INDEX

This is the seventh edition of the Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics Report published by Project 39A at National Law University, Delhi. 2022 represents a significant shift in death penalty adjudication, with the Supreme Court recognising the need to reconsider the capital sentencing framework for the first time since it was laid down in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab in 1980. In a momentous order, the Supreme Court noted the gaps in the death penalty sentencing framework and has sought to address these concerns through a Constitution Bench towards establishing the components of a real, meaningful and effective capital sentencing hearing. In another decision, the Court laid down guidelines for the collection of mitigating material by trial courts. However, in the same year that the Supreme Court cast grave doubts on the death penalty sentencing framework and its implementation by trial courts, it is of concern that 165 death sentences were imposed by Sessions Courts, the highest in a single year since 2000.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list India
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Saudi Arabia is a flagrant abuser of the right to life. Between 2010 and 2021, Saudi Arabia executed at least 1243 people, making it one of the most rampant executioners in the world. As of December 2022, the Saudi regime had executed at least a further 147 people in 2022, including 81 people in one day in a mass execution on 12 March 2022.
Saudi Arabia’s use of the death penalty has drastically increased since 2015. This escalation has taken place on the watch of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, who acceded the throne on 23 January 2015, and his son, Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman. The annual rate of executions has almost doubled since King Salman and Mohammed bin Salman came to power in 2015. From 2010-2014 there was an average of 70.8 executions per year. From 2015-2022 there was an average of 129.5 executions per year – a rise of 82%. The six bloodiest years of executions in Saudi Arabia’s recent history have all occurred under the leadership of Mohammed bin Salman and King Salman (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2022).

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Saudi Arabia
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• Available languages سفك الدماء والأكاذيب: مملكة إعدام محمد بن سلمان

In a year awash with incendiary political advertising that drove the public’s perception of rising crime to record highs, public support for capital punishment and jury verdicts for death remained near fifty-year lows. Defying conventional political wisdom, nearly every measure of change — from new death sentences imposed and executions conducted to public opinion polls and election results — pointed to the continuing durability of the more than 20-year sustained decline of the death penalty in the United States.
The Gallup crime survey, administered in the midst of the midterm elections while the capital trial for the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida was underway, found that support for capital punishment remained within one percentage point of the half-century lows recorded in 2020 and 2021. The 20 new death sentences imposed in 2022 are fewer than in any year before the pandemic, and just 2 higher than the record lows of the prior two years. With the exception of the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, the 18 executions in 2022 are the fewest since 1991.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States
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Use of the death penalty in Texas remained near historic low levels in 2022, with juries sentencing two people to death and the State executing five people. Three other scheduled executions were stayed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA). Overall, the eight execution dates set for 2022 were the fewest in Texas since 1996.
Despite their low number, the executions set and carried out in 2022 raise troubling issues about the fairness and utility of the death penalty. Four of the men put to death, including 78-year-old Carl Wayne Buntion, suffered from physical or mental impairments or histories of childhood trauma, while two maintained their innocence of the crimes for which they were convicted.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States
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Death Penalty and the Indian Supreme Court (2007-2021) maps the important trends and developments in the Supreme Court’s death penalty jurisprudence. These past 15 years have witnessed significant developments in the law on capital sentencing, post-mercy jurisprudence, and other procedural developments pertaining to the administration of the death penalty. Imagined as an intellectual successor of PUCL and Amnesty International’s doctrinal study of the Supreme Court’s death penalty cases between 1950 to 2006, in ‘Lethal Lottery: The Death Penalty in India’, this report highlights the sustained inconsistency and judge-centric reasoning in capital cases, with particular emphasis on the problem of arbitrariness in approaches to capital sentencing at the Supreme Court.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list India
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An increasing number of countries have recognized that state killing undermines human dignity and respect for human rights, such as the discriminatory use of the death penalty, the use of forced confession that increases the possibility of executing an innocent person, and the lack of deterrence effect of capital punishment. This move towards abolition of the death penalty is being witnessed in all regions of the world regardless of political system, religion, culture or tradition. As of today, at least 110 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, while at least eight countries have abolished for ordinary crimes, while less than 20 countries have reportedly
carried out executions in 2021.
This publication is a supplement to the ICDP´s 2018 work on “How States Abolish the Death Penalty: 29 Case Studies.”

• Document type NGO report
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One of the most compelling forces behind the evolution of international attitudes towards capital punishment in recent decades has been the increasing recognition of the potential for error in its use – that those states that choose to retain the practice may be taking the lives of innocent individuals. The Death Penalty Project produced this resource on wrongful convictions and the death penalty.

• Document type NGO report
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• Themes list Fair Trial
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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
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• Themes list Public Opinion
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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
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• Themes list Public Opinion
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The use of capital punishment has been an issue addressed by international human rights law since the earliest days of the United Nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly in 1948, and an instrument widely recognised as the gold standard for human rights, affirms the right to life and the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The Death Penalty Project produced this resource on international law and the death penalty.

• Document type NGO report
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