executed in 2023 are also included in the tables. The report also looks into the abolitionist movement within Iran, including the forgiveness movement and its contribution to reducing the use of the death penalty, and provides analysis on how the international community can contribute to limiting the scope of the death penalty in Iran. The 2023 report is the result of hard work from Iran Human Rights members and supporters who took part in reporting, documenting, collecting, analysing and writing of its contents. We are especially grateful to Iran Human Rights sources inside Iran who incur a significant risk by reporting on unannounced and secret executions in prisons of 30 different provinces. Due to the very difficult context, the lack of transparency and the obvious risks and limitations that human rights defenders face in the Islamic Republic of Iran, this report does not give a complete picture of the use of the death penalty in Iran by any means. There are 46 reported executions which are not included in this report due to a lack of sufficient details or an inability to confirm cases through two different sources. However, it aims to provide the most complete and realistic figures possible in the present circumstances. The current report does not include suspicious deaths in custody, death row prisoners who died in prison before the executions or those killed under torture. ECPM supports the elaboration, editing process, publishing and distribution of this report in the framework of its international advocacy work against the death penalty. The problems of transparency on the data and information about the death penalty in Iran should be overcome by a strong strategy of distribution and dissemination. The overall objectives of this report for Iran Human Rights and ECPM are to call attention to and publicise the facts, in order to change national and international views on the situation of the death penalty in Iran, first executioner country in the world.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Iran (Islamic Republic of)

The 120-page report assesses and analyses trends in death penalty practices in order to propose recommendations, tailored to the national context, and to engage in a constructive dialogue on capital punishment in the country.

The death penalty situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran remains alarming with a significant increase in executions in 2021 (+25%) and an increasing number of Iranian women being executed. The number of executions has doubled after the election of Ebrahim Raeisi as President, and as the Islamic Republic and Western governments negotiate to revive the nuclear deal, also called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). These are some of the main findings of the 14th Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran by Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) and Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort (ECPM) released today.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Iran (Islamic Republic of)
• Available languages Rapport annuel sur la peine de mort en Iran 2021

Published in December 2023.

In “Death by Design” Parts 1 and 2, Wren investigated the state of court-appointed capital representation in Harris County—the death penalty capital of the world.The first report delves into the failings of the lawyers in capital cases.

Wren recommends a total overhaul to the system of capital representation for poor defendants in Harris County, with either the public defender absorbing those cases or the judges establishing a new, freestanding capital public defender that is independent from judicial oversight.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Legal Representation

This report covers the judicial use of the death penalty for the period January to December 2022. Amnesty International reports only on executions, death sentences and other aspects of the use of the death penalty, such as commutations and exonerations, where there is reasonable confirmation. In many countries governments do not publish information on their use of the death penalty.

• Document type NGO report
• Available languages 2022 منظمة العفو الدولية أحكام وعمليات الإعدام فيInforme Global de Amnistía Internacional : Condenas a muerte y ejecuciones 2022Amnesty International Rapport Mondial : Condamnations à mort et exécutions 2022國際特赦組織 2022全球死刑報告

Written by a team including experts in the fields of capital defense, gender rights, gender-sensitive mitigation and the rights of transgender persons, the guide includes sections on gender-based violence, women’s mental health, prison conditions, discrimination in the legal system, working with the media, and how to build a gender-sensitive team. It also includes a step-by-step gender-sensitive interview protocol that builds on resources developed by the anti-violence community and is tailored to the needs of defense teams.

• Document type Legal Representation
• Themes list Legal Representation / Women
• Available languages Défendre les femmes et les personnes transgenres confrontées à des peines extrêmes

Published on December 01, 2023.

Innocence cases dominated much of the media’s attention on death penalty cases in 2023. While these prisoners were largely unsuccessful in the courts, there was unprecedented support for their claims from state legislators, prosecutors, judges, and other elected officials, some of whom declared themselves newly disillusioned with use of the death penalty in their state. This year is the 9th consecutive year with fewer than 30 people executed (24) and fewer than 50 people sentenced to death (21, as of December 1). The 23 men and one woman who were executed in 2023 were the oldest average age (tied with 2021) and spent the longest average number of years in prison in the modern death penalty era before being executed. As in previous years, most prisoners had significant physical and mental health issues at the time of their executions, some of which can be attributed to the many years they spent in severe isolation on death row. Continued difficulties obtaining lethal injection drugs led some states to explore new, untested methods of execution or revive previously abandoned methods. Other states enacted or continued pauses on executions while the state’s method of execution was studied.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Public Opinion 

2021 saw a worrying rise in executions and death sentences as some of the world’s most prolific executioners returned to business as usual and courts were unshackled from Covid-19 restrictions, Amnesty International said today in its annual review of the death penalty.

• Document type NGO report
• Available languages التقرير العالمي لمنظمة العفو الدولية أحكام وعمليات الإعدام في 2021Condenas A Muerte Y Ejecuciones 2021Condamnations à mort et exécutions 2021

Published in December 2023.

In “Death by Design” Parts 1 and 2, Wren investigated the state of court-appointed capital representation in Harris County—the death penalty capital of the world. The second report examines why that poor representation has thrived, and the ways that the judges overseeing those cases have enabled it to continue that way.

Wren recommends a total overhaul to the system of capital representation for poor defendants in Harris County, with either the public defender absorbing those cases or the judges establishing a new, freestanding capital public defender that is independent from judicial oversight.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Legal Representation

This how-to guide, elaborated with Parliamentarians for Global Action with highlights coming from the African continent, is specifically designed for the use of abolitionist civil society groups who want to work with parliamentarians for the abolition of the death penalty.

• Document type Working with... / World Coalition
• Themes list Moratorium / Public Opinion 
• Available languages Comment travailler avec les parlementaires pour l'abolition de la peine de mort ?

As of 2020, blasphemy was formally criminalised in some 84 countries. As many as 21 countries criminalised apostasy as of 2019. The legal penalties for such offences range from fines to imprisonment to corporal punishment—and in at least 12 countries, the death penalty.

This report examines the extent to which States commit, or are complicit in, killings that violate religious freedom. Focussing on the 12 States in which offences against religion are lawfully punishable by death, we examine four different types of State-sanctioned killings on the basis of religious offence (apostasy, blasphemy, or alike) or affiliation (most commonly, membership of a religious minority): judicial executions, extrajudicial killings, killings by civilians, and killings by extremist groups. We explore the relationship between the retention of the death penalty for religious offences and other forms of State-sanctioned killings motivated by alleged religious offending or by religious identity.

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list Brunei Darussalam / Iran (Islamic Republic of) / Maldives / Mauritania / Nigeria / Qatar / Saudi Arabia / Somalia / United Arab Emirates / Yemen

Published in 2023.

This article assesses whether there is evidence to suggest that the UPR can influence the timing of a country’s decision to abolish the death penalty. The evidence arises out of the examination of thirty case studies of countries that abolished the death penalty, or ratifiedthe leading treaty calling for abolition. This article concludes that in some circumstances the UPR does appear to influence that timing. These conclusions can assist civil society organizations as they refine their advocacy to encourage more countries to abolish the death penalty.

Part I of this article offers an introduction to the global abolitionist movement and two of its advocacy targets: the U.N. Human Rights Council and the UPR. Part II makes the case for focusing on the UPR to assess the efficacy of U.N. advocacy. Part III describes the process of abolition and offers several theories as to how the UPR might influence a country’s trajectory toward abolition. Part IV sets out the study’s methodology and encompasses the analysis of the case studies, focusing first on countries that have abolished the death penalty early in a UPR cycle, then on countries that have abolished at mid-cycle, and finally on countries that have abolished during the tail end of the cycle. The conclusion discusses the implications of these findings for civil society organizations working toward abolition of the death penalty.

• Document type Academic Article
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition

Decades of research on the administration of the death penalty have recognized the persistent arbitrariness in its implementation and the racial inequality in the selection of defendants and cases for capital punishment. This Article provides new insights into the combined effects of these two constitutional challenges. We show how these features of post-Furman capital punishment operate at each stage of adjudication, from charging death-eligible cases to plea negotiations to the selection of eligible cases for execution and ultimately to the execution itself, and how their effects combine to sustain the constitutional violations first identified 50 years ago in Furman. Analyzing a dataset of 2,328 first- degree murder convictions in Georgia from 1995–2004 that produced 1,317 death eligible cases, we show that two features of these cases combine to produce a small group of persons facing execution: victim race and gender, and a set of case-specific features that are often correlated with race. We also show that these features explain which cases progress from the initial stages of charging to a death sentence, and which are removed from death eligibility at each stage through plea negotiations. Consistent with decades of death penalty research, we also show the special focus of prosecution on cases where Black defendants murder white victims. The evidence in the Georgia records suggests a regime marred less by overbreadth in its statute than capriciousness and randomness in the decision to seek death and to seek it in a racially disparate manner. These two dimensions of capital case adjudication combine to sustain the twin failures that produce the fatal lottery that is the death penalty.

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Fair Trial

A Death Penalty Information Center Analysis of 185 Death-Row Exonerations Shows Most Wrongful Convictions Are Not Merely Accidental.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Innocence

Japan retains the death penalty for three main reasons: because it missed a major opportunity for abolition in the postwar Occupation, because of the long hegemony of the (conservative) Liberal Democratic Party, and because (like the United States and China) it has sufficient size, economic influence, and political clout to enable it to defy human rights norms. Capital punishment also persists in Japan because it performs welcome functions for politicians, prosecutors, media, and the public.
Despite widespread belief to the contrary, capital punishment in Japan does not deter homicide better than long terms of imprisonment do.

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list Japan

As the 47th session of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is being held on 27-28 November 2020 in Niamey, Niger, ECPM and Nael Georges release this study, “The Process of Abolishing the Death Penalty in Member States of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation”.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Afghanistan / Albania / Algeria / Azerbaijan / Bahrain / Brunei Darussalam / Burkina Faso / Cameroon / Chad / Comoros / Djibouti / Egypt / Indonesia / Iran (Islamic Republic of) / Iraq / Jordan / Kazakhstan / Kuwait / Kyrgyzstan / Lebanon / Libya / Malaysia / Maldives / Mali / Morocco / Mozambique / Niger / Nigeria / Oman / Qatar / Saudi Arabia / Sierra Leone / Somalia / Sudan / Suriname / Tajikistan / Togo / Tunisia / Turkey / Turkmenistan / Uganda / United Arab Emirates / Uzbekistan
• Available languages مسارمإلغاء عقوبة الإعدافي الدول الأعضاءفي منظمة التعاونالإسلاميLes processus d’abolition de la peine de mort dans les États membres de l’Organisation de la coopération islamique (OCI)

This paper updates The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area: Background Paper 2020. It is intended to provide a concise update to highlight changes in the status of the death penalty in OSCE participating States since the previous publication and to promote constructive discussion of the issue. It covers the period from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021. Special Focus: The road to abolition in selected OSCE participating States

• Document type Regional body report
• Countries list Belarus / United States
• Available languages Смертная казнь в регионе ОБСЕ, Справочный документ 2021 года

“The President, his administration and Congress must recognize that respect for human dignity and retention of the death penalty are incompatible; that respect for the rule of law must include international human rights law guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty; that upholding universal rights must include upholding the right of everyone to life and freedom from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; and that making international institutions stronger must include implementing the conclusions of UN human rights treaty bodies,”

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States

Saudi Arabia is a flagrant abuser of the right to life. Between 2010 and 2021, Saudi Arabia executed at least 1243 people, making it one of the most rampant executioners in the world. As of December 2022, the Saudi regime had executed at least a further 147 people in 2022, including 81 people in one day in a mass execution on 12 March 2022.
Saudi Arabia’s use of the death penalty has drastically increased since 2015. This escalation has taken place on the watch of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, who acceded the throne on 23 January 2015, and his son, Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman. The annual rate of executions has almost doubled since King Salman and Mohammed bin Salman came to power in 2015. From 2010-2014 there was an average of 70.8 executions per year. From 2015-2022 there was an average of 129.5 executions per year – a rise of 82%. The six bloodiest years of executions in Saudi Arabia’s recent history have all occurred under the leadership of Mohammed bin Salman and King Salman (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2022).

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Saudi Arabia
• Available languages سفك الدماء والأكاذيب: مملكة إعدام محمد بن سلمان

Published on February 2024.

Founded in 2001, the Berkeley Law Death Penalty Clinic seeks justice for individuals facing capital punishment by providing high-quality representation and offers students a rich opportunity for meaningful, hands-on experience in high stakes, complex litigation. The clinic also tackles problems endemic to the administration of the death penalty and the criminal legal system.

The report continues the clinic’s racial justice research and advocacy by cataloging the states that gather prospective jurors’ self-identified race and ethnicity and those that do not. It examines what courts do with the information, including whether it is provided to the court and counsel for use during jury selection, and the consequences of these choices in furthering or obstructing jury representativeness and diversity. In particular, the report shows why the collection of prospective jurors’ self-identified race and ethnicity is vital to meeting state and federal fair cross-section guarantees and eliminating the discriminatory exercise of peremptory challenges.

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list United States

In 2021, The Death Penalty Project and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, in partnership with the Australian National University commissioned Prof. Carolyn Hoyle, Director of The Death Penalty Research Unit, at the University of Oxford, to undertake research in order to provide accurate data on attitudes towards the death penalty in Kenya and facilitate a constructive conversation on the future of capital punishment. The research examined the views of both the general public in Kenya and also opinion formers, those considered influential in shaping, and responding to, national views.

Key findings :

– The vast majority of opinion formers that took part in the interviews were in favour of abolishing the death penalty.
– 90% of opinion formers were in favour of abolishing the death penalty
– 82% of opinion formers were strongly in favour of of abolishing the death penalty
– Most of the opinion formers interviewed were very well informed on the administration of the death penalty in Kenya.
– Across both groups there were concerns around the possibility that innocent people could be sentenced to death.
– 88% of opinion formers believe wrongful convictions occur fairly regularly
– 93% of opinion formers thought Kenya should be influenced by high rates of abolition around the world
– Opinion formers believed that 75% of the public would accept abolition of the death penalty, despite initial reservations.

• Document type Rapport d’ONG
• Countries list Kenya
• Themes list Public Opinion 

This research is a contribution towards understanding why six small, independent island nations in the
Eastern Caribbean – Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, and St
Vincent and the Grenadines, all members of the OECS – and the neighbouring island of Barbados retain
the death penalty in their criminal statutes, and yet have not executed anyone sentenced to death for a
very long time. With the exception of St Kitts and Nevis, where an execution took place in 2008, no-one
has been judicially executed in any of the other countries for more than 20 years – and in Dominica,
Grenada, St Lucia and Barbados for more than 30 years. Furthermore, death sentences have been imposed
within the past 10 years only in St Lucia and Barbados, and in four of these seven nations no-one is under
sentence of death on ‘death row’ at the time of writing.
The questions posed by this publication are: why do these countries hang on to capital punishment
and what are the barriers and hindrances to the complete abolition of capital punishment by these
nations

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Antigua and Barbuda / Barbados / Dominica / Grenada / Saint Kitts and Nevis / Saint Lucia / Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition

In criminal justice matters, Jamaica has been rightly praised for its de-facto abolitionist
stance on the death penalty: nobody has been executed on the island since 1988.
However, the alternative to death is imprisonment. For many years, NGOs, the UN
Human Rights Committee, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and
various independent and internal reports have expressed serious concern about the
conditions in which Jamaica detains its prisoners.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Jamaica
• Themes list Death Row Conditions 

Published in 2024.

This research briefing documents the horrifying surge in executions in Iran in 2023, the highest in eight years. More than half of the executions were for drug-related offences amid a distressing return to a lethal antinarcotics policy since Ebrahim Raisi’s rise to presidency in 2021. With systemic impunity in Iran, the briefing reiterates the need for states to initiate criminal investigations under the principle of universal jurisdiction into crimes under international law committed by Iranian officials, irrespective of the absence or presence of the accused in their territory. Since the “Woman Life Freedom” uprising of September-December 2022, the Iranian authorities have weaponized the death penalty to create a pervasive climate of fear across the country, exert control over the population, and suppress dissent and any challenge to their iron grip on power. As a result, 2023 saw an exponential increase in the number of recorded executions. The authorities executed at least 853 people in 2023, a 48% increase from 2022 when 576 people were executed and a 172% increase from 2021 when 314 people were executed. Amnesty International believes that the real number of executions is higher, but the Iranian authorities are not transparent about the number of people executed each year and do not make data on executions publicly available.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Iran (Islamic Republic of)
• Available languages « ن گ راذ ی د ام ار دنشکب » نارحب مادعا یب یاه ناما رد اریا شزیخ نامز زا ن لاس 1

1. This report addresses the Philippines’ compliance with its international human rights
obligations with respect to the death penalty. For years, the Philippines imposed the death
penalty, particularly for so-called heinous crimes. In 2006, President Gloria MacapagalArroyo abolished the death penalty.1 Since then, however, lawmakers have introduced
numerous bills to reinstate the death penalty, with the House adopting Bill No. 7814 as
recently as March 2, 2021.2

2. The report examines the current state of the death penalty in the Philippines, including (1)
acceptance of international norms; (2) proposed legislation reintroducing the death penalty;
(3) torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in enforcing drug control; (4)
conditions of detention; and (5) administration of justice and fair trial.

3. This report recommends that the Philippines continue the abolition of the death penalty,
refrain from reintroducing the death penalty, honor its international commitments, and
implement a human rights-based approach to anti-drug policy

• Document type NGO report / World Coalition
• Countries list Philippines

Since 2010, persons convicted of rape offences were executed in at least 9 countries, including India and Pakistan. Moreover, public protests against the rape epidemic, which led governments to introduce capital rape laws, illustrates the need to shine a spotlight in South Asia.

The report examines the use of the death penalty for rape in four South Asian countries: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and explores ways that anti-death penalty activists can challenge this concerning trend.

• Document type Arguments against the death penalty / NGO report
• Countries list Bangladesh / India / Pakistan / Sri Lanka

This paper updates The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area: Background Paper 2019. It is intended to provide a concise update to highlight changes in the status of the death penalty in OSCE participating States since the previous publication and to promote constructive discussion of the issue. It covers the period from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020. Special Focus: Is the death penalty inherently arbitrary?

• Document type Regional body report
• Countries list Belarus / United States
• Available languages Смертная казнь в регионе ОБСЕ: Справочный документ 2020 года

Published on October 7, 2023.

Of all retentionist countries, Singapore seems to be the most vocal about the need to execute individuals as a form of criminal punishment. MAI SATO (Monash University) reviews studies conducted or commissioned by Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs that claim public backing for and the effectiveness of the death penalty in managing drug trafficking. Sato finds that these studies provide far weaker evidence for using the death penalty for drug trafficking than their authors and officials citing them claim.

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list Singapore
• Themes list Drug Offenses

Project 39A at the National Law University, Delhi published the sixth edition of the Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics Report which provides an annual update on the use of the death penalty in India along with legislative and international developments on the issue. As on 31st December 2021, there were 488 prisoners on death row across India (a steep rise of nearly 21% from 2020), with Uttar Pradesh having the highest number at 86. This is the highest the death row population has been since 2004 as per the data from the Prison Statistics published by the National Crime Records Bureau.

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list India

Bu rapor, Ocak-Aralık 2022 dönemi için ölüm cezasının adli kullanımını kapsamaktadır. Uluslararası Af Örgütü yalnızca infazlar, ölüm cezaları ve ölüm cezasının kullanımına ilişkin diğer hususlar (cezanın hafifletilmesi ve beraat gibi) hakkında makul teyitlerin olduğu durumlarda raporlama yapmaktadır. Birçok ülkede hükümetler ölüm cezasının kullanımına ilişkin bilgi yayınlamamaktadır.

• Document type NGO report

Supreme Court rhetoric, scholarly discussion, blackletter law, and ethical rules have perpetuated a myth that individual rights protect the autonomy of defendants within the criminal legal system. To expose this myth, I examine six rights that the Court has enshrined as essential decision points for criminal defendants due to the rights’ purported expressive and consequential functions: (1) the right to self-representation; (2) the right to plead guilty; (3) the right to waive a jury; (4) the right to testify; (5) the right to waive appeals; and (6) the right to maintain innocence at a capital trial. I conclude that each of these rights fails to protect defendant autonomy.

I then argue that genuine displays of autonomy under the criminal legal system take the form of resistance to the law, legal advocates, and the legal system. Thus, the autonomy of criminal defendants occurs not because of law but in spite of it. As such, scholarly discussions of the personal autonomy of criminal defendants should focus not on rights and rules but on acts of resistance. The current autonomy rights discourse is harmful because it obscures the system’s defects by framing discussions around individual rights instead of structural limitations. This lends itself to solutions involving procedural tinkering to better actualize individual rights instead of radical structural reform or abolition. By obscuring these structural defects and stressing the system’s protective qualities, the autonomy rights discourse presents the system not only as legitimate, but as functional, and potentially even successful. As such, a new scholarly frame is warranted: autonomy as resistance to law and the legal system. By illuminating the ways in which autonomy in the criminal legal system resembles autonomy under the American institution of slavery, the autonomy as resistance frame exposes the need for radical structural change and facilitates a reimagining of the criminal legal system.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States

Upon receiving his execution date, one of the thousands of men living on death row in the United States had an epiphany: “All there ever is, is this moment. You, me, all of us, right here, right now, this minute, that’s love.”

Right Here, Right Now collects the powerful, first-person stories of dozens of men on death rows across the country. From childhood experiences living with poverty, hunger, and violence to mental illness and police misconduct to coming to terms with their executions, these men outline their struggle to maintain their connection to society and sustain the humanity that incarceration and its daily insults attempt to extinguish.

By offering their hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, failures, and wounds, the men challenge us to reconsider whether our current justice system offers actual justice or simply perpetuates the social injustices that obscure our shared humanity.

• Document type Book
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Death Row Conditions 

In Malaysian jails, more than 1,200 prisoners are on death row. For them, news that the government was planning to abolish the death penalty provided a much-needed glimmer of hope. But many Malaysians want to keep the law as it is, saying capital punishment deters criminals and helps keep citizens safe. Families of murder victims say the only way to get justice for their loved ones is by hanging the perpetrators. 101 East meets the people on either side of this emotional life-and-death debate and investigates if Malaysia is ready to abolish the death penalty.

• Document type Multimedia content
• Countries list Malaysia
• Themes list Moratorium , Murder Victims' Families, Death Row Phenomenon,

This publication seeks to make visible the gender and intersectional discrimination faced by women in the judicial process leading to the death penalty. Through the various articlesin this publication, the authors bring to light the reality of women facing the death penalty through a different lens.

The first author, Shekinah Bright Kiting’a, in making a compelling case for abolition of the death penalty, explores how the death penalty uniquely affects women in the context of motherhood. Further, she highlights the rights and well-being of the children affected by their mothers’ death sentences, revealing flaws in our legal and ethical systems. With the overall aim of advocating for its abolition due to its significant impact on both parenthood and children’s rights, her article seeks to push for reforms that honour motherhood and prioritize children’s well-being in these difficult circumstances.

Kenaya Komba dissects gender disparity in the judicial system by exploring the intersection of domestic violence and the death penalty. In making a case for a restorative approach to justice, her article analyses the impact of capital punishment on victims of domestic violence and the systemic injustice and biases they continue to grapple with. Her elaborate analysis of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 and the Protection Against Domestic Violence Act, 2016, highlights the urgent need for reform in the legal system.

While Analyzing the role the media plays in shaping perceptions of women on death row, Patricia Chepkirui evaluates the implications of positive and negative media portrayals of such women by highlighting the ethical responsibilities of media in the coverage of women on death row cases. The article ultimately underscores the significance of responsiblemedia coverage in ensuring that media exposure of cases of women on death row is fair,balanced, and respectful of their rights and dignity.

Alex Tamei delves into the intricacies of abuse, gender-based violence, and trauma as mitigating factors in death penalty sentencing for women. His article comparatively analyses two Kenyan cases of murder in retaliation to intimate partner violence, seeking to shed light on the plight of victims of gender-based violence. The article effortlessly brings out the nexus between the death penalty and intimate partner violence and makessolid recommendations for change.

The fifth author, Patience Chepchirchir, delves into the nexus between psychological abuse and provocation. Through her article, she brings out the scope of psychological abuse while focusing on the linkage between emotional abuse and provocation and how the same can be considered as mitigating factors. Through an elaborate analysis of case law, she makes a case for psychological abuse of women as a mitigating circumstance during sentencing.

Stella Cherono’s article reflects on the intersectional discrimination faced by women in the criminal trial process leading to death row. The article highlights the complex and overlapping forms of discrimination women experience during the pretrial, trial and sentencing stages. Through her comprehensive analysis of gendered pathways to offending and imprisonment, she challenges how society perceives discrimination.

Loraine Koskei Interrogates the emerging jurisprudence on Intimate Partner Violence.Her article lays out the gendered factor in the commissioning and sentencing of women convicted of murder and offers possible recommendations.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Kenya
• Themes list Death Row Conditions  / Fair Trial / Gender / Women

Published on February 2024.

Texas has executed more people than any other state. However, out of the 254 counties in Texas, 136 have never sent an individual to death row. Harris County—Texas’s largest county and home to the city of Houston—stands out as the “death penalty capital of the world.” Harris County has executed more people than any state in the United States except Texas3 and is responsible for a quarter of the 1,124 people who have been sent to Texas’s death row since 1973.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States

For the 21th year in a row, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty is calling for local initiatives and world-wide actions that shine a spotlight on the abolition of the death penalty. The goal of this Mobilization Kit is to inform of this year’s objectives as well provide ideas of activities that boost the global abolitionist goal. This year’s World Day is dedicated to people who, during the process of being sentenced to death, or following the sentence of their death, have been victims of torture.

• Document type Campaigning / World Coalition
• Available languages Kit de mobilisation Journée mondiale 2023

The death penalty in the USA in 2021 was defined by two competing forces: the continuing long-term erosion of capital punishment across most of the country, and extreme conduct by a dwindling number of outlier jurisdictions to continue to pursue death sentences and executions.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States

Most of the workers NPR interviewed reported suffering serious mental and physical repercussions. But only one person said they received any psychological support from the government to help them cope. The experience was enough to shift many of their perspectives on capital punishment. No one who NPR spoke with whose work required them to witness executions in Virginia, Nevada, Florida, California, Ohio, South Carolina, Arizona, Nebraska, Texas, Alabama, Oregon, South Dakota or Indiana expressed support for the death penalty afterward, NPR found.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States

Published on February 11, 2024.

In 2002, Ra’id was arrested alongside several other suspects following a botched bank robbery that left two people dead and another paralyzed. His co-defendants pointed to him as the mastermind, which Ra’id adamantly denied. “I did not take part in that atrocity,” he told the court following his trial. “I did not shoot and kill anyone.”

Newson attended his father’s sentencing hearing, along with his mother, Jeannie Gipson-Newson. A death sentence would be “devastating to my child,” she remembered testifying. But it felt futile. The jurors seemed to have made up their minds. In 2004, Ra’id was sentenced to die.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States

For the 20th year in a row, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty is calling for local initiatives and world-wide actions that shine a spotlight on the abolition of the death penalty. The goal of this Mobilization Kit is to inform of this year’s objectives as well provide ideas of activities that boost the global abolitionist goal. This year’s World Day is dedicated to people who, during the process of being sentenced to death, or following the sentence of their death, have been victims of torture.

• Document type World Coalition
• Available languages Kit de mobilisation Journée mondiale 2022

The World Coalition and its members have collected testimonies of victims of torture in the death penalty. Confessions, death row phenomenon, moments before the execution, psychological torture of those not sentenced to death, methods of execution. Read the stories of these victims.
We thank all those who agreed to share their testimonies and their stories.

• Document type World Coalition
• Available languages Outil témoignages - Journée mondiale 2022

Published on April 3, 2023.

The death penalty has gained its legitimacy from the belief that capital prosecutions are more procedurally rigorous than noncapi-tal prosecutions. This Article reveals how a project of heightened capital standards, set in motion when the Supreme Court ended and then revived the death penalty, was set up to fail.

In establishing what a constitutional death penalty would look like, the Court in 1976 called for heightened standards of reliability in capital cases. In the late 1970s and early 80s, the Supreme Court laid out specific constitutional procedures that must be applied in capital cases, and left the door open for the Eighth Amendment to do even more. In the decades that followed, state and federal courts have fueled a perception of heightened procedural rigor in capital cases by referring repeatedly to the heightened standards applica-ble in capital cases.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Fair Trial

Qatar had been maintaining a de facto moratorium on executions since 2000, but courts continued to sentence people to death. In 2020, however, Qatar executed a Nepali migrant worker by firing squad. Qatar’s death penalty practices are not in compliance with the Covenant. Qatar does not limit the death penalty to the most serious crimes, it is not taking steps toward a de jure moratorium on executions or ratification of the Second Optional Protocol, and it does not ensure that defendants in capital cases have a fair trial. Recent history suggests that a migrant worker may be more likely to be sentenced to death and executed for killing a Qatari national, as opposed to a non-citizen. Migrant workers are particularly vulnerable in the context of the country’s criminal legal system.

• Document type NGO report / World Coalition
• Countries list Qatar

Cuba has maintained a de facto moratorium on the imposition of the death penalty since its last reported execution in 2003. In 2010, Cuba’s Supreme Court commuted the death sentence of Cuba’s last remaining death row inmate. As of the date of this report, there is no record of an individual currently sentenced to death. Although a de facto moratorium is in place, Cuba has not committed to a de jure abolition of the death penalty, citing national security concerns.

• Document type NGO report / World Coalition
• Countries list Cuba
• Themes list Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment

Published in 2023.

This is the eighth edition of the Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics Report. This annual publication presents changes in the death row population as well as political and legal developments in the administration of the death penalty in India each year. The statistics are compiled through a combination of data mining of court websites, media monitoring and Right to Information applications.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list India

In a February 2019 letter to the United Nations Office in Geneva, the government of Bahrain claimed that its courts “actually hand down very few death sentences.” In fact, since 2011, courts in Bahrain have sentenced 51 people to death, and the state has executed six since the end of a de facto moratorium on executions in 2017. As of June 2022, 26 men were on death row, and all have exhausted their appeals. Under Bahraini law, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa has the power to ratify these sentences, commute them, or grant pardons.

• Document type Article
• Countries list Bahrain
• Available languages المحكمة تطمئن إلى سلامة الاعتراف : أحكام الإعدام في البحرين إثر التعذيب والمحاكمات الصُوَرية

An increasing number of countries have recognized that state killing undermines human dignity and respect for human rights, such as the discriminatory use of the death penalty, the use of forced confession that increases the possibility of executing an innocent person, and the lack of deterrence effect of capital punishment. This move towards abolition of the death penalty is being witnessed in all regions of the world regardless of political system, religion, culture or tradition. As of today, at least 110 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, while at least eight countries have abolished for ordinary crimes, while less than 20 countries have reportedly
carried out executions in 2021.
This publication is a supplement to the ICDP´s 2018 work on “How States Abolish the Death Penalty: 29 Case Studies.”

• Document type NGO report

This report addresses Uganda’s compliance with its obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women with respect to the death penalty. The report examines and discusses Ugandan death penalty laws and cases where women are sentenced to death row in Uganda, primarily for murder.

This report recommends that Uganda adopt a number of key recommendations to better align its death penalty practices with Uganda’s obligations to women under the Convention. These steps, among other things, include: (1) abolishing the death penalty and in the interim, limiting the death penalty to only the most serious crimes of intentional killing of another human; (2) ensuring proper gender-sensitive training in the judicial system and protecting women in conflict with the law when gender-based violence is involved; (3) developing and implementing programs to prevent gender-based violence and discrimination; and (4) ensuring fair access to counsel to women sentenced to death or at risk of being sentenced to death.

• Document type NGO report / World Coalition
• Countries list Uganda
• Themes list Women

Utafiti wa Amnesty International kuhusu matumizi ya adhabu ya kifo mwaka wa 2022 ulionyesha kwambakulikuwa na ongezeko kubwa la idadi ya watu wanaojulikana kuwa walinyongwa duniani, likiwemo ongezekokubwa la watu walionyongwa kutokana na makosa yanayohusiana na dawa za kulevya

• Document type NGO report

In 2021, the 19th edition of the World Day Against the Death Penalty (“World Day” on October 10) was dedicated to the invisible reality of women on death row, paving the way for new data on the issue of women sentenced to death. Many members of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (“World Coalition”), in preparation for 10 October, conducted research to document the situations of women facing the death penalty around the world. To systematize the information collected and have a global understanding of women sentenced to death, the World Coalition conducted a data systematization exercise.
This short report presents the main conclusions of this country exercise. These findings are a compilation of existing data available to the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty and its members organization up to December 2022.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Gender
• Available languages Cartographie de données : les femmes dans le couloir de la mort

Published in 2023.

This article is the first in a series that will systematically explore how gender has affected the criminal proceedings of women currently on death row. For this inaugural article, we have undertaken the first—and, to our knowledge, only comprehensive analysis of gender-based violence (“GBV”) in the lives of all women currently on death row, examining the prevalence of GBV and how it has shaped the lives and affected the criminal prosecutions of women facing execution. Our research reveals, for the first time, that almost every woman on death row in the United States has experienced GBV. Indeed,the great majority have experienced more than one incident of GBV in their lifetime. Our findings align with previous studies demonstrating that women’s pathways to incarceration are paved with physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. Our research further shows that both in the United States and around the world, defense attorneys frequently fail to present evidence of GBV in women’s capital trials. When they do introduce such evidence, they fail to fully explain the nature of their clients’ victimization and the harm they have suffered as a result. Moreover, prosecutors frequently rely on gendered tropes to discredit women’s accounts of violence such as childhood sexual abuse, rape, and intimate partner violence. Consequently, those who sentence women to die rarely comprehend the extensive trauma that the women have endured throughout their lives, and how that trauma relates to their legal and moral culpability.

• Document type Academic Article
• Themes list Gender / Women

This report addresses Uganda’s compliance with its international human rights obligations with respect to the death penalty. The report examines and discusses the current state of the death penalty in Uganda, including (1) the broad scope of crimes that are eligible for the death penalty; (2) the lack of effective access to counsel in capital cases; (3) the occurrence of extrajudicial killings.

This report recommends that Uganda adopt a number of key steps to better align its death penalty practices with Uganda’s international human rights obligations. These steps include the following: establishing an official, de jure moratorium on the death penalty; reducing the number and scope of crimes that are eligible for the death penalty; reducing the maximum possible sentence from death to one that is fair, proportionate and in compliance with international human rights standards; and other measures

• Document type NGO report / World Coalition
• Countries list Uganda

This article primarily focuses on how racial bias creates nearly ubiquitous racial disparities in the imposition of the death penalty; it does so both to amass further reasons McCleskey was wrongly decided, and to point the way forward. Part I provides the necessary foundation by summarizing the history of race and the death penalty in the United States, with a focus on the Supreme Court’s treatment of racial discrimination claims in capital sentencing. Part II, the heart of this Article, examines the multiple psychological mechanisms that create racially biased decision making in capital cases. Understanding those mechanisms further undercuts the Supreme Court’s reasoning in McCleskey and argues for overturning the holding. However, recognizing the reluctance with which today’s Court would view overturning McCleskey, Part III considers whether and how alternative, case-specific uses of the data described in Part II might ameliorate the influence of racial bias in capital sentencing.

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list United States

Published on April 2024.

Researchers at Reprieve conducted an in-depth comparative study of botched lethal injection executions in the modern era of the U.S. death penalty, cross-referenced against the 1,407 lethal injection executions carried out or attempted during that period.

This report examines the phenomenon of botched executions by lethal injection, exploring the trends and contributing factors leading to botched executions through an analysis of 73 botched executions in the 1,407 lethal injection executions since 1977 (known as the modern era of the death penalty in the U.S.). This analysis used a process called multi-variable logistic regression, a type of analysis that assesses the odds of something happening considering multiple variables, to assess how identifiable characteristics (gender, age, and race) were associated with botched executions.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment

Leaflet for the 21th World Day against the death penalty (2023), on torture and the death penalty.

• Document type Campaigning / World Coalition
• Available languages كتيب - اليوم العالمي 2023Brochure - Journée mondiale 2023

This report explores the current issues with capital punishment in Tennessee through a historical lens, tracing the origins of the use of the death penalty from lynchings and other forms of racial violence directed at Black Tennesseans. The stories of individuals and communities that have interacted with different facets of Tennessee’s justice system throughout history suggest that, in many ways, even though centuries have passed, the experiences of discrimination toward Tennessee’s communities of color continue. A meaningful understanding of the state’s history and its legacy of violence and racism is essential to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Fair Trial

This document has been compiled by the Secretariat of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty with substantial aid from member organizations, including Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, Amnesty International, Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, Free Mumia ! French Support Group (Collectif français “Libérons Mumia !”), German Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Justice Project Pakistan, […]

• Document type Campaigning / World Coalition
• Available languages TEMOIGNAGES - 21ème Journée mondiale contre la peine de mort

• Document type World Coalition
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition
• Available languages Rapport d'Activité de la Coalition Mondiale 2022

Published on December 18, 2023.

Initial impressions of others based on facial appearances are often inaccurate yet can lead to dire outcomes. Across four studies, adult participants underwent a counterstereotype training to reduce their reliance on facial appearance in consequential social judgments of White male faces. In Studies 1 and 2, trustworthiness and sentencing judgments among control participants predicted whether real-world inmates were sentenced to death versus life in prison, but these relationships were diminished among trained participants. In Study 3, a sequential priming paradigm demonstrated that the training was able to abolish the relationship between even automatically and implicitly perceived trustworthiness and the inmates’ life-or-death sentences. Study 4 extended these results to realistic decision-making, showing that training reduced the impact of facial trustworthiness on sentencing decisions even in the presence of decision-relevant information. Overall, our findings suggest that a counterstereotype intervention can mitigate the potentially harmful effects of relying on facial appearance in consequential social judgments.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States

Published in December 2023.

This paper seeks to map the political economy of capital punishment in Iran, in particular in relation to dual and foreign nationals, and examines its external and internal functions. The external functions include suppressing the ‘cultural threat’ of cross-border drug trafficking, achieving more power in sanctions negotiations, seeking reciprocal prisoner swaps or demanding recompense for outstanding multinational debt. The internal functions include quashing protests against the regime, supressing separatist movements, or even just ‘otherness’. It is evident that those facing disadvantage across foreign national and intersectional lines face the death penalty disproportionately. In addition, although only representing a fraction of the overall population of death row, the arbitrary detention of dual nationals has a disproportionate political function.

• Document type Academic Article
• Countries list Iran (Islamic Republic of)

Published in April 2023.

Despite the reduction in the number of executions for drug offences during 2018-2020, a sudden increase in executions was recorded during 2021-2023: at least 131 known executions were recorded for drug offences in 2021, 253 executions in 2022, and 82 executions during the first 3 months of 2023 (Table). However, information concerning the death penalty in Iran is notoriously difficult to obtain because of the secrecy surrounding the country’s criminal justice process. This note provides a rare glimpse into the application of capital drug laws in the Islamic Republic of Iran. It exposes the idiosyncratic practices of the judiciary and its decision-making, using cases concerning the death penalty for drug offences—its imposition prohibited long under international standards. These judgments repeatedly use the language of ‘certainty’ in convicting the accused. In reality, to those familiar with basic fair trial standards, they raise serious concerns about miscarriages of justice that could potentially result in the erosion of legitimacy of the criminal ‘justice’ system in Iran.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Drug Offenses

• Document type World Coalition
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition
• Available languages Statuts de la Coalition mondiale contre la peine de mort 2023

It is of the utmost importance, in the short and medium-term, to develop an intense work of academically nature both of study and disclosure of the problems of the abolition of the death penalty in the international scenario, to complement and help the work of the diplomatic action and non-governmental organizations. To this effect it is proposed to keep REPECAP as an ever – growing scientific world network comprising academic law scholars, human rights centers, institutions of public law and Ngos, with expertise and skill in the problems of death penalty and interests in the field of international criminal justice, as well as young researchers who have been dealing with these topics or wish to get involved with the subject, regardless of nationality or locations.

• Document type Working with...
• Themes list Networks,

In a year awash with incendiary political advertising that drove the public’s perception of rising crime to record highs, public support for capital punishment and jury verdicts for death remained near fifty-year lows. Defying conventional political wisdom, nearly every measure of change — from new death sentences imposed and executions conducted to public opinion polls and election results — pointed to the continuing durability of the more than 20-year sustained decline of the death penalty in the United States.
The Gallup crime survey, administered in the midst of the midterm elections while the capital trial for the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida was underway, found that support for capital punishment remained within one percentage point of the half-century lows recorded in 2020 and 2021. The 20 new death sentences imposed in 2022 are fewer than in any year before the pandemic, and just 2 higher than the record lows of the prior two years. With the exception of the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, the 18 executions in 2022 are the fewest since 1991.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States

In 2019-20, The Death Penalty Project, in partnership with LBH Masyarakat and the University of Indonesia, commissioned Professor Carolyn Hoyle, of The Death Penalty Research Unit at the University of Oxford to conduct research investigating attitudes towards the death penalty in Indonesia.
The findings have been presented in a two-part report; the first details the findings of a nuanced public survey and the second details the findings of interviews conducted with opinion formers.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Indonesia
• Themes list Drug Offenses / Public Opinion 

Business engagement in the death penalty is critical because of the impact it can have. Putsimply: the power is in your hands. If your business is looking for a human rights issue whereit can achieve measurable change, advocacy on the death penalty must be considered.Global support for the death penalty is declining. Meanwhile, competition for investment isfierce. Governments and the public at large care more about job creation and a healthy economythan a system of executions. Therefore, the voices of businesses and business leaders havea huge role to play in shaping public dialogue about whether to keep – or end – the use ofcapital punishment.

• Document type Working with...
• Themes list Networks, Death Penalty,
• Available languages Entreprises Responsables et Engagements sur la Peine de Mort: Guide Pratique

Where the death penalty is applied, international law, jurisprudence and practice require that certain minimum standards are applied. The standards include international and regional treaties that are legally binding on states that have ratified them, customary international law that is binding on all states without exception, and non-binding standards and resolutions that nonetheless command the support of the majority of states. International understanding of these minimum standards has continued to evolve in the years since they were drafted, but the documents themselves do not always keep pace. This paper brings together international, regional and national standards, the most recent understandings of relevant experts and appropriate insights from other connected disciplines. It explores possible ways in which international minimum standards could be further strengthened at this time, whether through ECOSOC, the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, regional bodies or national amendments to laws and policies. In each section, the issue and current practice is described, followed by examples of good practice or suggestions for improvement, finishing with a short list of recommendations for strengthening existing standards. These issues and recommendations are not final, but are intended to provide a point from which discussion can begin.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list International law, Legal Representation,

8 Myths about the death penalty are explored in this text: 1. the death penalty is needed to keep society safe, 2. the death penalty is applied fairly, 3. the death penalty is used worldwide, 4. the death penalty deters crime, 5. execution is cheaper than permanent imprisonment, 6. the death penalty offers justice to victims’ families, 7. only the truly guilty get the death penalty, 8. religious teachings support the death penalty.

• Document type Arguments against the death penalty
• Themes list Networks,
• Available languages Mitos y Realidades de la Pena de Muerte

The mainstream legal community, including the ABA, has long understood the importance of system-building, but the revised Guidelines state the point especially forcefully. In articulating “the current consensus about what is required to provide effective defense representation in capital cases,” they set high performance standards not just for lawyers, but for death penalty jurisdictions. As the problems are systemic, it is “imperative” that the solutions be.The Guidelines accordingly not only call on governments to deliver capital defense resources that are sufficient in amount, but also furnish the states with a user-friendly blueprint for using those resources wisely to create structures that will function well in the present and evolve effectively over time. This mandate for institution-building is welcome, and the states should lead it. Indeed, they must do so if the Guidelines are to achieve their ameliorative purposes and avoid becoming just a collection of lofty aspirations “‘that palter with us in a double sense, that keep the word of promise to our ear, and break it to our hope”.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Legal Representation,

This report covers the judicial use of the death penalty for the period January to December 2020. As in previous years, information is collected from a variety of sources, including:
– official figures;
– judgements;
– information from individuals sentenced to death and their families and representatives;
– media reports;
– and, for a limited number of countries, other civil society organizations.

Amnesty International reports only on executions, death sentences and other aspects of the use of the death penalty, , such as commutations and exonerations, where there is reasonable confirmation. In many countries governments do not publish information on their use of the death penalty. In China and Viet Nam, data on the use of the death penalty is classified as a state secret. During 2020 little or no information was available on some countries – in particular Laos and North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) – due to restrictive state practice.

• Document type NGO report
• Available languages أحكام وعمليات اإلعدام في2020CONDENAS A MUERTE Y EJECUCIONES 2020احکام مرگ و اعدامها۲۰۲۰سالCondamnations à mort et exécutions 2020ГЛОБАЛЬНЫЙ ДОКЛАД СМЕРТНЫЕ ПРИГОВОРЫ И КАЗНИ 2020

Isolation and Desolation – Conditions of Detention of People Sentenced to Death in Malaysia is the first ever fact-finding mission report on the conditions of detention of death row prisoners in Malaysia.

It examines the use of death penalty in Malaysia as well as the actual situation of people on death row.

This report is not meant to point fingers but rather to put the facts on the table in a transparent manner and work from there. It is mainly an advocacy tool for all abolitionist stakeholders, from civil society actors to the parliamentarians who will keep fighting for the abolition of the death penalty.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Malaysia
• Themes list Death Row Conditions 
• Available languages Isolement et désespoir conditions de détention des condamnés à mort Malaisie

Isolation and Desolation – Conditions of Detention of People Sentenced to Death in Malaysia is the first ever fact-finding mission report on the conditions of detention of death row prisoners in Malaysia.

It examines the use of death penalty in Malaysia as well as the actual situation of people on death row.

This report is not meant to point fingers but rather to put the facts on the table in a transparent manner and work from there. It is mainly an advocacy tool for all abolitionist stakeholders, from civil society actors to the parliamentarians who will keep fighting for the abolition of the death penalty.

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Isolation and Desolation – Conditions of Detention of People Sentenced to Death di Malaysia adalah satu-satunya laporan berasaskan misi mengkaji fakta (fact-finding mission) mengenai keadaan-keadaan penahanan bagi banduan-banduan hukuman mati di Malaysia.

Laporan ini mengkaji pelaksanaan hukuman mati di Malaysia dan juga keadaan sebenar orang-orang yang dijatuhkan hukuman mati.

Laporan ini bukan bertujuan untuk menunding jari terhadap mana-mana pihak, tetapi bertujuan untuk memberi pencerahan kepada fakta-fakta yang ditemui dan berusaha ke atasnya. Laporan ini bertujuan utama sebagai alat advokasi kepada semua pihak yang mempunyai kepentingan dalam pemansuhan, bermula dari ahli persatuan kemasyarakatan sehingga ahli parlimen yang akan berusaha berterusan untuk memansuhkan hukuman mati.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Malaysia
• Themes list Death Row Conditions 

The Philippine Congress recently passed a bill amending the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 and reimposing the penalty of life imprisonment to death for specific-drug related offenses. House Bill No. 7814 also allows the presumption of guilt in certain drug-related crimes unless otherwise proven, thereby overturning the long-standing constitutional presumption of innocence.

The bill has been sent to the Senate for its concurrence and could only be several steps away before being signed into law by President Rodrigo R. Duterte. This paper discusses the ramifications of the new bill and the questioned timeliness of its passage when the country continues to have a large and overcrowded prison population and a significant number of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 in Southeast Asia.

The government’s lapses in following the 2021 national vaccination plan became apparent in the 31 March 2021 assessment made by the congressional health panel on the government’s response to the pandemic.

From the authors’ perspective, the urgency of using the country’s limited resources to help medical frontliners and local government units prevent further infections and save lives should have outweighed the efforts exerted to pass a law that legalized the death penalty for the third time in the Philippines.

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list Philippines
• Themes list Drug Offenses

Despite a steady increase worldwide in the number of states that have abolished the death penalty, capital punishment remains a troubling presence in the international order. The world’s leading powers in terms of economics and population include the retentionist states of China, India, Japan and the United States of America (USA). It seems there is no linear path to abolition, and its achievement is indeterminate. Yet, in international human rights law, death penalty abolition is a powerful norm embraced by half the countries across the world. While the majority of death penalty research has emanated from and focuses on the USA, well over 90 per cent of global executions occur in Asia, which lags behind the global trend towards abolishing the death penalty. Our symposium and this collection seek to bring perspectives from a variety of disciplines and methods—historical, legal, sociological, comparative— to bear on the questions of retention and abolition in a variety of jurisdictions and time periods.
This article was first published in Crime Justice Journal: https://www.crimejusticejournal.com/issue/view/119

• Document type Academic report

Bylaws of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty As Amended by the 18 June 2021 General Assembly

• Document type World Coalition
• Available languages Statuts 2021

The present report is submitted pursuant to decision 18/117 and resolution 42/24 of the Human Rights Council. The report focuses on consequences arising from the lack of transparency in the application and imposition of the death penalty on the enjoyment of human rights.

• Document type United Nations report
• Themes list Public Opinion 

This tip sheet provides some guidelines for mental health professionals who may encounter or work with children and families related to individuals who have been sentenced to death or executed.

• Document type Working with...
• Themes list Juveniles

Harm Reduction International has monitored the use of the death penalty for drug offences worldwide since our first ground-breaking publication on this issue in 2007. This report, our eleventh on the subject, continues our work of providing regular updates on legislative, policy and practical developments related to the use of capital punishment for drug offences, a practice which is a clear violation of international law.
The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: Global Overview 2021 found that: 1) 35 countries still retain the death penalty for drug offences 2) At least 131 people were executed for drug offences in 2021 – a 336% increase from 2020. However, due to a severe lack of transparency, if not outright censorship, this is only a partial picture. This figure likely represents only a fraction of all drug-related executions carried out globally.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Drug Offenses

The signatory organizations are convinced that the death penalty is incompatible with the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, which is a peremptory norm of international law (jus cogens) and should thus be abolished. The death penalty is only tolerated by international law and standards to the extent that it may only be imposed for the most serious crimes and applied in a way that causes the least possible suffering. However, the signatory organizations believe that from the sentencing to the execution, the death penalty inevitably causes physical harm and psychological suffering amounting to torture or ill-treatments.

The present position paper documents the extent to which international and regional organisation have already recognised a violation of the absolution prohibitionof torture in the application and imposition of the death penalty.

• Document type NGO report / World Coalition
• Themes list Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment
• Available languages La peine de mort et l'interdiction de la torture et des peines ou traitements cruels, inhumains ou dégradants

Greater Caribbean for Life has launched its educational toolkit to assist activists and organisations as they work toward abolishing the death penalty in the Greater Caribbean. The production of this toolkit forms part of GCL’s activities under its EU partnered project to educate on death penalty abolition in the Eastern Caribbean and Barbados.

The launch of the toolkit is timely as a few of these target countries recently voted against adopting the UN Moratorium on the use of the death penalty and countries that had previously chosen to abstain have now firmly voted against the resolution.

GCL members condemn the rise of violent crime in our region and express solidarity and compassion with the victims of crime, however, we reject the notion that capital punishment will act as a deterrent or foster respect for life in our communities.

It is our hope that this toolkit will assist in promoting respect for the right to life for all human beings in the Caribbean region.

• Document type Lobbying
• Countries list Barbados
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition

Although other countries have largely rejected the felony murder doctrine, 48 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government still use these laws. Felony murder laws compel harsh decades-long – or even life – sentences even when the individual charged did not directly cause or intend the loss of life.

This report evaluates the legal and empirical foundation, and failings, of the felony murder rule, profiles impacted individuals, and highlights recent reform efforts in 10 jurisdictions. Key findings include:

1. Felony murder laws widen the net of extreme sentencing and are counterproductive to public safety.
2. Felony murder laws have particularly adverse impacts on people of color, young people, and women.
3. Existing reforms must be expanded to achieve justice.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States

Leaflet for the 20th World Day against the death penalty (2022), on torture and the death penalty.

• Document type World Coalition
• Available languages للیوم العالمي لمناھضة عقوبة الإعدام كتيب باللغة العربيةBrochure - Journée mondiale 2022

This report builds on the pioneering work HRI has been doing since its first ‘The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: Global Overview (‘Global Overview’) in 2007. It analyses how the landscape of the death penalty for drug offences has shifted in the last decade, looking at the main trends regarding people on death row, death sentences and executions for drug offences, as well as key developments at national and international level in the period between 2014 and 2023.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Drug Offenses