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This overview discusses the intersection of the law and the challenges faced by mentally ill capital defendants at every stage from trial through appeals and execution. It provides examples of some of the more famous cases of the execution of the mentally ill. Lastly, it describes current legislative efforts to exempt those who suffer from a serious mental illness from execution and the importance of such efforts.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Mental Illness,

The death penalty in the U.S. is an enormously expensive and wasteful program with no clear benefits. All of the studies on the cost of capital punishment conclude it is much more expensive than a system with life sentences as the maximum penalty. In a time of painful budget cutbacks, states are pouring money into a system that results in a declining number of death sentences and executions that are almost exclusively carried out in just one area of the country. As many states face further deficits, it is an appropriate time to consider whether maintaining the costly death penalty system is being smart on crime.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Financial cost,

This report asserts that the death penalty is not only inappropriate and unwarranted for persons with severe mental illness but that it also serves as a distraction from problems within the mental health system that contributed or even led directly to tragic violence. Families of murder victims and families of people with mental illness who have committed murder have a cascade of questions and needs. It is to these questions, rather than to the death penalty, that as a society we must turn our attention and our collective energies if we are truly to address the problem of untreated mental illness and the lethal violence that can result.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Mental Illness, Murder Victims' Families,

The Worldwide Situation to Date: The worldwide trend towards abolition, underway for at least a decade, was again confirmed in 2008 and the first six months of 2009. There are currently 151 countries and territories that to different extents have decided to renounce the death penalty. Of these: 96 are totally abolitionist; 8 are abolitionist for ordinary crimes; 5 have a moratorium on executions in place and 42 are de facto abolitionist (i.e. countries that have not carried out any executions for at least 10 years or countries which have binding obligations not to use the death penalty).

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Statistics,
• Available languages Italian : SINTESI DEI FATTI PIÙ IMPORTANTI DEL 2008 (e dei primi sei mesi del 2009)

Amnesty International received information from a number of sentenced prisoners indicating that their trials had not met international fair trial standards. Some had been tried in secret locations, rather than in properly established courts of law. Some trials had been completed within an hour. A number of prisoners complained that they had been convicted on the basis of false “confessions” which they had been forced to make under torture or other illtreatment during pre-trial detention. Detainees commonly were denied access to lawyers in the early stages of their detention, when they were usually held incommunicado, and were interrogated by the Asayish.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Due Process , Country/Regional profiles,
• Available languages الأمل والخوف حقوق الإنسان في إقليم كردستان العراق

Iraq now has one of the highest rates of execution in the world. At least 1,000 people are believed to be under sentence of death, 150 of whom have exhausted all legal remedies available to them and are therefore at serious risk of being hanged. This document describes the use of the death penalty in Iraq, including issues of transperancy, crimes punishable by death, unfair trials, the death penalty as used in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and some individual cases are discussed.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Country/Regional profiles,
• Available languages Irák: Un millar de personas se enfrentan a la pena de muerte en Irakألف شخص يواجهون عقوبة الإعدام في العراقIrak. Un millier de personnes encourent la peine de mort en Irak

The use of the death penalty is in decline globally. Japan is one of the few industrialized countries to continue to use it, hanging a small number of prisoners each year. This report discusses the legal basis for exempting mentally ill prisoners from the death penalty and documents the situation faced by such prisoners on death row in Japan. It calls on the authorities to ensure that mentally ill prisoners are not executed and to implement a moratorium on the death penalty.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Mental Illness,

This document summarises Amnesty International’s global research on the death penalty. Information was gathered from various sources including official statistics (where available), non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations, human rights defenders, the media and interviews with survivors of human rights violations.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Statistics,
• Available languages CONDENAS A MUERTE Y EJECUCIONES EN 2008СМЕРТНЫЕ ПРИГОВОРЫ И КАЗНИ В 2008 ГОДУأحكام الإعدام الصادرة وما نُفِّذ من أحكام في عام 2008CONDAMNATIONS À MORT ET EXÉCUTIONS RECENSÉES EN 2008

Regularly denounced by human rights associations, violations of the right to a fair trial and inequality before the law for prisoners who face the death penalty are flagrant. Most prisoners belong to the most disadvantaged social classes or to ethnic or religious minorities. Involved in often questionable circumstances, with confessions extracted under frequent beatings and torture, many litigants are not given an adequate defence. To defend these cases, lawyers appointed ex officio receive 200 rupees per hearing (less than 5 U.S. dollars). Often young and inexperienced to deal with procedures not respecting the minimum fair trial guarantees, these lawyers are not in a position to ensure the mandate entrusted to them.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Due Process , Discrimination, Country/Regional profiles,
• Available languages Pakistan, une longue marche pour la démocratie et l'etat de droit

As momentum is gathering across the world towards abolition of capital punishment, Iran ranks second for number of executions, after China, and first for per capita executions. Unfair trials, execution of juveniles, targeting of ethnic and religious minorities… the death penalty is applied in blatant violation of Iran’s obligations under international human rights law. A very wide range of offences (including economic, drug-related, so-called sexual offences, apostasy…) carry the death penalty and the methods of execution (public hangings, stoning…)amount to the most inhuman and degrading treatment.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Minorities, Fair Trial, Country/Regional profiles,
• Available languages ایران: مجازات اعدام - سیاست دولتی ایجاد وحشت