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The nine nations with records of persistent executions
can be seen at the bottom of Amnesty's map |
The gruesome,
botched execution of
Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma Tuesday night has brought renewed focus on some of the grim realities of the death penalty in America. While the terrifying course of Locket's death is a relatively rare occurrence in American executions, the fact that the United States carries out death penalties at all makes the nation stand out among most countries of the world.
As
Amnesty International notes in its
2014 report, about a third of the world may have a death penalty, but only nine nations across the globe still regularly execute citizens. As one of those nine nations, the
United States finds itself in the company of states like
Iran, China, Somalia, Sudan and North Korea.
Out of the list of countries that do actively enforce the death penalty, most are authoritarian governments with a terrible track record of human rights. Seeing the United States listed among them is a strange sight, and one that should make death penalty advocates take notice of the company they keep.
Source: Huffington Post, Nick Robins-Early, May 1, 2014
