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This report provides a global snapshot of cases and research findings from Japan, the United States, Taiwan, the Commonwealth Caribbean, Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom. International human rights law recognises the potential for wrongful conviction and execution of the innocent, or those who have not had fair trails. As a consequence, international norms seek to impose exacting standards and apply a heightened level of due process in capital cases. The relevance of universal human rights standards and international norms, requiring states to apply rigorous procedural rules in the application of the death penalty, is detailed in the Appendix.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Innocence,
• Available languages Japanese : 誤判の必然性 死刑事件における司法

Some defendants who commit murder are automatically excluded from the death penalty in the U.S., such as juveniles and the intellectually disabled. Others with similar deficits are regularly executed. A new study by Robert Smith (l.), Sophie Cull, and Zoe Robinson examined the mitigating evidence present in 100 recent cases resulting in execution, testing whether the offenders possessed mitigating qualities similar to those spared from execution. This infographic presents some of their findings.

• Document type Arguments against the death penalty
• Themes list Mental Illness, Arbitrariness,

A vast literature details the crimes that condemned inmates commit, but very little is known about the social histories of these capital offenders. For example, how many offenders possessed mitigating characteristics that demonstrate intellectual or psychological deficits comparable to those shared by classes of offenders categorically excluded from capital punishment? Did these executed offenders suffer from intellectual disability, youthfulness, mental illness, or childhood trauma? The problem with this state of affairs is that the personal characteristics of the defendant can render the death penalty an excessive punishment regardless of the characteristics of the crime. This Article begins to fill the mitigation knowledge gap by describing the social histories of the last hundred offenders executed in America. Scouring state and federal court records, this Article documents the presence of significant mitigation evidence for eighty-seven percent of executed offenders. Though only a first step, our findings suggest the failure of the Supreme Court’s mitigation project to ensure the only offenders subjected to a death sentence are those with “a consciousness materially more depraved” than that of the typical murderer. Indeed, the inverse appears to be true: the vast majority of executed offenders possess significant functional deficits that rival — and perhaps outpace — those associated with intellectual impairment and juvenile status; defendants that the Court has categorically excluded from death eligibility.

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

Continental Conference on the Death Penalty2-4 July 2014, Cotonou, BeninHuman Rights Organisations’ Manifesto for a Protocolto the African Charter on the Abolition of the Death Penalty in Africa

• Document type Working with...
• Themes list International law,
• Available languages Manifeste pour un Protocole à la Charte africaine sur l’abolition de la peine de mort en Afrique

This report presents the theme of 2013 World Day, facts on the death penalty and all the actions and media coverage for the 11th World Day on the progress made and challenges ahead.

• Document type Campaigning
• Themes list Public opinion, Mandatory Death Penalty,

Up-to-date information on the application of death penalty around the world in 2013 and 2014

• Document type World Coalition
• Themes list Death Penalty, Statistics,
• Available languages Faits et chiffres 2014Hechos y datos 2014

The Committee also offers a host of other recommendations to prevent and correct wrongfulconvictions. These include recommendations regarding the preservation, testing andpresentation of forensic evidence; the creation of statutory remedies for wrongful convictionsand the implementation of procedures for the systemic review to help avoid future errors; thevideotaping of custodial interrogations – where practical – in order to avoid the documentedproblem of false and otherwise inaccurate confessions; the adoption of best practices foreyewitness identifications; the effective implementation of prosecutors’ constitutionalobligation to disclose exculpatory evidence; and enforcement of the Vienna Convention onConsular Relations.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Innocence,

How are lawyers affected by defending death penalty cases, where failure means execution? And how do they respond when their clients are killed?This briefing paper, written by Susannah Sheffer and drawing on her book Fighting for their lives, showcases the voices of the lawyers themselves to demonstrate the profound and long-lasting impacts that the death penalty can have on those indirectly affected by it.

• Document type Working with...
• Themes list Legal Representation,

The death penalty is retained for terrorism offences in many countries, but how does it conform with international standards? The global community has had much to say about both terrorism and capital punishment; this paper brings together the key arguments to identify the appropriate state responses in the face of terrorism.

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list International law, Terrorism,

The Advocates for Human Rights, in collaboration with the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty and the Iraqi Coalition Against the Death Penalty, submitted a joint stakeholder report to the U.N. Human Rights Council for its October-November 2014 Universal Periodic Review of Iraq. This submission describes Iraq’s international human rights obligations with regard to its use of the death penalty.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Minorities, Due Process , Fair Trial, International law, Transparency, Torture, Discrimination, Legal Representation, Most Serious Crimes, Hanging, Death Penalty, Statistics, Country/Regional profiles,