Police or judicial authorities may err in establishing the truth, in assessing the personal circumstances of the offender that influenced his guilt or responsibility, or in determining the just sentence imposed on the alleged criminal. In this context, the death penalty can lead to false confessions by detainees and false convictions. The threat of the death penalty has the same effects as torture: it leads some defendants to collude with the police or prosecutors and accept unjust sentences, even for crimes not committed, given the possibility of being sentenced to death if they do not “confess”. [78] The 1977 UN General Assembly declaration stated that it was desirable “to progressively limit the number of crimes punishable by the death penalty, the future abolition of the death penalty being desirable.” [26] By the end of 2019, 106 countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes and 142 had prohibited it by law or in practice. According to Amnesty International (AI), the official figure of at least 657 executions worldwide this year does not include the thousands of executions believed to have taken place in China. And it is that this country has continued to be the greatest executioner in the world, although the true extent of the phenomenon is unknown, since the data relating to the death penalty are classified as a state secret. Without the country, 86% of known executions took place in just four countries: Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. [38] The number of executions has decreased in recent years. Amnesty International reports that 483 people were sentenced to death in 2020, the lowest number recorded by the NGO in a decade. Four countries – Iran, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia – accounted for 88% of the total, although there is no record of other countries where there could have been more executions, such as China or North Korea.
These six States are some of the States where the death penalty is still applied. In any case, European international law considers the death penalty in peacetime to be a violation of human rights. Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights (ratified by all European countries except Russia and Belarus) prohibited the death penalty from 1 May 1983 in ordinary criminal law. [28] Although Russia has not ratified the Sixth Protocol (peacetime abolition) and allows the death penalty under its legislation, it has imposed a moratorium on the use of the death penalty since joining the Council of Europe. In fact, in January 2010, the Russian Constitutional Court ruled on the abolition of the death penalty. [29] # In 2004, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that part of the death penalty law was unconstitutional. In 2007, the court ruled that its earlier ruling applied to the last prisoner on state death row. The legislator rejected attempts to reinstate the law. Belarus, Japan and the United Arab Emirates resumed executions. Amnesty International is not aware of any executions in India, Qatar and Taiwan, where they were recorded in 2020. In many cases, the use of the death penalty is a flagrant violation of international law.
Whether due to the public nature of certain executions (Iran), the execution of minors (also in Iran), the application to persons with intellectual disabilities (United States or Pakistan) or their application to crimes that would not have involved murder or murder, such as drug trafficking, economic crimes, rape, rebellion, espionage or ambiguous concepts of blasphemy or acts against national security. Methods that continued to be used included shootings (China and Iran among others), epidemics (Arab countries, Iran or India), lethal injections (China and the United States), the electric chair (also in the United States) and the United States. UU) or beheading (Saudi Arabia), arguably the cruelest system used at the time. The year 2021 has seen a worrying increase in executions and death sentences as some of the world`s most prolific executioners have returned to their routines and courts have freed themselves from COVID-19 restrictions. Amnesty International stated this today in its annual report on the death penalty. In Spain, Joseph I ordered that Bonaparte be executed only with a hideous mace in 1809, but soon changed his mind. In 1832, the gallows was finally replaced by the club, which was used until the final abolition of the death penalty. The Second Republic briefly abolished the death penalty in the 30s of the twentieth century, only to reintroduce it shortly thereafter.
[21] During Franco`s dictatorship, the number of punishable crimes increased. After the last executions of terrorists from Euskadi Ta Askatasuna and the Revolutionary Anti-Fascist and Patriotic Front in the last years of Francoism, the adoption of the 1978 constitution meant the abolition of the death penalty, “except as could be provided for in time of war by military criminal laws”. [22] The 1985 reform of the Military Penal Code abolished the penalty even in times of war,[23] and Spain`s accession to the European Union reinforced its abolition. [24] Amnestia International argues that one of the reasons for abolishing the death penalty is that mistakes can be made and an innocent person can be executed. In addition, he stated that this type of punishment did not deter crime, was discriminatory and was used as a political tool. ^ In 1979, the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled that a law mandating the death penalty for someone who kills another prisoner was unconstitutional. Parliament repealed the Act in 1984. In 2020, Egypt tripled its annual number of executions compared to 2019, to 107. In addition to serious cases such as murder or terrorism, it is also used for ordinary crimes. (Photograph: Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images) According to the efforts of enlightened people like Cesare Beccaria, the guillotine was the symbol of the reign of terror at the time of the French Revolution.
Karl Marx wrote that “the world has never been corrected or intimidated by punishment.” In the twentieth century, authoritarian states used the death penalty as a method of political oppression. The use of the death penalty dates back to the beginning of history. Countries such as Algeria, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Egypt, Iran, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia and Yemen reported death sentences after trials that did not meet international fair trial standards. Although 23 of its 50 states were officially abolished in 2022 and three others have a moratorium [40], others, such as Texas, have concentrated more than a third of the 1,500 executions since the sentence was reintroduced in 1976, after 10 years of suspension by the Supreme Court. According to Amnesty International, the reactivation of death row by the federal justice system under President Donald Trump is of particular concern, resulting in 10 executions in less than 6 months, an unprecedented number in the previous four decades, during which only three executions were carried out pursuant to Federal Court decisions. On the other hand, according to the United States Death Penalty Information Center. In the United States, the number of blacks executed for murdering whites since 1976 was about 300.15 times higher than the number of whites executed for murdering blacks, which was previously 21, when the number of interracial murders in the first case was just over twice as high. [41] Death sentences were recorded in 18 countries in 2020, the same number as in 2019. Article 37 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states: “The death penalty and life imprisonment without possibility of release shall not be imposed for offences committed by persons under 18 years of age.
[37] This Convention has been signed and ratified by all countries of the world. The UN Subcommittee on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights argues that the death penalty for juveniles violates customary international law. Since 1990, however, several countries have executed minors: China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United States and Yemen, as well as before semi-state Islamic Sharia courts in Somalia.