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The original report in Chinese was in three parts. Part I, translated here, outlines the legal system and its application in relation to the death penalty. Part II introduces the use of the death penalty review system following the Supreme People’s Court’s resumption of its power to review death sentences on January 1st, 2007. Part II also analyses the influence of the death penalty review system on the new criminal procedure law that will come into effect in 2013. Part III introduces a number of death penalty cases.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Country/Regional profiles,
• Available languages 中国死刑观察报告

The final 72-hours in the life of Myuran Sukumaran, the Bali-9 convicted criminal who became an accomplished artist while in Kerobokan prison under the tutorship of artist Ben Quilty. Myuran was executed by Indonesian firing squad on Nusakambangan Island, 29 April 2015 alongside fellow Australian Andrew Chan and six others. Dramatic and archival material takes us into the final three days of Myuran Sukumaran’s life, as he farewells his family and creates his final paintings.

• Document type Multimedia content
• Countries list Indonesia
• Themes list Foreign Nationals, Firing Squad,

Trial by Fire is the true-life Texas story of the unlikely bond between an imprisoned death row inmate (Jack O’Connell) and a mother of two from Houston (Laura Dern) who, though facing staggering odds, fights mightily for his freedom. Cameron Todd Willingham, a poor, uneducated heavy metal devotee with a violent streak and a criminal record, is convicted of arson-related triple homicide in 1992. During his 12 years on death row, Elizabeth Gilbert, an improbable ally, uncovers questionable methods and illogical conclusions in his case, and battles with the state to expose suppressed evidence that could save him.

• Document type Multimedia content
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Death Row Conditions, Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

According to Iranian law, the age when girls are held accountable for criminal punishment is nine years old, while international conventions have banned the death penalty for persons under 18. In Iran, the death penalty for children is used for crimes such as murder, drug trafficking, and armed robbery.Pursuant to the passing of new laws in recent years, the Iranian Judiciary System detains children in Juvenile Delinquents Correction Centers after their death sentence verdict, and a large number of them are hanged upon reaching age 18.

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list Iran (Islamic Republic of)
• Themes list Juveniles, Women, Death Row Conditions,

This article draws on two original empirical research projects that explored judges’ opinions on the retention and administration of capital punishment in India and Bangladesh. The data expose justice systems marred by corruption, incompetence, abuses of due process, and arbitrary and inconsistent treatment of defendants from arrest through to conviction and sentencing. It shows that those with the power to sentence to death have little faith in the integrity of the criminal process. Yet, a startling paradox emerges from these studies; despite personal knowledge of its flaws, judges have trust in the death penalty to deter crime and to realise other sentencing aims and feel retention benefits society. This is explained by reference to utilitarian values. Not only did our judges express strongly utilitarian justifications for sentencing people to death, in terms of their erroneous belief in its deterrent effect, but some also articulated utilitarian justifications for misconduct in pre-trial processes, suggesting that it was necessary to break the rules to secure convictions when the system was dysfunctional and ineffective.

• Document type Article
• Countries list Bangladesh
• Themes list Arbitrariness, Death Penalty,

Just Mercy film discussion and reflections on racism in the US criminal justice system, scheduled on 22 July 2020.

• Document type Multimedia content
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Fair Trial, Death Penalty,

Since December 2007, seven resolutions in favour of a universal moratorium on death penalty executions have been adopted by the UN General Assembly. In an earlier paper (Pascoe and Bae 2020) we examined UN member states’ voting patterns over these seven resolutions, asking why some countries vote in a manner seemingly contradictory to their domestic death penalty practices. With a slightly different focus, we now further explore idiosyncratic state behaviour, this time through an analysis of co-sponsorship and the note verbale of dissociation. Our assumption is that states which plan to vote ‘yes’ in the plenary will also co-sponsor the resolution beforehand. We also presume that states which vote ‘no’ in the plenary will sign the note verbale invariably circulated several months later, as a further means of condemnation.

However, when it comes to the moratorium resolutions, not all member states fit into either of these binary categories. Many countries situate themselves in between the two groups of ‘genuine’ supporters and opponents. These countries in the middle evince inconsistency between their plenary votes and what we term their ‘association behaviour’ before or after the plenary, consisting of co-sponsorship and adherence to the note verbale. This paper analyses these groups of countries to determine the underlying causes for their ambivalent, or even contradictory, positions concerning the moratorium resolutions. The findings of this research stand to enrich not only the academic literature on international organizations, but also to inform the campaigning efforts of abolitionist UN member states and non-governmental organizations.

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list Moratorium

In the judicial discourse on the relationship between human sacrifice and punishment in criminal law, there are glaring errors. Looking closely at the Supreme Court’s judgment in Ishwari Lal Yadav v State of Chhattisgarh, the deviation from the principle of individualised sentencing and the consequences of ignoring evidence on the complex anthropological and psychological dimensions of human sacrifice are reflected upon.

• Document type Article
• Countries list India
• Themes list Hanging,

In THE EXECUTION OF WANDA JEAN, award-winning filmmaker Liz Garbus continues her investigations into the American criminal justice system with the compelling story of convicted murderess Wanda Jean Allen

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition,

Silently Silenced: State-Sanctioned Killing of Women examines States’ involvement in ‘feminicide’. Feminicide is understood as the gender-motivated killing of women and girls that States actively engage in, condone, excuse, or fail to prevent. We use the term ‘feminicide’ to refer to the various forms of State-sanctioned killing of women and girls. In this report, we outline States’ direct involvement and complicity in the killings of women and girls and explain these deaths as a product of gendered forms of structural violence upheld and sustained by the State. We examine 3 types of feminicide: gender- related killings of women directly perpetrated by the State, such as the death penalty and extrajudicial killings; gender-related killings of women committed by non-State actors that are excused or condoned by the State; and gender-related killings of women that the State failed to prevent.

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list Women

The ‘Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics’ attempts to create a comprehensive year-by-year documentation of movements in the death row population in India. The publication tracks important political and legal developments in the administration of the death penalty and the criminal justice system in the year 2019.

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list Death Penalty, Statistics,

Is the death penalty “natural” or sometimes legally due?
If not, is the death penalty always a political instrument?
If so, how and why can it be said that the death penalty is unjust, also considering religious values?
What about in case of war time or of very dangerous criminals?
In which way can there be an irrefutable argument for banning the death penalty worldwide and forever?

These and other issues concerning the death penalty are addressed by the Author of this book.
A book, where the most common theories for and against the death penalty are considered in the light of law history and philosophical views, and where Cesare Beccaria’s approach is revised, taking into account the development of the contemporary criminal law and of the legal positivism.

This is an essay, where the protection of humanity is not considered simply as a hope or as a naive dream, but rather as a juridical concept, absolutely necessary to understand one of most tragic questions of all time: “is it just to kill those who killed?”

• Document type Book

TCADP reviews the death penalty situation in Texas in 2016: The State of Texas executed seven people in 2016, the lowest number of executions in two decades. Seven other individuals with execution dates received reprieves from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. It was only the second time since the resumption of executions in 1982 that no African-Americans were put to death in Texas.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Discrimination, Intellectual Disability, Death Penalty, Statistics, Country/Regional profiles,

The ‘Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics’ attempts to create a comprehensive year-by-year documentation of movements in the death row population in India. The publication tracks important political and legal developments in the administration of the death penalty and the criminal justice system in the year 2020.

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list India

The use of the death penalty has resulted in a number of studies attempting to determine if its application is consistent with the guidelines established by the United States Supreme Court. In particular, many studies have assessed whether there are racial disparities in the imposition of death sentences. This study examined the imposition of death sentences in Ohio, a state largely ignored by previous research and that, until 1999, had not executed an inmate since 1963. Drawing from previous studies that have examined the issue in other states, this study assessed the likelihood that a particular homicide would result in a death sentence, controlling for race of defendant and victim and other relevant factors. Results indicated both legal and extralegal factors (including race of victim) were significant predictors of a death sentence, supporting many previous studies that concluded that race plays a role in the imposition of the death penalty.

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

Guided by existing macrolevel theories on punishment and society, the present study explores the independent and conjunctive effects of measures of sociopolitical conditions on the legal retention of capital punishment in 185 nations in the 21st century. Significant correlations are found between a nation’s retention of legal executions for ordinary crimes and its level of economic development, primary religious orientation, citizens’ voice in governance, political stability, and recent history of extrajudicial executions. Subsequent multivariate analyses through qualitative comparative methods reveal substantial context-specific effects and wide variability in legal retention even within countries with similar sociopolitical structures. These results are then discussed in terms of their theoretical implications for future cross-national research on punishment and society.

• Document type Article
• Themes list Networks,

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 tenth 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.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Drug Offenses

On May 16, 2001, the federal government carried out its first execution for a criminal offense in over 38 years (Timothy McVeigh). This article (part of a symposium issue) examines recent developments in the administration of the federal death penalty, in the legislative, judicial, and executive (Department of Justice) arenas. While not an abolitionist, the author expresses misgivings about federal capital punishment as it is currently administered, updating statistics regarding racial and geographic disparity from his 1999 article “The Federal Death Penalty: History and Some Thoughts About the Department of Justice’s Role,”. The article also explains “What the Supreme Court Got Wrong in Jones,” (1999). Finally, the international implications of the first execution by the federal government in two generations are explored. No longer can the United States shift its internationally isolated position regarding capital punishment onto its constituent states under a theory of independent federalism. Note: This is a description of the paper and not the actual abstract.

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

The ABA has long been concerned with the provision of effective counsel for all criminal defendants, especially for those facing the death penalty. In 1989, the ABA first published its Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Counsel in Death Penalty Cases, which detailed the kind of competent, effective legal representation that all capital defendants were entitled to receive. Earlier this year, after a two-year effort drawing upon the expertise of a broad group ofdistinguished and experienced judges, lawyers, and academics, the ABA House of Delegates overwhelmingly approved revisions to those Guidelines to update and expand upon the obligations of death penalty jurisdictions to ensure due process of law and justice. “These Guidelines are not aspirational.” They articulate a national standard of care and the minimum that should be required in the defense of capital cases.

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

State legislatures principally have been responsible for the acceptance and evolution (and even sometimes the abandonment) of capital punishment in the American criminal justice system from the colonial and founding eras, through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and now into the twenty-first century. A number of colonial legislative enactments, though influenced by England’s embrace of the punishment of death, uniquely defined and often significantly confined which crimes were to be subject to capital punishment.[1] State legislatures further narrowed the reach of the death penalty through the early nineteenth century as states, prodded often by vocal abolitionists and led by developments in Pennsylvania, divided the offense of murder into degrees and provided that only the most aggravated murderers would be subject to the punishment of death. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also saw states, as the product of legislative enactments, move away from mandating death as the punishment for certain crimes by giving juries discretion to choose which defendants would be sentenced to die. Throughout all these periods, statutory enactments have also played a fundamental role in the evolution of where and how executions are carried out.

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

The haunting specter of hanging trees holds a powerful sway on the American imagination, conjuring images of rough-and-tumble frontier towns struggling to impose law and order in a land where violence was endemic. In this thoughtful study, former New Mexico State Historian Robert Torrez examines several fascinating criminal cases that reveal the harsh and often gruesome realities of the role hangings, legal or otherwise, played in the administration of frontier justice. At first glance, the topic may seem downright morbid, and in a sense it is, but these violent attempts at justice are embedded in our perception of America’s western experience. In tracing territorial New Mexico’s efforts to enforce law, Torrez challenges the myths and popular perceptions about hangings and lynching in this corner of the Wild West.

• Document type Book
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Hanging,

Europe is today the only region in the world where the death penalty has been almost completely abolished. In the Council of Europe’s 45 member states, including the European Union’s 15 member states and its 13 candidate countries, capital punishment is no longer applied. The Council of Europe played a pioneering role in the battle for abolition, believing that the death penalty has no place in democratic societies under any circumstances. This determination to eradicate the death penalty was reflected in Protocol No.6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, on the abolition of the death penalty in peacetime, which was adopted in April 1983, then in Protocol No.13 on the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances, adopted in May 2002.Introduced by Roger Hood, an international expert on death penalty legislation, this book reviews the long and sometimes tortuous path to abolition in Europe. It also addresses the tangible problems which countries face once the death penalty has been abolished, and related issues: the situation of murder victims’ families and alternatives to capital punishment, particularly the choice of a substitute sentence.The Council of Europe’s campaign for abolition is currently being pursued beyond Europe’s borders, in those states which have Observer status with the organisation, particularly the United States and Japan: the situation in these countries is discussed here.This publication will be of interest to all those who feel concerned by this issue, particularly members of NGOs, lawyers, officials in departments dealing with legal and criminal affairs, and human rights campaigners.

• Document type Book
• Countries list France
• Available languages Peine de mort - Après l'abolition

This extensively revised third edition covers developments since publication of the second edition in 1997. It includes consideration of the UN human rights system, international humanitarian law, European human rights law and Inter-American human rights law. New chapters address capital punishment in African human rights law and international criminal law. An extensive list of appendices contains many of the essential documents for the study of capital punishment in international law.

• Document type Book
• Themes list Networks,

In this Article, I will review the matrix in which executive decisions in women’s capital clemency cases are made, a matrix supplied by modern equal protection law, the nature and scope of the clemency power, gender politics, and contemporary death row. I will then conduct two thought experiments. Each invented case tests the relevance of gender in legally and politically acceptable contemporary clemency decisions. The goal is to understand the politics and law of granting or denying that very rare boon-commutation of sentence – to a female death row prisoner. The exercise offers support for two conclusions. In the age of formal equality, women cannot be granted clemency simply because they are women. The rhetoric of chivalry is untenable for the contemporary executive. A governor who is courageous and rhetorically skillful, however, can sometimes successfully defend the commutation of the death sentence of a woman as a proper use of the power to grant mercy, done for her sake, the class she exemplifies, the conscience of the governor, and the public.

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

This Article argues for the abandonment of the two-track approach to sentencing by the Supreme Court. It finds no support in the Constitution’s text, history, or structure, and the functional arguments given by the Court to support its capital decisions apply with equal force to all other criminal punishments.

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

This article examines the situation of the death penalty in Africa. It does so byaddressing three main questions: First, to what extent is the death penalty inAfrica in fact an issue about which one should be particularly concerned?Second, what are the restrictions on the death penalty in Africa? Third, whatis to be done to strengthen the restrictions on the death penalty in Africa? Inaddition, the article examines the question whether article 4 of the AfricanCharter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and its related provisions will inspirethe abolition of the death penalty. It is suggested that challenging mandatorydeath sentences, advancing procedural challenges, open debate onalternatives to the death penalty, and improving the national criminaljustice system will strengthen restrictions on the death penalty in Africa. Thearticle concludes that positive criminal justice reform rather than moralisticcondemnation is the most effective route to the eventual abolition of thedeath penalty in Africa.

• Document type Article
• Themes list Networks,

Why are death penalty provisions, convictions and executions so prevalent in China? This article aims to answer this question by way of defining China as a ‘state power’ based society characterized by a socialist social system. The prevalence of the death penalty in China can be explained in terms of the following factors: first, the death penalty is a political issue of state power; second, the death penalty is a crucial part of criminal policy in a ‘state power’-based society; third, the issue of whether to retain the death penalty is a political rather than a legal matter. The Chinese government has improved its death penalty system in recent years; however, the situation has not fundamentally changed. The future of death penalty policy and practice in China will depend primarily on legal rather than democratic developments. The death penalty serves as a focal point that can help illuminate issues of punishment and society in East Asia. Accordingly, this article will elaborate my theories regarding the death penalty in contemporary China, with the primary intent of elucidating the relationship between punishment and society in China.

• Document type Article
• Countries list China
• Themes list Networks,

Based on the review of capital cases from various jurisdictions involoving issues of competence to stand trial, this article examines the standards, literature, and varying practices associated with competence assessments and adjudications. The author, who is an experienced criminal defense lawyer with capital trial and postconviction litigation experiece, examines the implications of disparities in the approaches and definitions used in dealing with competence assessments and suggests solutions to improve the standards of practice related to these important assessments.

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

Today in America, there is perhaps no arena of public life or governmental administration where racial discrimination is more widespread, apparent, and seemingly tolerate than in the selection of juries. Nearly 135 years after Congress enacted the 1875 Civil Rights Act to eliminate racially discriminatory jury selection, the practice continues, especially in serious criminal and capital cases.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Networks,

This Article aims to provide an examination: An analysis of the state procedures that prisoners may employ after trial to litigate innocence claims grounded on newly discovered non-DNA evidence. Ultimately, the result of this examination is far from sanguine. Little-altered in decades beyond the trend toward recognizing the benefits of DNA testing, the structure of most state procedures means that a prisoner’s quest for justice may turn on the fortuity that a biological sample was left at the crime scene and preserved over time. The fact that DNA testing provides a modicum of certainty to an innocence claim does not imply that claims lacking the possibility of such certainty are spurious; on the contrary, DNA has unearthed holes in the criminal justice system, holes that are likely also prevalent in cases without biological evidence.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Innocence, Networks,

As noted by Flanagan (1996), public opinion polls about crime and justice can act as a social barometer providing important data to policy makers regarding what the public is willing, or is not willing, to accept when it comes to proposed legislation and/or intervention programming. This paper reports findings from the 2001 Penn State Poll, a random telephone survey of Pennsylvanians, 18 years of age or older, in which citizens were asked about their attitudes toward and perceptions of such issues as fear of crime, capital punishment, the most important goal of prison, and where they would most like to see their tax dollars spent (building more prisons vs. early intervention programs with troubled youth). Significant differences were found within certain demographic groups across these sets of questions, and in a predictive model, gender, race/ethnicity, and education had a greater impact on citizens’ support for capital punishment than did their fear of crime. Overall, findings suggest that the public is not as punitive as it is sometimes believed to be by legislators and policy makers.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Public opinion,

The article discusses the difficulties and controversies surrounding the 1999 Draft Resolution on the Death Penalty to the United Nations General Assembly.

• Document type Article
• Themes list Networks,

A guide for NGOs to use media effectively. This guide explains the importance of media, how to create contacts, how to prepare a media outreach campaign, how to deliver a campaign to the media and how to use available resources to support your media campaign.

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

This article provides a brief history of the study of miscarriages of justice in America. It analyzes the field of wrongful conviction scholarship as three distinct genres: the big-picture studies, the specialized-causes literature, and the true-crime genre. It also analyzes what these literatures have contributed to knowledge about miscarriages as well as their limitations. This article attempts to rethink the study of miscarriages of justice to systematically develop a more sophisticated, insightful, and generalizable criminology of wrongful conviction.

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

The Article highlights that statutory compensation schemes overlook the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004, of wrongful execution and the greater injustice it entails and urges that the statutes be amended in light of this grievous wrong that has come to the fore of American criminal justice systems.

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

A death penalty abolitionist (Martina Correia) must sound the alarms of our criminal justice system in time to save her brother from lethal injection.

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Innocence,

The issue of erroneous convictions in capital cases has recently gained considerable nationwide media attention. This article builds on prior research by examining 76 cases of inmates who were released from death rows between 1970 and 1998 because of doubts about their guilt. By using sources, or persons who have extensive insider knowledge about these cases, as well as published court opinions, it was possible to identify the causes of the wrongful convictions as well as the significant events that led to the discovery of the miscarriages of justice. The data indicate that prosecutorial misconduct, perjury of witnesses, police misconduct, and racial discrimination were influential factors that led to the wrongful convictions. In addition, continued investigation by the defense attorney, new witnesses coming forward, and/or a confession from another person were the factors most often leading to the discovery of errors. These findings suggest that there have not been any significant changes in causes of erroneous convictions since the implementation of contemporary safeguards. As a result, policy changes are suggested to decrease the chances of erroneous executions.

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

In this paper we use reported exonerations as a window on false convictions generally. We can’t come close to estimating the number of false convictions that occur in the United States, but the accumulating mass of exonerations gives us a glimpse of what we’re missing. We located 340 individual exonerations from 1989 through 2003, not counting at least 135 innocent defendants in at least two mass exonerations, and not counting more than 70 defendants convicted in a series of childcare sex abuse prosecutions, most of whom were probably innocent. Almost all the individual exonerations that we know about are clustered in the two most serious common felonies: rape and murder. They are surrounded by widening circles of categories of cases that include false convictions that are rarely detected, if ever: rape convictions that have not been reexamined with DNA evidence; robberies, for which DNA identification is useless; murder cases that are ignored because the defendants were not sentenced to death; assault and drug convictions that are forgotten entirely; misdemeanor convictions that aren’t even part of the picture. Judging from our data, any plausible guess at the total number of miscarriages of justice in America in the last fifteen years must run to the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, in felony cases alone. We can, however, see some clear patterns in those false convictions that have come to light.

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

This article argues that because prosecutors have discretion to seek the death penalty in too many cases, they lack the incentive to police themselvesand choose carefully. Put simply, because there are few legal constraints — and virtually no political constraints — on the sheer number of cases in which prosecutors can pursue the death penalty, the Government is not under sufficient pressure to limit its use of capital punishment to only the most heinous cases. As a result, two things happen. First, the death penalty is sought and meted out in some cases, which though terrible, are no worse than the thousands of other murder cases in which prosecutors pursue only life imprisonment. Second, because prosecutors file too many capital cases, the criminal justice system lacks the resources to focus sufficient attention on each one.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Arbitrariness, Most Serious Crimes,

This research will consider the principal claims and counterclaims made by death penalty supporters and opponents, as well as document the manner in which these claims were advanced or refuted. The nineteen-year debate provides a natural laboratory that can assist our understanding of why the United States is the only Western industrialized democracy to retain capital punishment.

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

The thesis of this paper is that lawyers who have represented clients in capital murder cases at trial and appeal—not unlike all criminal trial and initial appeal counsel, but more urgently because of the circumstances—continue to owe important obligations to their former clients. These obligations have been just recently included in the latest version of the American Bar Association’s Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death PenaltyCases: In accordance with professional norms, all persons who are or have been members of the defense team have a continuing duty to safeguard the interests of the client and should cooperate fully with successor counsel. This duty includes, but is not limited to: A. maintaining the records of the case in a manner that will inform successor counsel of all significant developments relevant to the litigation; B. providing the client’s files, as well as information regarding all aspects of the representation, to successor counsel; C. sharing potential further areas of legal and factual research with successor counsel; and D. cooperating with such professionally appropriate legal strategies as may be chosen by successor counsel. It is my hope that this article will demonstrate that these Guidelines reflect not just best practice, but actual ethical mandates that trial counsel, like Bryan Saunders, owe their former clients as those clients negotiate the jurisprudential maze known as habeas corpus.

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

The goal of our bill is simple, but profoundly important: to reduce the risk of mistaken executions. The Innocence Protection Act proposes basic, common-sense reforms to our criminal justice system that are designed to protect the innocent and to ensure that if the death penalty is imposed, it is the result of informed and reasoned deliberation, not politics, luck, bias, or guesswork. We have listened to a lot of good advice and made some refinements to the bill since the last Congress, but it is still structured around two principal reforms: improving the availability of DNA testing, and ensuring reasonable minimum standards and funding for court-appointed counsel.

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

I begin this essay with basic information about grand juries, then tell what happened to our grand jury, and conclude by reflecting on what I learned from this experience. My theme is the tension between the grand jury’s independence and the prosecutor’s desire to control it. The lesson I learned, intellectually and emotionally, is the depth and tenacity of the prosecutor’s assumption that he does control, and has the right to control, the grand jury process. I also learned some lessons about being a client, and believing in oneself and one’s principles.

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

Recent changes to the way the U.S. Department of Justice decides whether to pursue capital charges have made it more likely that the federal death penalty will be sought in cases in which the criminal conduct occurred within States that do not authorize capital punishment for any crime. As a result, since 2002, five people have been sentenced to death in federal court for conduct that occurred in States that do not authorize the death penalty. This state of affairs is in serious tension with the Eighth Amendment’s proscription against “cruel and unusual punishments.”

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

This is an essay about capital punishment and American culture. Its point of departure is the recent publication of several books and articles suggesting that the USA’s retention of the death penalty is an expansion of an underlying cultural tradition that creats an elective affinity between American society and the execution of criminal offenders. The implicit – and sometimes explicit claim – of this new literature is that today’s capital punishment system is an insurance of ‘American exceptionalism’, an expression of a deep and abiding condition that has shaped the American nation from its formative years to the present.

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

Poster World Day against the death penalty 2010

• Document type Campaigning
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition
• Available languages Poster Spanish 2010Affiche journée mondiale 2010

Find the main facts and figures regarding the death penalty worldwide in 2022 and early 2023.

• Document type Campaigning / World Coalition
• Available languages 21ème Journée Mondiale - Faits et chiffres 2023

• Document type Campaigning / World Coalition
• Available languages 2023 ملصق اليوم العال مPoster Spanish – 2023 Día Mundial contra la Pena de MuertePoster Farsi 2023 – بیستمین روز جهانی علیهمجازات مرگPoster 21ème Journée Mondiale contre la peine de mortPoster Russian 2023 — 21-Й ВСЕМИРНЫЙ ДЕНЬ БОРЬБЫ ПРОТИВ СМЕРТНОЙ КАЗНИPoster Chinese 2023- 第21个世界反对死刑日

Poster world day against the death penalty 2009

• Document type Campaigning
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition
• Available languages Affiche journée mondiale 2009

Take action
against the death penalty:
Join the hundreds
of initiatives worldwide
Sign the petition
calling for a universal
moratorium on executions

• Document type Campaigning
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition
• Available languages Poster Arabic 2007Affiche journée mondiale 2007

Facts and Figures 2008

• Document type Campaigning
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition
• Available languages Faits et chiffres 2008

• Document type Campaigning / World Coalition

• Document type Campaigning / World Coalition
• Available languages 22e Journée mondiale contre la peine de mort - Faits et chiffres

Key Findings

Elected supreme court justices in Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio are twice as likely to affirm death penalty cases during an election year than in any other year. This effect is statistically significant when controlling for the number of cases each year.

Changing public opinion means that zealous support for the death penalty is no longer a litmus test for elected officials in many death penalty jurisdictions. Today’s elections feature viable candidates who criticize use of the death penalty and pledge reforms or even non-use, reflecting the significant decline in public support for the death penalty.

Elected governors were more likely to grant clemency in the past when they did not face voters in an upcoming election. Concerns about voter “backlash” have eased today with declining public support and low numbers of new death sentences and executions, and have led to an increased number of prisoners benefiting from clemency grants, especially mass grants, in recent years.

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

Poster 2011

• Document type Campaigning / World Coalition
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition
• Available languages Poster Arabic 2011Affiche 2011

Since 1976, over forty percent of prisoners executed in American jails have been African American or Hispanic. This trend shows little evidence of diminishing, and follows a larger pattern of the violent criminalization of African American populations that has marked the country’s history of punishment.

In a bold attempt to tackle the looming question of how and why the connection between race and the death penalty has been so strong throughout American history, Ogletree and Sarat headline an interdisciplinary cast of experts in reflecting on this disturbing issue. Insightful original essays approach the topic from legal, historical, cultural, and social science perspectives to show the ways that the death penalty is racialized, the places in the death penalty process where race makes a difference, and the ways that meanings of race in the United States are constructed in and through our practices of capital punishment.

From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State not only uncovers the ways that race influences capital punishment, but also attempts to situate the linkage between race and the death penalty in the history of this country, in particular the history of lynching. In its probing examination of how and why the connection between race and the death penalty has been so strong throughout American history, this book forces us to consider how the death penalty gives meaning to race as well as why the racialization of the death penalty is uniquely American.

• Document type Book
• Countries list United States

The most common justification for the retention of the death penalty among the minority of states that continue to sentence to death and execute individuals who are found guilty of committing certain serious offences is a belief that this punishment has a unique deterrent effect. The Death Penalty Project produced this resource on deterrence and the death penalty.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Public Opinion 

The protracted and (somewhat) ongoing debate over whether lethal injection—in some or all of its forms—is cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment is the newest variation on the question of whether a particular form of capital punishment is inhumane and cruel. The history of capital punishment in the United States over the last two centuries has been punctuated by attempts to find less painful and gruesome ways to kill persons society has condemned to die. Ironically, at least from a historical perspective, some recent executions have seen condemned inmates or their attorneys elect some of the older methods, i.e., electrocution, or offer, as a potentially less painful alternative, the firing squad or death by lethal gas. And some states, including the main subject of this article, have resurrected electrocution and the firing squad because of a claimed inability or difficulty in obtaining execution drugs. In this article, the authors trace the history of execution methods in the pre-modern era of capital punishment (before 1972), primarily in South Carolina, pointing out the often-intractable problems with their implementation process (including specific “botches”), and then address other aspects of executions that have relevance to the current debate about the wisdom and efficacy of retaining the “modern” American death penalty in the twenty-first century.

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

One of every 15 women in prison — amounting to more than 6,600 women — is serving a life sentence and nearly 2,000 of these have no chance for parole. Another 52 women in the U.S. are awaiting execution. Many women serving extreme sentences were victims of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse long before they committed a crime.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Women

Pandangan Para Pembentuk Opini tentang Hukuman Mati di Indonesia

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

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list China

The Permanent Missions to the United Nations inNew York listed below have the honour to refer to General Assembly resolution 73/175, entitled “Moratorium on the use of the death penalty”, which was adopted by the Assembly on 17 December 2018 by a recorded vote. The Permanent Missions wish to place on record that they are in persistent objection to any attempt to impose a moratorium on the use of the death penalty or its abolition in contravention of existing stipulations under international law, for the following reasons:

• Document type United Nations report
• Countries list Bahrain / Bangladesh / Botswana / Brunei Darussalam / Chad / China / Democratic People's Republic of Korea / Egypt / Ethiopia / Grenada / Iran (Islamic Republic of) / Iraq / Jamaica / Kuwait / Libya / Nigeria / Oman / Pakistan / Papua New Guinea / Qatar / Saint Kitts and Nevis / Saint Lucia / Saint Vincent and the Grenadines / Saudi Arabia / Singapore / Sudan / Syrian Arab Republic / United Arab Emirates / Yemen / Zimbabwe
• Themes list Moratorium
• Available languages مذكرة شفوية مؤرخة 13 أيلول/سبتمبر 2019 موجهة إلى الأمين العام من الممثل الدائم لمصر لدى الأمم المتحدةNota verbal de fecha 13 de septiembre de 2019 dirigida al Secretario Generalpor el Representante Permanente de Egipto ante las Naciones UnidasNote verbale datée du 13 septembre 2019, adressée au Secrétaire général par le Représentant permanent de l’Égypte auprès de l’Organisation des Nations UniesВербальная нота Постоянного представителя Египта при Организации Объединенных Наций от 13 сентября 2019 года на имя Генерального секретаря2019年9月13日埃及常驻联合国代表给秘书长的普通照会

• Document type NGO report

• Document type Array
• Countries list Iran (Islamic Republic of)
• Themes list Drug Offenses / Fair Trial / Juveniles / Women

United Nations General Assembly Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 16 December 2020 [on the report of the Third Committee (A/75/478/Add.2, para. 89) 75/183. Moratorium on the use of the death penalty.

• Document type International law - United Nations
• Themes list Moratorium
• Available languages قرار اتخذته الجمعية العامة في 16 كانون الأول/ديسمبر 2020Resolución 75/183 - Moratoria del uso de la pena de muerteRésolution 75/183 - Moratoire sur l'application de la peine de mortРезолюция 75/183 - Мораторий на применение смертной казни大会决议75/183 - 暂停使用死刑

2020 was abnormal in almost every way, and that was clearly the case when it came to capital punishment in the United States. The interplay of four forces shaped the U.S. death penalty landscape in 2020: the nation’s long-term trend away from capital punishment; the worst global pandemic in more than a century; nationwide protests for racial justice; and the historically aberrant conduct of the federal administration. At the end of the year, more states had abolished the death penalty or gone ten years without an execution, more counties had elected reform prosecutors who pledged never to seek the death penalty or to use it more sparingly; fewer new death sentences were imposed than in any prior year since the Supreme Court struck down U.S. death penalty laws in 1972; and despite a six-month spree of federal executions without parallel in the 20th or 21st centuries, fewer executions were carried out than in any year in nearly three decades.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States

• Document type Rapport des Nations Unies

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Antigua and Barbuda / Congo / Democratic Republic of the Congo / Djibouti / Dominica / Eswatini / Guinea / Lebanon / Libya / Nauru / Niger / Pakistan / Philippines / Republic of Korea / Sierra Leone / Solomon Islands / South Sudan / Tonga / Uganda / Zimbabwe

• Document type Informe de las Naciones Unidas

• Document type Доклад Организации Объединенных Наций

• Document type United Nations report
• Available languages (2020) وقف العم بعقوبة اإلعدام. تقرير األمين العامMoratoria del uso de la pena de muerte. Informe del Secretario General (2020)Moratoire sur l'application de la peine de mort. Rapport du Secrétaire général (2020)Мораторий на применение смертной казни. Доклад Генерального секретаря (2020)暂停使用死刑。 秘书长的报告 (2020)

• Document type International law - United Nations
• Available languages

• Document type Regional body report
• Available languages Informe No. 211/20. Caso 13.750. Informe sobre admisibilidad y fondo. Lezmond C. Mitchell. Estados Unidos de America

• Document type NGO report
• Available languages التقرير العالمي لمنظمة العفو الدولية: أحكام وعمليات الإعدام في 2019Condenas a muerte y ejecuciones 2019گرارش جهانی : مجازات اعدام در سال 2019Condamnations à mort et exécutions 2019Cмертные приговоры и казни 2019

• Document type United Nations report
• Available languages تقرير 2018- وقف العمل بعقوبة الإعدامInforme 2018 - Moratoria del uso de la pena de muerteRapport 2018 - Moratoire sur l'application de la peine de mortДоклад 2018 - Мораторий на применение смертной казни2018报告 - 暂停使用死刑联合国

United Nations General Assembly Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 17 December 2018 [on the report of the Third Committee (A/73/589/Add.2) 73/175. Moratorium on the use of the death penalty.

• Document type International law - United Nations
• Available languages قرار اتخذته الجمعية العامة في 17 كانون الأول/ديسمبر 2018Resolución 73/175 - Moratoria del uso de la pena de muerteRésolution 73/175 - Moratoire sur l'application de la peine de mortРезолюция 73/175 - Мораторий на применение смертной казни大会决议73/175 - 暂停使用死刑

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States

The fascinating, moving story of a friendship with an inmate on death row. It was a clash of race, privilege, and circumstance when Alan Robertson first signed up through a church program to visit Cecil Johnson on Death Row, to offer friendship and compassion. Alan’s wife Suzanne had no intention of being involved, but slowly, through phone calls and letters, she began to empathize and understand him. That Cecil and Suzanne eventually became such close friends—a white middle-class woman and a Black man who grew up devoid of advantage—is a testament to perseverance, forgiveness, and love, but also to the notion that differences don’t have to be barriers. This book recounts a fifteen-year friendship and how trust and compassion were forged despite the difficult circumstances, and how Cecil ended up ministering more to Suzanne’s family than they did to him. The story details how Cecil maintained inexplicable joy and hope despite the tragic events of his life and how Suzanne, Alan, and their two daughters opened their hearts to a man convicted of murder. Cecil Johnson was executed Dec. 2, 2009.

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

When faced with calls to join the majority of states worldwide that have now abolished capital punishment, a key justification, typically relied upon by retentionist states, is that their citizens are not yet ready for abolition, and that political leaders must represent ‘the will of the people.’ The Death Penalty Project produced this resource on public opinion and the death penalty.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Public Opinion 

• Document type World Coalition

• Document type World Coalition

Anniversary tool for the 20th World Day Against the Death Penalty.
This tool traces 20 years of struggle for the abolition of the death penalty. Rediscover the different themes addressed and the achievements of the World Day.

• Document type World Coalition
• Available languages أداة الذكرى السنوية - اليوم العالمي العشرينOutil anniversaire - 20e Journée mondiale

• Document type Array

World Day 2022 Poster in Turkish – ÖLÜM CEZASI: İŞKENCEYLE DÖŞELI BIR YOLDUR

• Document type World Coalition

• Document type World Coalition

Shattered Justice presents original crime victims’ experiences with violent crime, investigations and trials, and later exonerations in their cases. Using in-depth interviews with 21 crime victims across the United States, Cook reveals how homicide victims’ family members and rape survivors describe the painful impact of the primary trauma, the secondary trauma of the investigations and trials, and then the tertiary trauma associated with wrongful convictions and exonerations. Important lessons and analyses are shared related to grief and loss, and healing and repair. Using restorative justice practices to develop and deliver healing retreats for survivors also expands the practice of restorative justice. Finally, policy reforms aimed at preventing, mitigating, and repairing the harms of wrongful convictions is covered.

• Document type Book
• Countries list United States

This report provided by the United Nations General Assembly presents the resolutions of the 77th session. It includes reports on the moratorium on the use of the death penalty (A/77/463/Add.2 DR XII) which was adopted on the 15th of December 2022 with a vote (125-37-22) (A/77/PV.54) under item 68(b). Guided by the purposes and principles contained in the Charter of the United Nations, it reaffirms the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child and recalls the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty.

• Document type United Nations report
• Available languages الجمعية العامة للأمم المتحدة - قرارات الدورة السابعة والسبعينAsamblea General de las Naciones Unidas - Resoluciones del 77º Período de SesionesAssemblée Générale des Nations Unies - Résolutions de la 77e SessionГенеральная Ассамблея ООН - Резолюции 77-й сессии联合国大会 - 第77届会议的决议

• Document type World Coalition

• Document type World Coalition

20th World Day on “Torture and the death penalty”.

• Document type Campaigning / World Coalition
• Available languages 2022 ملصق اليوم العال مPoster Spanish – 2022 Día Mundial contra la Pena de MuertePoster Farsi 2022 - بیستمین روز جهانی علیهمجازات مرگAffiche Journée mondiale 2022Poster Russian 2022 - 20Й ВСЕМИРНЫЙ ДЕНЬ ПРОТИВ СМЕРТНОЙ КАЗНИPoster Chinese 2022- 第20届世界反死刑日

Find the main facts and figures regarding the death penalty worldwide in 2021 and early 2022.

• Document type World Coalition
• Available languages Faits et chiffres 2022

• Document type Array

Welttag gegen die Todesstrafe Poster

• Document type Array