INDEX

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 race of the victim and the race of the defendant in capital cases are major factors in determining who is sentenced to die in this country. In 1990 a report from the General Accounting Office concluded that “in 82 percent of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e. those who murdered whites were more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks.

• Document type Arguments against the death penalty
• Themes list Discrimination,

Authors David Johnson, an expert on law and society in Asia, and Franklin Zimring, a senior authority on capital punishment, utilize their research to identify the critical factors affecting the future of the death penalty in Asia. They found that when an authoritarian state experienced democratic reform, such as in Taiwan and South Korea, the rate of executions dropped sharply. Johnson and Zimring also found that politics, instead of culture or tradition, is the major obstacle to the end of capital punishment in Asia.

• Document type Book
• Countries list China

The data herein are updated as often and as quickly as possible, with the last date of entry noted on the cover page. However, given the difficulty of gathering complete information from all jurisdictions and as soon as cases develop, these reports may under-report the number of female offenders under death sentences. The subjects of these reports are female offenders sentenced to death. They are not all referred to as women, since some were as young as age fifteen at the time of their crimes. However, no such very young female offenders are currently under death sentences. —- See bottom left hand corner of web page.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Women,

Part one of this article summarizes death penalty policy and practice in the region that accounts for 60 percent of the world’s population and more than 90 percent of the world’s executions. The lessons from Asia are then organized into three parts. Part two describes features of death penalty policy in Asia that are consistent with the experiences recorded in Europe and with the theories developed to explain Western changes. Part three identifies some of the most significant diversities within the Asian region – in rates of execution, trends over time, and patterns of change – that contrast with the recent history of capital punishment in non-Asian locations and therefore challenge conventional interpretations of death penalty policy and change. Part four discusses three ways that the politics of capital punishment in Asia are distinctive: the limited role of international standards and transnational influences in most Asian jurisdictions; the presence of single-party domination in several Asian political systems; and the persistence of communist versions of capital punishment in the Asia region.

• Document type Article
• Countries list China
• Themes list Death Penalty,

Death penalty is the most effective deterrence to grave crimes, which has been the key basis for the State to retain death penalty. In fact, either in legislation or in execution, death penalty can not produce the special deterrent effect as expected. With respect to this issue, people tend to conduct normative exploration from the perspective of ordinary legal principles or the principle of human rights, which is more speculative than convincing. Correct interpretation based on the existing positive analysis and differentiation based on human nature which sifts the true from the false will not only help end the simple, repetitive and meaningless arguments regarding the basis for the existence of death penalty, but also help understand the rational nature of both the elimination and the preservation of death penalty, so as to define the basic direction towards which the State should make efforts in controlling death penalty in the context of promoting social civilization.

• Document type Article
• Countries list China
• Themes list Deterrence ,
• Available languages 犯罪学分析死刑威慑力量（注：英文名翻译）

In chapter III, the Special Rapporteur focuses on the compatibility of the death penalty with the prohibition of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. He concludes that the historic interpretation of the right to personal integrity and human dignity in relation to the death penalty is increasingly challenged by the dynamic interpretation of this right in relation to corporal punishment and the inconsistencies deriving from the distinction between corporal and capital punishment, as well as by the universal trend towards the abolition of capital punishment.

• Document type International law - United Nations
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition,
• Available languages تقرير المقرر الخاص المعني بمسألة التعذيب وغيره من ضروب المعاملةأو العقوبة القاسية أو اللاإنسانية أو المهينة، مانفرِد نوواكInforme del Relator Especial sobre la tortura y otros tratos o penas crueles, inhumanos o degradantes, Manfred Nowak酷刑和其他残忍、不人道或有辱人格的待遇或处罚问题特别报告员曼弗雷德·诺瓦克的报告Rapport du Rapporteur spécial sur la torture et autres peines ou traitements cruels, inhumains ou dégradants, Manfred NowakДоклад Специального докладчика по вопросу о пытках и других жестоких, бесчеловечных или унижающих достоинство видах обращения и наказания Манфреда Новака

Tanzania is one of 25 countries in the world that continues to retain the death penalty in its legislation.56 However, de facto, Tanzania is an abolitionist country, as there have been no executions in Tanzania since 1994. Chapter 2.1.1 describes the position of the death penalty in Tanzania.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Statistics,

This report aims to briefly highlight the past and present challenges and choices in Iran’s human rights record on juvenile offenders. It considers legal and theological perspectives on key issues as well as presenting case studies on selected individuals whose mistreatment raises serious questions about the injustices faced by young people in the Iranian judicial system. The report offers practical recommendations to the international community as it takes a closer look at the Islamic Republic and its human rights record through the 2010 Universal Periodic Review.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Juveniles,

As a result of legal challenges, and in line with the trend worldwide, the mandatory death penalty has now been abolished in nine Caribbean countries and a discretion to impose a lesser sentence has been given to the judges of the Eastern Caribbean, Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas. However, in relation to Trinidad & Tobago, in the case of Charles Matthew (Matthew v The State [2005] 1 AC 433), a majority of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council decided – notwithstanding that the mandatory death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment in violation of entrenched fundamental freedoms and human rights established in the Constitution of Trinidad & Tobago – that it remained protected from constitutional challenge by the operation of the “savings clause” in the Constitution. As a result, Trinidad & Tobago remains one of only three Commonwealth Caribbean countries (Barbados and Guyana being the other two) that still retains the mandatory death penalty.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Mandatory Death Penalty,