INDEX

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

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Death Row Conditions / Fair Trial
• Available languages RAPPORT JOURNÉE MONDIALE CONTRE LA PEINE DE MORT 2023

Pemantauan yang dilakukan oleh Amnesty Internasional terhadap hukuman mati secara global
mencatat terdapat 1.153 eksekusi hukuman mati pada tahun 2023. Angka tersebut menunjukkan
adanya peningkatan sebanyak 31% dari 883 eksekusi pada tahun 2022. Namun, ada penurunan
yang signifikan pada angka negara yang menerapkan hukuman mati. Dari 20 negara pada 2022
menjadi hanya 16 negara di 2023

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition

Ufuatiliaji wa Amnesty International wa matumizi ya adhabu ya kifo duniani ulibaini watu
1,153 wanaofahamika kuwa walinyongwa mwaka 2023, ambalo ni ongezeko la asilimia
31 kutoka 883 mwaka 2022. Hata hivyo nchi zinazowanyonga watu zilipungua kwa
kiwango kikubwa kutoka 20 mwaka 2022 hadi 16 mwaka 2023

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition

Amnesty International’s monitoring of the global use of the death penalty recorded 1,153 known executions in 2023, an increase by 31% from 883 in 2022. However, there was a significant decrease in executing countries, from 20 in 2022 to 16 in 2023.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition
• Available languages التقرير العالمي لمنظمة العفو الدولية أحكام وعمليات اإلعدام في 2023Informe Global de Amnistia internacional: condenas a muerte y ejecuciones 2023Amnesty international - Rapport mondial : condamnations à mort et exécutions 2023

In January 2024, Ohio lawmakers announced plans to expand the use of the death penalty to permit executions with nitrogen gas, as Alabama had just done a week earlier. But at the same time the Attorney General and the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association are championing this legislation, a bipartisan group of state legislators has introduced a bill to abolish the death penalty based on “significant concerns on who is sentenced to death and how that sentence is carried out.” The competing narratives make it more important than ever for Ohioans to have a meaningful, accurate understanding of how capital punishment is being used, including whether the state has progressed beyond the mistakes of its past.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Fair Trial / Innocence / Trend Towards Abolition

This report builds on the pioneering work HRI has been doing since its first ‘The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: Global Overview (‘Global Overview’) in 2007. It analyses how the landscape of the death penalty for drug offences has shifted in the last decade, looking at the main trends regarding people on death row, death sentences and executions for drug offences, as well as key developments at national and international level in the period between 2014 and 2023.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Drug Offenses

Published on February 2024.

Texas has executed more people than any other state. However, out of the 254 counties in Texas, 136 have never sent an individual to death row. Harris County—Texas’s largest county and home to the city of Houston—stands out as the “death penalty capital of the world.” Harris County has executed more people than any state in the United States except Texas3 and is responsible for a quarter of the 1,124 people who have been sent to Texas’s death row since 1973.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States

Published on April 2024.

Researchers at Reprieve conducted an in-depth comparative study of botched lethal injection executions in the modern era of the U.S. death penalty, cross-referenced against the 1,407 lethal injection executions carried out or attempted during that period.

This report examines the phenomenon of botched executions by lethal injection, exploring the trends and contributing factors leading to botched executions through an analysis of 73 botched executions in the 1,407 lethal injection executions since 1977 (known as the modern era of the death penalty in the U.S.). This analysis used a process called multi-variable logistic regression, a type of analysis that assesses the odds of something happening considering multiple variables, to assess how identifiable characteristics (gender, age, and race) were associated with botched executions.

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

Published on April 8, 2024.

As the Constitutional Court of the Republic of China considers a challenge to the constitutionality of the death penalty, Amnesty International Taiwan and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty submitted a joint amicus curiae intervention, to ensure the protection of the rights of all those under sentence of death. The amicus interveners argue that the use of the death penalty in the Republic of China constitutes a violation of human rights as guaranteed under the Constitution and international law and standards; and sets the country against the global trend, which remains overwhelmingly in favour of abolition.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Taiwan
• Available languages 憲法法庭法庭之友意見書 主案案號：111年度憲民字第904052號 法庭之友：國際特赦組織台灣分會 均詳委任狀 代 表 人：林綉娟 理事長 代 理 人：陳瑋珊 律師 均詳委任狀 均詳委任狀