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Students of capital punishment need to study Asia, the site of at least 85 percent and as many as 95 percent of the world’s executions. This article explores the varieties of Asian capital punishment in two complementary ways. Cross-sectionally, the impression of uniformity that comes from classifying 95 percent of the population of Asia as living in executing states breaks down when closer attention is paid to the character of capital punishment policy within retentionist nations. Temporally, the general trajectory of capital punishment in the Asian region seems downward (though generalizations about patterns in this part of the world are undermined by significant data problems). Asia is also a useful territory for testing the generality of theories of capital punishment based on European experience. Looking forward, Japan and South Korea, two developed nations in Asia that still retain the death penalty, may indicate what other Asian nations are likely to do as they develop. Ultimately, Asia either will become a major staging area for world-wide abolition or the campaign against capital punishment will fail to achieve global status.

• Document type Article
• Countries list Japan

We examine sources of variation in possession and use of the death penalty using data drawn from 193 nations in order to test theories of punishment. We find the death penalty to be rooted in a country’s legal and political systems, and to be influenced by its religious traditions. A country’s level of economic development, its educational attainment, and its religious composition shape its political institutions and practices, indirectly affecting its use of the death penalty. The article concludes by discussing likely future trends.

• Document type Article
• Themes list Networks,

English version starts at 15 minutes and 59 seconds. ‘Words beyond death row’, extracts from testimonies of death row prisoners illustrated by a photo screening, in partnership with PhotoEspaña. This movie was presented during the 5th World Congress against the death penalty in Madrid in June 2013, by Ensemble contre la peine de mort – ECPM (Together against the death penalty) #Abolition201

• Document type Multimedia content
• Themes list Death Row Conditions, Death Penalty,
• Available languages Des mots par-delà le couloir

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,

Although the death penalty has a long history, it is not without debate and differing views. There appears to be a gap between Whites and Blacks in terms of their support of capital punishment. Students at a Midwestern university were surveyed to determine whether there were differences between the two groups of students in reasons to support or oppose the death penalty. In bivariate tests, there were significant differences between White and Black students on 15 of 16 measures for reasons for supporting or opposing capital punishment. These differences continued for 10 of the 16 measures even after multivariate analysis controlled for the effects of gender, age, and academic level. The results are discussed.

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

One of the largely unique aspects of the American jury system is that it confers upon the parties the unilateral power – in the form of peremptory challenges – to remove prospective jurors for any non-racial or non-gender-based reason. This article presents an overview of the literature on peremptory challenges, and an empirical analysis of their use in Philadelphia capital cases in the 1980s and 1990s.

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

The Flynn Effect is a well documented phenomenon demonstrating score increases on IQ measures over time that average about 0.3 points per year. Normative adjustments to scores derived from IQ measures normed more than a year or so prior to the time of testing an individual have become controversial in several settings but especially so in matters of death penalty litigation. Here we make the argument that if the Flynn Effect is real, then a Flynn Correction should be applied to obtained IQs in order to obtain the most accurate estimate of IQ possible. To fail to provide the most accurate estimate possible in matters that are truly life and death decisions seems wholly indefensible.

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

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,

Activists have embraced the life-without-parole alternative because the availability of parole is often a key factor for jurors deciding whether of not to impose a sentence of life or death.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Sentencing Alternatives,

The death penalty is a subject that, in the words of Justice Adrian Saunders of the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal, “invariably elicits passionate comment.” Such comment is particularly so within the states that make up the Commonwealth Caribbean, where rising rates of violent crime have led to strong public clamor for a swift and final response. The involvement of foreign courts and quasi-judicial international tribunals in limiting the actual use of the death penalty in the Caribbean has made the issue even more politically charged, leading to a strongly held perception that the judgments of these foreign bodies are unacceptable challenges to the very exercise of Caribbean national sovereignty.

• Document type Article
• Themes list Mandatory Death Penalty,

This article outlines some of the main arguments against the death penalty in Japan.

• Document type Article
• Countries list Japan

The majority of those on death row in the Philippines have been convicted of rape crimes, including rape of a minor, rape of a family member and other aggravated forms of rape. Looking at incestuous rape in particular, this paper will examine some of the psychological and legal difficulties of imposing the death penalty for such a crime. It will focus on the effects the administration of the death penalty has on the victim and the victim’s family, as well as looking at some of the legal, evidential and procedural problems that arise in this jurisdiction’s imposition of the death penalty for rape.Despite the continued existence of the death penalty for incestuous rape, the number of reported cases has not diminished. Recognising this, local women’s groups in the Philippines have called for the root causes of incest and other forms of violence against women to be addressed rather than imposing the death penalty for rape. This response will also be considered within the broader context of Filipino gender relations.

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

While research abounds on attitudes toward capital punishment in the United States, such work has been lacking in non-western nations — particularly in India, the world’s largest democracy. Data recently collected have revealed variance in levels of support for the death penalty among Indian college students: 44 percent express some degree of opposition, 13 percent are uncertain, and 43 percent express some degree of support. Reasons for support or opposition also exhibited variance. According to a multivariate analysis, statistically significant reasons for support included retribution, instrumentalist goals, and incapacitation; while significant reasons for opposition included morality and the belief that deterrence could be achieved by imposing sentences of life without parole.

• Document type Article
• Countries list India
• Themes list Public opinion, Public debate,

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,

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,

This article focuses on the role played by Mao Zedong in the making of the Chinese communist legal system in general and in the Chinese practice of the death penalty under Mao in particular. It attempts to study this link through an analysis of an event which represented a landmark, namely the campaign of the regression against counterrevolutionaries launched in 1950—2, and through an examination of three specific cases, which enable us to observe the concrete characteristics of these practices, whose effects continue to be felt in today’s China.

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

There is a lack of research on attitudes toward capital punishment in China, and there is even less research on cross-national comparisons of capital punishment views. Using data recently collected from college students in the United States and China, this study finds that U.S. and Chinese students have differences in their views on the death penalty and its functions of deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation. This study also reveals that the respondents’ perspectives of deterrence, rehabilitation, retribution, and incapacitation all affect their attitudes toward the death penalty in the United States, whereas only the first three views affect attitudes toward capital punishment in China. Furthermore, retribution is the strongest predictor in the United States, whereas deterrence is the strongest predictor in China.

• Document type Article
• Countries list China
• Themes list Public opinion, Public debate,

This report details the administration of the death penalty in Taiwan. It discusses Taiwans obligations under international law, how executions are carried out, the profile of the condemned, discrimination in the sysem and discusses placing a moratorium on executions in Taiwan.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Networks,
• Available languages 重啓死刑執行 廢死之路大倒退- 2010台灣死刑報告

PowerPoint presentation used at The Advocates for Human Rights’ training session on death penalty advocacy for the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review of human rights. See also the video of the presentation here.

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list International law,

In this book Beth Berkowitz tells the story of modern scholarship on the ancient rabbinic death penalty and continues the story by offering a fresh perspective using the approaches of ritual studies, cultural criticism, and talmudic source criticism. Against the scholarly consensus, Berkowitz argues that the rabbinic laws of the death penalty were used by the early Rabbis in their efforts to establish themselves in the wake of the destruction of the Temple. The purpose of the laws, she contends, was to create a complex ritual of execution that was controlled by the Rabbis, thus bolstering their claims to authority in the context of Roman imperial domination.

• Document type Book
• Themes list Religion ,

The article, with three co-authors, examines empirically the capital cases decided by the lower courts since the United States Supreme Court created the categorical ban against the execution of persons with intellectual disability twelve years ago in the Atkins decision.

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

While most western democracies have renounced the death penalty, capital punishment enjoys vast and growing support in the United States. A significant and vocal minority, however, continues to oppose it. Against Capital Punishment is the first full account of anti-death penalty activism in America during the years since the ten-year moratorium on executions ended.

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

This book addresses one of the most controversial issues in the criminal justice system today—the death penalty. Paternoster et al. present a balanced perspective that focuses on both the arguments for and against capital punishment. Coverage draws on legal, historical, philosophical, economic, sociological, and religious points of view.

• Document type Book
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Due Process , Public opinion, Country/Regional profiles,

This report provides evidence on public attitudes to the death penalty in Ghana, withan empirical focus on Accra.

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list Public opinion, Statistics,

Forty-three years after the Supreme Court reversed course and reinstated the death penalty, reliable data on the individuals sent to death row is maddeningly difficult to obtain. The Intercept set out to compile a comprehensive dataset on everyone sentenced to die in active death penalty jurisdictions since 1976. The findings show that capital punishment remains as “arbitrary and capricious” as ever.

• Document type International law - Regional body
• Themes list Statistics, Country/Regional profiles,

This book provides an introduction to socio-legal forms of mitigation in capital sentencing. It helps mitigation specialists, defense investigators, social scientists, and lawyers in developing socio-cultural themes of mitigation. It examines scientific formulations, concepts, and frameworks for structuring social history investigations and assessments of moral culpability. A fundamental aim of this handbook was to provide mitigation professionals not only with an understanding of the context of mitigation in criminal justice thinking, but also ways of contextualizing issues of blame and culpability.

• Document type Book
• Themes list Due Process ,

This book shows that the majority of Asian countries have been particularly resistant to the abolitionist movement and tardy in accepting their responsibility to uphold the safeguards. The essays contained in this volume provide an in-depth analysis of changes in the scope and application of the death penalty in Asia with a focus on China, India, Japan, and Singapore. They explain the extent to which these nations still fail to accept capital punishment as a human rights issue, identify impediments to reform, and explore the prospects that Asian countries will eventually embrace the goal of worldwide abolition of capital punishment.

• Document type Book
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

Imprisoned by the Past: Warren McCleskey and the American Death Penalty examines the long history of the American death penalty and its connection to the case of Warren McCleskey, revealing how that case marked a turning point for the history of the death penalty. In this book, Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier explores one of the most important Supreme Court cases in history, a case that raised important questions about race and punishment, and ultimately changed the way we understand the death penalty today.

• Document type Book
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Fair Trial,

This article addresses the effect of judge versus jury decision making through analysis of a database of all capital sentencing phase hearing trials in the state of Delaware from 1977-2007. Over the three decades of the study, Delaware shifted responsibility for death penalty sentencing from the jury to the judge. Currently, Delaware is one of the handful of states that gives the judge the final decision making authority in capital trials. Controlling for a number of legally-relevant and other predictor variables, we find that the shift to judge sentencing significantly increased the number of death sentences. Statutory aggravating factors, stranger homicides, and the victim’s gender also increased the likelihood of a death sentence, as did the county of the homicide. We reflect on the implications of these results for debates about the constitutionality of judge sentencing in capital cases.

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list Statistics, Country/Regional profiles,

Informations and survey findings about the public opinion on the death penalty in Singapore

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list Public opinion, Death Penalty,

The present report contains information covering the period from July 2010 to June 2011, and draws attention to a number of phenomena, including the continuing trend towards abolition, the ongoing difficulties in gaining access to reliable information on executions, and various international efforts towards the universal abolition of the death penalty.

• Document type International law - United Nations
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition,
• Available languages Вопрос о смертной казни. Доклад Генерального секретаря.死刑问题. 秘书长的报告.La cuestión de la pena capital. Informe del Secretario General.

The Court (pictured) ruled in favour of two prisoners who petitioned for a commutation of their death sentences to life imprisonment, claiming “the unconscionably long delay in deciding the mercy petition has caused the onset of chronic psychotic illness”. It acknowledged the “unbearable mental agony after confirmation of death sentence” and added that in some cases “death-row prisoners lost their mental balance on account of prolonged anxiety and suffering experienced on death row”.

• Document type Multimedia content
• Countries list India
• Themes list Mental Illness, International law, Death Row Conditions, Death Row Phenomenon,

Some Human Rights and civil society groups wrote to the member states of the Human Rights Council to get them to support the resolution to renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran at the 31st session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

• Document type Multimedia content
• Countries list Iran (Islamic Republic of)
• Themes list International law, Most Serious Crimes, Country/Regional profiles,

Status of signature ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, including declarations, reservations and objections.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Moratorium ,
• Available languages État de signature et ratification du Deuxième Protocole facultatif se rapportant au Pacte international relatif aux droits civils et politiques visant à abolir la peine de mort.État de signature et ratification du Deuxième Protocole facultatif se rapportant au Pacte international relatif aux droits civils et politiques visant à abolir la peine de mort.

This Article presents evidence of racial discrimination in the administration of the death penalty in the United States Armed Forces from 1984 through 2005.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Minorities, Country/Regional profiles,

Cameroon, with a population of approximately 18 million, has a multiparty system of government, with the current ruling party Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) in power since it was created in 1985. The president retains the power to control legislation or to rule by decree. Although the civilian authorities do generally maintain effective control of the security forces, security forces sometimes act independently of government authority. Authorities arbitrarily arrest and detain citizens for different reasons. Among those arbitrarily arrested and detained are human rights defenders and other activists and persons not carrying government-issued identity cards. There are incidents of prolonged and sometimes incommunicado pretrial detention and infringement on privacy rights. The government restricts freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association, and harasses journalists and human rights defenders. Other problems include widespread official corruption, societal violence, discrimination against women, the trafficking of children and girls, and discrimination against homosexuals. The government restricts worker rights and activities of independent labor organizations. The diverse cultural beliefs and ethnic groups promote to a large extend discrimination against and violations of women and young people, widows and the divorced. This report specifically highlights violations in 2008 and 2009, with a few violations in other years.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Networks,
• Available languages Cameroun: Rapport de la société civile sur la mise en oeuvre du PIDCP

This paper describes the international law surrounding the trend towards abolition. It then discusses this in relation to the death penalty in Palestine which has come under criticism from Human Rights NGO’s to provide prisoners with international standards regarding their detention and providing a fair trial.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition,

The Commonwealth Caribbean remains an obstinate holdout against the international trend limiting use of the death penalty. The death row population in the region per capita is about four times that of the United States. Widely debated in legal circles for a decade, capital punishment jurisprudence will be affected by the creation of the regional appellate court that was launched in April 2005. Modeled after the European Court of Justice, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) will assume the constitutional jurisdiction currently exercised by the Judicial Committee of the London-based Privy Council. Critics claim the CCJ was created to undo the constraints on the death penalty decreed by the Privy Council and international human rights tribunals, while proponents maintain that the new court completes the region’s assumption of sovereignty. This article situates the debate in the constitutional history of the independence era, the current regionalization movement, and the interplay between international norms and domestic fundamental rights.

• Document type Article
• Countries list Antigua and Barbuda

While an examination of the social and political currents of each country would perhaps be the best way to answer the question “Why is there strong support for capital punishment in Southeast Asia?”, this paper will begin this effort by looking specifically at the Philippines, a society that has received more exposure to democratic tenets and human rights advocacy than other Southeast Asian countries (Blitz, 2000).

• Document type Article
• Countries list Philippines
• Themes list Public opinion,

A quarterly report by the Criminal Justice Project of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, on the situation of the death penalty in the USA

• Document type NGO report

The question of how societies should respond to their most serious crimes if not with the death penalty is ‘perhaps the oldest of all the issues raised by the two-century struggle in western civilization to end the death penalty’ ( Bedau, 1990: 481 ). In this article we draw attention to the rapid and extraordinary increase in the use of ‘life imprisonment without parole’ in the United States. We aim to critically assess the main arguments put forward by supporters of whole life imprisonment as a punishment provided by law to replace the death penalty and argue against life-long detention as the ultimate sanction.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Sentencing Alternatives,

In Alabama, elected trial judges can override jury verdicts of life and impose death sentences. Although judges have authority to override life or death verdicts, in 92% of overrides elected judges have overruled jury verdicts of life to impose the death penalty.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Fair Trial, Arbitrariness, Sentencing Alternatives,

This annual report is characterized by contrasts – some victories to celebrate against a background of hateful laws still in force and hate crimes around the world.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Minorities, Capital offences, Homosexuality,

This training handbook was specifically designed for those “newcomer” NGOs and activists that are in the process of establishing a European strategy. It does so by providing tailored-made information on EU institutions, the way European NGOs work, as well as lobbying “tips”, illustrated by examples of EU level campaigns.

• Document type Working with...
• Themes list Networks,
• Available languages Bulgarian : Как гласът ни да бъде чут в ЕС:Наръчник за НПОRomanian : Cum s v face i vocea auzit în cadrul Uniunii Europene: Îndreptar pentru Organiza iile Non-GuvernamentaleEstonian : Enda kuuldavaks tegemine Euroopa Liidus: juhend vabaühendusteleItalian : Far sentire la propria voce nell’UE Guida per le ONGGerman : Einfluss nehmen in der EU: Ein Handbuch für NROsHungarian : Hallassuk hangunkat az EU-ban: útmutató civil szervezeteknekLatvian : Tava balss Eiropas Savieniba: Rokasgramata NVOPortuguese : Faça ouvir A sua voz na União Europeia!Slovene : Naj se slisi vas glas v EU: Prirocnik za nevladne organizacijeFaire Entendre votre voix dans l'UE: Un Guide à l'Usage des ONGHaciéndose oír en la UE: Una Guía para ONG

This article discusses the role of judges in death determinations, identifying jurisdictions that initially (post-1972) allowed judge sentencing and naming the individuals who today remain under judge-imposed death sentences. The decisions guaranteeing a jury determination have so far been applied only to cases that have not undergone initial review in state courts. Key questions remain unresolved, including whether the evolving standards of decency permit the execution of more than 100 individuals who were condemned to death by judges without a jury’s death verdict before implementation of the rules that now require unanimous jury votes.

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list Due Process , Fair Trial,

Four decades after the reinstatement of the death penalty in the United States, the harmful impact of death sentences and executions on persons other than the individual offender is still not widely recognized – not even among mental health professionals who specialize in responding to individual and community needs in the aftermath of traumatic events.

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

The secrecy that surrounds capital punishment in Japan is taken to extremes not seen in other nations. This article describes the Japanese state’s policy of secrecy and explains how it developed in three historical stages: the “birth of secrecy” during the Meiji period (1867 – 1912); the creation and spread of “censored democracy” during the postwar Occupation (1945 – 1952); and the “acceleration of secrecy” during the decades that followed. The article then analyzes several justifications for secrecy that Japanese prosecutors provide. None seems cogent. The final section explores four meanings of the secrecy policy that relate to the sources of death penalty legitimacy, the salience of capital punishment, the nature of Japan’s democracy, and the role and rule of law in Japanese society.

• Document type Article
• Countries list Japan
• Themes list Transparency,

That the European area is a zone free of capital punishment is the result of a complex process of restraints that has evolved over the last 50 years. Domestic, regional and universal international law, as well as certain components within each level, have influenced each other to produce a dynamic, circular movement towards abolition. Starting from the internal level, restraints on the death penalty rose up to the regional and universal levels, and then descended back down into domestic law. This process, however, has not produced a completely closed circle, and certain countries in Europe retain legislation permitting recourse to the death penalty for certain crimes, especially war crimes and, according to recent interpretations, criminal offences related to terrorist activity. Extradition or other administrative mechanisms of expulsion also illustrate potential disjunctions in the circle, as they may allow persons to be transferred to retentionist countries. Even though the legislative framework has significantly evolved in the last few years, the dominant role played by political evaluations creates new fissures in the abolitionist circle. Only recently have new abolitionist perspectives emerged from the ‘right of interference’ in foreign death penalty cases, which some countries try to exercise when their own nationals are involved.

• Document type Article
• Themes list Networks,

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 Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP) – a statewide advocacy organization based in Austin, Texas – publishes this annual report to inform the public and elected officials about issues associated with the death penalty over the past year. The report includes illustrative charts and graphs, and cites the death penalty developments in Texas (USA).

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Death Penalty,

This Handbook deals with the right to life, as guaranteed byArticle 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and with the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights under that article.

• Document type Working with...
• Themes list International law,

In May 2013, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) undertook a fact-finding mission in California and Louisiana to evaluate the death penalty as practiced and experienced in these jurisdictions under a human rights framework. The mission examined whether the death penalty was being applied in a discriminatory manner, and if the conditions on death row met the U.S.’s obligation to prevent and prohibit torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.The mission interviewed death-row prisoners, exonerees and their family members, advocates, legal counsel, and non-governmental organizations in both states, analyzing the information gathered against the backdrop of international human rights law. Based on the interviews conducted and documentary review, the mission concludes that the use of the death penalty in California and Louisiana fails to protect a number of basic rights, rendering the United States in breach of certain fundamental international obligations. Specifically, the mission finds California and Louisiana violate the principle of non-discrimination in the charging, conviction and sentencing of persons to death. Both states treat prisoners condemned to death in a manner that is, at minimum, cruel, inhuman or degrading, and in some cases, constitutes torture.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Mental Illness, Torture, Death Row Conditions, Death Penalty,

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 statement is delivered on behalf of the World Coalition against the Death Penalty (WCADP), Iran Human Rights (IHR), Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation,The Advocates for Human Rights, an NGO with special consultative status, and Association for Human Rights in Kurdistan of Iran-Geneva.The statement addresses the following issues: (1) extensive use of the death penalty(official and unofficial figures); (2) the death penalty against juvenile offenders; (3) public executions; (4) the death penalty for murder or “qesas/retribution;” (5) the death penalty for drug-related charges, and; (6) the death penalty for other non-violent offenses.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Juveniles, Minorities, International law, Capital offences, Right to life, Drug Offences, Hanging, Stoning,

The present publication provides an extensive review of global trends in death penalty matters, a summary of the applicable international legal standards, and the current status of legislative reform related to the death penalty in South-East Asia. As a product of the OHCHR Regional Office for South-East Asia, this publication is intended to be a resource for further discussions in the region toward the abolition of the death penalty.

• Document type International law - United Nations
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition,

An unexpected feature of the modern death penalty is the fact that most persons sentenced to death are not executed […]. Death sentences are remarkably poor predictors of who will ultimately be executed. An even more salient feature of the death penalty is the fat that race matters […]. Rarity and race, then, stand as hallmarks of the American death penalty. But until now the interaction of these two phenomena has not been studied. This Article examines whether race is relevant for understanding the fate of the unfortunate few […]. By combining Baldus’s sentencing data whith original execution data, we demonstrate that the overall execution is susbsentially greater for defendants convicted of killing a white victim than for those convicted of killing a Black victim.

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

The seventh annual report of Iran Human Rights (IHR) on the death penalty gives an assessmentof how the death penalty was implemented in 2014 in the Islamic Republic of Iran.In addition to providing the number of executions that were conducted, the report alsolooks at the trends compared to previous years, the methods of execution, geographicaldistribution, the charges that were used by authorities to justify the executions and thearticles in the penal law that were used to issue the death sentences. Lists of the womenand juvenile offenders executed in 2014 are also included.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Juveniles, Minorities, Religion , Due Process , Fair Trial, International law, Capital offences, Drug Offences, Hanging, Statistics,

With 35 executions this year, 2014 marks the fewest people put to death since 1994, according to this report by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). The 72 new death sentences in 2014 is the lowest number in the modern era of the death penalty, dating back to 1974. Executions and sentences have steadily decreased, as Americans have grown more skeptical of capital punishment. The states’ problems with lethal injections also contributed to the drop in executions this year.Death sentences—a more current barometer than executions—have declined by 77% since 1996, when there were 315. There were 79 death sentences last year. This is the fourth year in a row that there have been fewer than 100 death sentences.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Mental Illness, Innocence, Intellectual Disability, Lethal Injection, Statistics,

On December 19, the Death Penalty Information Center released its annual report on the latest developments in capital punishment, “The Death Penalty in 2013: Year End Report.” In 2013, executions declined, fewer states imposed death sentences, and the size of death row decreased compared to the previous year. The number of states with the death penalty also dropped, and public support for capital punishment registered a 40-year low. There were 39 executions in the U.S., marking only the second time in 19 years that there were less than 40. Just two states, Texas (16) and Florida (7), were responsible for 59% of the executions. The number of death sentences (80) remained near record lows, and several major death penalty states, inclucing Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Louisiana, imposed no death sentences this year. Maryland became the sixth state in six years to abolish capital punishment.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Statistics,

This report focuses itsanalysis on discrimination and torture, cruel inhuman and degrading treatment and foundnumerous human rights violations, including the most basic right – the right to life – in theuse of the death penalty in California and Louisiana.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Discrimination,

The 2% Death PenaltyEXECUTIVE SUMMARYContrary to the assumption that the death penalty is widely practiced across thecountry, it isactuallythe domain of a small percentage of U.S. counties in a handful ofstates. The burdens created by this narrow but aggressive use, however, areshiftedtothe majority of counties that almost never use it.The disparate and highly clustered use of the death penalty raises seriousquestions of unequal and arbitraryapplication of the law. It also forcesthejurisdictionsthat have resisted the death penalty for decadesto pay fora costlylegalprocess thatisoftenmarred withinjustice.

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list Statistics,

Death sentences in Texas have dropped more than 70% since 2003, reaching a historic low in 2010. According to data compiled from news sources and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, juries condemned eight new individuals to death in Texas in 2010. This is the lowest number of new death sentences since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas’ revised death penalty statute in 1976. For preious annual reports on Texas please visit: http://tcadp.org/get-informed/reports/

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Statistics,

The sixth annual report of Iran Human Rights (IHR) on the death penalty gives an assessment of how the death penalty was implemented in 2013 in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Juveniles, Women, Minorities, Religion , Fair Trial, International law, Transparency, Drug Offences, Torture, Discrimination, Foreign Nationals, Hanging, Stoning, Death Penalty, Statistics, Country/Regional profiles,
• Available languages گزارش سالانه اعدام در ايران – سال ٢٠١٣ میلادیRapport annuel sur la peine de mort en iran 2013

The handbook is intended to introduce you to the rights and value based NGO sectors in the EU and helps you to navigate your way around Civil Society. Part I gives a general overview of the context of dialogue between the EU institutions and NGOs – as it has been established over the last 20 years – and how NGOs would like civil dialogue to develop in the context of the new Constitution. In Part II you will find an overview of the policy areas that each of the 6 sectors will work on during the EP period 2004-2009. This is intended to help you identify the areas of expertise European NGOs can offer for your specific work in the EP. The values and objectives of the EU Civil Society Contact Group from Part III and the annex contain a comprehensive contact list for European NGOs within the 6 sectors.

• Document type Working with...
• Themes list Networks,
• Available languages German : Einleitung durch die Kontaktgruppe der Europäischen Zivilgesellschaft : Ein Leitfaden für die ZusammenarbeitIntroduction du Groupe de Contact de la Société Civile: Un guide de partenariat

Scholars have devoted substantial attention to both the overrepresentation of black defendants on federal death row and the disproportionate number of federal defendants charged capitally for the murder of white victims. This attention has not explained (much less resolved) these disquieting racial disparities. Little research has addressed the unusual geography of the federal death penalty, in which a small number of jurisdictions are responsible for the vast majority of federal death sentences. By addressing the unique geography, we identify a possible explanation for the racial distortions in the federal death penalty: that federal death sentences are sought disproportionately where the expansion of the venire from the county to the district level has a dramatic demographic impact on the racial make-up of the jury. This inquiry demonstrates that the conversation concerning who should make up the jury of twelve neighbors and peers—a discussion begun well before the founding of our Constitution—continues to have relevance today. Louisiana, Missouri, Virginia and Maryland referred to.

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

The Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission (Commission) came together shortly after the state of Oklahoma imposed a moratorium on the execution of condemned inmates. In late 2015, Oklahoma executions were put on hold while a grand jury investigated disturbing problems involving recent executions, including departures from the execution protocols of the Department of Corrections. The report of the grand jury, released in May of 2016, was highly critical and exposed a number of deeply troubling failures in the final stages of Oklahoma’s death penalty

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Death Penalty,

OTSE is a coalition of individuals and organizations working to reduce use of and ultimately end capital punishment in Ohio. The purpose of the report is to provide information and analysis to the media, members of the general public, legislators and state leaders.The death penalty in Ohio has become increasingly rare and is relegated to just a few high-use,outlier counties.Indeed, although Ohio has set an execution schedule unmatched by any state in the country up to the year 2023, it seems doubtful, based on its history of litigation and execution drug shortages, that Ohio will execute all those individuals.

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

“Unknown Assailants: A Threat to Human Rights”So is named The Tanzania Human Rights Report of 2017 released by the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC).This report was published on April, 25th 2018 and it enlights for the fifteenth time the major human rights violation in Tanzania. This report, while it deals with human rights violation in Tanzania concerning civil and politial rights, freedom of violence, freedom of expression, etc, also presents some issues due to these violations such as the right to participate in governance, particularly the right to participate in political life, which are deny.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United Republic of Tanzania
• Themes list Death Penalty, Statistics, Country/Regional profiles,

This educational guide accompany the documentary Juan Melendez 6446.

• Document type Working with...
• Themes list Innocence, Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

On 18 April 2018, the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide and Malawi’s Paralegal Advisory Services Institute (PASI) released their report on “Malawian Traditional Leaders’ Perspectives on Capital Punishment” before a group of public officials and stakeholders in Lilongwe.The report analyses data from surveys of 102 traditional leaders in villages across Malawi. Clifford Msiska, the National Director of PASI, informed an audience in Lilongwe that over ninety percent of traditional leaders surveyed did not support the use of the death penalty to punish individuals convicted of murder. Only six traditional leaders stated that death was the appropriate penalty for murder. The rest preferred a term of years, life imprisonment with opportunity for early release, or (least frequently of all) life imprisonment with no opportunity for release.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Public opinion, Public debate, Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

The 10th annual report on the death penalty by Iran Human Rights (IHR) provides an assessment and analysis of the death penalty trends in 2017 in the Islamic Republic of Iran.The report sets out the number of executions in 2017, the trend compared to previous years, charges, geographic distribution and a monthly breakdown of executions.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Death Penalty,
• Available languages Rapport Annuel sur la peine de mort annuel en Iran 2017

This study is a joint collaboration between international law expert Dr Christopher Ward SC, Senior Counsel of the New South Wales Bar and Adjunct Professor of the Australian National University, and the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines.

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list International law, Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

• Document type Arguments against the death penalty
• Themes list Public opinion, Networks, Member organizations,

The State of Texas stands today as one of the most extensive utilizers of the death penalty worldwide. Consequently, inmate living conditions on Texas’ death row are ripe for review. This report demonstrates that the mandatory conditions implemented for death row inmates by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice(TDCJ) are harsh and inhumane. Particular conditions of relevance include mandatory solitary confinement, a total ban on contact visits with both attorneys and friends and family, substandard physical and psychological health care, and a lack of access to sufficient religious services.

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Death Row Conditions, Death Row Phenomenon, Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

The ABA concluded in 1997 that pervasive unfairness in capital punishment regimes warranted a halt to executions unless all of the systemic problems the ABA identified were corrected. Four years later, with those problems still pervasive, the ABA’s Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities issued protocols designed to facilitate the evaluation of the fairness—or lack thereof—of a jurisdiction’s capital punishment system. The protocols are particularly timely because many state legislative bodies are authorizing, or considering authorizing, studies of death penalty implementation. The protocols provide an overview, a list of questions to consider, and recommendations with regard to each topic area they cover. While these are not exhaustive, and are not fully applicable in every death penalty jurisdiction, they should prove invaluable to any group seeking to seriously evaluate the manner in which capital punishment is actually administered today.

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

This report covers the judicial use of the death penalty for the period January to December 2016. As in previous years, information is collected from a variety of sources, including: official figures; information from individuals sentenced to death and their families and representatives; reporting by other civil society organizations; and media reports. 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.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Death Penalty, Statistics, Country/Regional profiles,
• Available languages condamnations à mort et exécutions en 2016Condenas a muerte y ejecuciones 2016

Use of the death penalty fell to historic lows across theUnited States in 2016. States imposed the fewest deathsentences in the modern era of capital punishment, sincestates began re-enacting death penalty statutes in 1973. Newdeath sentences are predicted to be down 39% from 2015’s40-year low. Executions declined more than 25% to theirlowest level in 25 years, and public opinion polls alsomeasured support for capital punishment at a four-decadelow.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Death Penalty, Statistics, Country/Regional profiles,

The trends are clear. In 2015, juries returned the fewest number of new death sentences—49—since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.Of the 3,143 county or county equivalents in the United States, only 16—or one half of one percent—imposed five or more death sentences between 2010 and 2015.This report takes a close look at how capital punishment operates on the ground in half of these active death-sentencing counties. In Part II, we highlight Dallas (TX), Jefferson(AL), San Bernardino (CA), Los Angeles (CA), Orange (CA), Miami-Dade (FL),Hillsborough (FL), and Pinellas (FL) counties.Our review of these counties, like the places profiled in Part I, reveals thatthese counties frequently share at least three systemic deficiencies: a history ofoverzealous prosecutions, inadequate defense lawyering, and a pattern of racialbias and exclusion. These structural failings regularly produce two types of unjustoutcomes which disproportionately impact people of color: the wrongful convictionof innocent people, and the excessive punishment of persons who are young or sufferfrom severe mental illnesses, brain damage, trauma, and intellectual disabilities.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Country/Regional profiles,

The trends are clear. In 2015, juries returned the fewest number of new death sentences—49—since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.Of the 3,143 county or county equivalents in the United States, only 16—or one half of one percent—imposed five or more death sentences between 2010 and 2015.This report takes a close look at how capital punishment operates on the ground in half of these active death-sentencing counties. In this first report, we dig deep into Caddo, Clark, Duval, Harris, Maricopa, Mobile, Kern, and Riverside counties. Our review reveals that these counties frequently share at least three systemic deficiencies: a history of overzealous prosecutions, inadequate defense lawyering, and a pattern of racial bias and exclusion. These structural failings regularly produce two types of unjust outcomes which disproportionately impact people of color: the wrongful conviction of innocent people, and the excessive punishment of persons who are young or suffer from severe mental illnesses, brain damage, trauma, and intellectual disabilities.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Country/Regional profiles,

As of November 2001, 203 men sit on Ohio’s death row. With the executions of Wilford Berry on February 19, 1999, Jay D. Scott on June 14, 2001, and John Byrd, Jr. on February 19, 2002, the death penalty in Ohio is a reality. The capital defense practitioner representing a client at trial or on appeal must be prepared to defend his or her client against that reality. To that end, this article examines the statutory framework within which capital cases are prosecuted with the express purpose of aiding defense practitioners and improving the quality of capital representation in Ohio. This article analyzes both the positive and negative aspects of Ohio’s death penalty statute. To meet its twin objects, practical advice and suggested litigation strategies are intermingled with critical analysis of the law in Ohio.

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

This web site and its accompanying materials are designed to assist both teachers and students in an exploration of capital punishment, presenting arguments for and against its use, as well as issues of ethics and justice that surround it.

• Document type Campaigning
• Themes list Networks,

The participants to the 6th World Congress against the death penalty have handed over their final declaration, calling again for the universal abolition of the death penalty.

• Document type Multimedia content
• Available languages Déclaration finale 6ème Congrès mondial contre la peine de mort

This report assesses whether race influences the administration of capital punishment in Washington State, and if so, where in the process it matters.

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list Discrimination, Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

American death penalty laws and procedures persistently minimize cases involving female capital offenders. Recognizing some benign explanations for this disparate impact, Professor Streib nonetheless sees the dearth of female death penalty trials, death sentences, and actual executions as signaling sex bias throughout the death penalty system. In this article, he provides data concerning death sentencing and execution patterns and then suggests both substantive and procedural means to address the apparent sex bias. Much more significant, however, is the unique lens for examining the death penalty that is provided by a sex bias analysis. Professor Streib concludes that this perspective unmasks the system’s crime-fighting rhetoric to reveal a macho refuge that masculinizes all who enter therein.

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

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,

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Juveniles, Fair Trial, Death Penalty,

The present report aims to provide an update on the 2007 report, bearing in mind the significant changes that have taken place in Pakistan under various governments since then, including the 2008 unofficial moratorium and the resumption of executions in 2014. The mission aimed at exploring specific issues within the theme of the death penalty, including detention conditions on death row, the use of capital punishment for minors, and the impact of the death penalty on families of death row inmates, particularly their children. However, a recurring theme emerged in discussions about each of these sub-issues: a strong systemic bias against the poor and marginalized.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Fair Trial, Death Penalty,

The Transitional Justice Working Group’s 2019 report “Mapping the Fate of the Dead: Killings and Burials in North Korea” is based on four years of research(2015-2019) to document and map three types of locations connected to human rights violations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea):

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

This article discusses the paradoxical motivations and problems behind legislative changes from one method of execution to the next, and particularly moves from electrocution to lethal injection. Legislatures and courts insist that the primary reason states switch execution methods is to ensure greater humaneness for death row inmates. History shows, however, that such moves were prompted primarily because the death penalty itself became constitutionally jeopardized due to a state’s particular method. The result has been a warped legal “philosophy” of punishment, at times peculiarly aligning both friends and foes of the death penalty alike and wrongly enabling legislatures to delegate death to unknowledgeable prison personnel. This article first examines the constitutionality of electrocution, contending that a modern Eighth Amendment analysis of a range of factors, such as legislative trends toward lethal injection, indicates that electrocution is cruel and unusual. It then provides an Eighth Amendment review of lethal injection, demonstrating that injection also involves unnecessary pain, the risk of such pain, and a loss of dignity. These failures seem to be attributed to vague lethal injection statutes, uninformed prison personnel, and skeletal or inaccurate lethal injection protocols. The article next presents the author’s study of the most current protocols for lethal injection in all thirty-six states where anesthesia is used for a state execution. The study focuses on a number of criteria contained in many protocols that are key to applying an injection, including: the types and amounts of chemicals that are injected; the selection, training, preparation, and qualifications of the lethal injection team; the involvement of medical personnel; the presence of general witnesses and media witnesses; as well as details on how the procedure is conducted and how much of it witnesses can see. The study emphasizes that the criteria in many protocols are far too vague to assess adequately. When the protocols do offer details, such as the amount and type of chemicals that executioners inject, they oftentimes reveal striking errors and ignorance about the procedure. Suchinaccurate or missing information heightens the likelihood that a lethal injection will be botched and suggests that states are not capable of executing an inmate constitutionally. Even though executions have become increasingly hidden from the public, and therefore more politically palatable, they have not become more humane, only more difficult to monitor.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Lethal Injection, Electrocution,

In recent years, numerous individuals who confessed to and were convicted of serious felony crimes have been released from prison— some after many years of incarceration—and declared factually innocent, often as a result of DNA tests that were not possible at the time of arrest, prosecution, and conviction. DNA testing has also exonerated numerous individuals who confessed to serious crimes before their cases went to trial. Numerous others have been released from prison and declared factually innocent in cases that did not involve DNA tests, but instead may have occurred because authorities discovered that the crime never occurred or that it was physically impossible for the (wrongly) convicted defendant to have committed the crime, or because the true perpetrator of the crime was identified, apprehended, and convicted. In this Article, we analyze 125 recent cases of proven interrogation-induced false confessions (i.e., cases in which indisputably innocent individuals confessed to crimes they did not commit) and how these cases were treated by officials in the criminal justice system.This Article has three goals. First, we provide and analyze basic demographic, legal, and case-specific descriptive data from these 125 cases. This is significant because this is the largest cohort of interrogation-induced false confession cases ever identified and studied in the research literature. Second, we analyze the role that (false) confession evidence played in these cases and how the defendants in these cases were treated by the criminal justice system. In particular, this Article focuses on how criminal justice officials and triers-of-fact respond to confession evidence, whether it biases their evaluations and overwhelms other evidence (particularly evidence of innocence), and how likely false confessions are to lead to the wrongful arrest, prosecution, conviction, and incarceration of the innocent. Analysis of the aforementioned questions leads to the conclusion that the problem of interrogationinduced false confession in the American criminal justice system is far more significant than previously supposed. Furthermore, the problem of interrogation-induced false confessions has profound implications for the study of miscarriages of justice as well as the proper administration of justice. Third, and finally, this Article suggests that several promising policy reforms, particularly mandatory electronic recording of police interrogations, will minimize the number of false confessions and thereby inject a much needed dose of justice into the American criminal justice system.

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

This article contends that legislatures should adopt measures to assure greater reliability in the eyewitness testimony introduced in capital cases. Erroneous eyewitness identification is one of the most frequent causes of mistaken convictions and executions. Decades ago, the United States Supreme Court crafted due process and right to counsel constitutional doctrines to curb identification procedures that gratuitously enhanced the risk of mistake. While initial interpretations favored a greater judicial role in preventing such abuses, later rulings retreated. Present constitutional rules do not suffice due to the narrowness of their definition and the weakness of the remedial sanctions allotted. The proposed Innocence Protection Act and similar state legislation trust DNA testing to avert mistaken executions. But testing requires biological material that is often not available in capital prosecutions, and so DNA cannot detect all the innocents among those capitally prosecuted. To avert mistaken convictions and executions, legislative reforms need to go beyond DNA, and avert mistakes arising from erroneous eyewitness identifications. Studies show this is one of the most common sources of unjust conviction, and that suchmistakes may well be on the rise. Federal and state legislation should be adopted that provides a stronger curb on suggestive identification practices that gratuitously increase the risk of executing the innocent. The Recommendations for Lineups and Photospreads, developed by the American Psychology/Law Society (AP/LS) in 1998, are an appropriate starting point for legislatures (or state courts exercising their supervisory powers or interpreting state constitutional provisions). Adopting such guidelines will reduce the risk of error in capital cases, with little or no expense borne by the states. Further, to assure that these more reliable procedures will be used during capital case investigations and prosecutions, legislatures and courts should, minimally, adopt an exclusionary rule of the type first announced by the United States Supreme.

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

In this Article, we point out the failures of the legal tests governing admissibility of confessions, tracing the historical development of these flawed standards. We propose a new standard that we believe reinvigorates the largely forgotten purpose of the rules—reliability of confession evidence—in part by requiring the electronic recording of custodial interrogations.

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

The Pakistan Capital Punishment Study is the result of a two-year long research and analysis project undertaken by lawyers and academics at the Foundation for Fundamental Rights (‘FFR’) in Pakistan and international legal non-profit organization, Reprieve.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

Call by the NHRIs to Strengthen and Broaden the Fight Against the Death Penalty

• Document type Multimedia content
• Themes list Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,
• Available languages Appel des INDH en faveur du renforcement et de l'élargissement du combat contre la peine de mort

General comment No. 36 on article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, on the right to life.

• Document type United Nations report
• Themes list International law, Right to life, Death Penalty,

Victim impact evidence is presented during sentencing hearings to convey the harm experienced by victims and victims’ relatives as a result of a crime. Its use in capital cases is highly controversial. Some argue that the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the admission of victim impact statements (VIS) during capital sentencing proceedings (Payne v. Tennessee, 1991) invites prejudice and judgments based on emotion rather than reason. Others reason that it provides an important voice for survivors and affords the jury an opportunity to learn about the victim. The authors outline the chief psychological issues that arise in the context of VIS, including their relevance to jurors’ judgments of blameworthiness, concerns that the social worth of the victim will influence jurors’ sentencing decisions, and issues related to the emotional appeal of VIS. Psycholegal research on the influence of VIS on mock jurors is reviewed, and implications of this work for capital sentencing policy and suggested directions for future research are discussed.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Fair Trial, Murder Victims' Families,

Recently, the work of the abolitionist community has shifted from the courts to the legislatures. In this article, Professor Sarat examines the significance of what he calls the “new abolitionism” in the politics of legislation aimed at changing or ending the death penalty. The author describes the new abolitionism in detail and then examines its role in the May 2000 vote of the New Hampshire State Legislature to repeal the death penalty. The author concludes that the focus of the new abolitionism on the practical liabilities of our system of capital punishment makes it possible for legislators to oppose the death penalty whilepresenting themselves as guardians of widely shared values and the integrity and fairness of our legal institutions.

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

Joint statement calling on the government to immediately commute all death sentences; to investigate all allegations of torture made by persons sentenced to death, and to dismiss any and all convictions made on the basis of confessions obtained under conditions of torture; to re-impose a moratorium on the death penalty with a view towards abolishing the practice.

• Document type Multimedia content
• Countries list Bahrain
• Themes list Country/Regional profiles,

The report as presented to the Ohio State Bar Association Council of Delegates in 1997,the OSBA’s recommendations and, where there have been changes in the law since that time, updates reflecting those changes. New information is noted at the conclusion of each section of the report immediately following the OSBA recommendation for that section.

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

We assessed the Court’s reformist project on its own terms, asking whether the Court achieved the goals explicit or tolerated, if not invited, the inequalities and capriciousness characteristic of the pre-Furman era. We also argued that, apart from its failure on its own terms, the Supreme Court’s reformist regulation of capital punishment might well have carried an additional unanticipated cost. Whereas abolitionists initially sought judicial regulation of the death penalty as at least a first step towards abolition, judicial reform actually may have helped to stabilize the death penalty as a social practice. We argued that the appearance of intensive regulation of state death penalty practices, notwithstanding its virtual absence, played a role in legitimizing the practice of capital punishment in the eyes of actors both within and outside the criminal justice system, and we pointed to some objective indicators—such as the dramatic decline in the use of executive clemency in the post-Furman era[12] —as support for this thesis. Implicit in Furman and the 1976 foundational cases. Our assessment was not a positive one. Although the reformist approach spawned an extraordinarily intricate and detailed capital punishment jurisprudence, the resulting doctrines were in practical terms largely unresponsive to the underlying concerns for fairness and heightened reliability that had first led to the constitutional regulation of the death penalty. We described contemporary capital punishment law as the worst of all possible worlds. Its sheer complexity led to numerous reversals of death sentences and thus imposed substantial costs on state criminal justice systems. On closer inspection, however, the complexity concealed the minimalist nature of the Court’s reforms.

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