'Global executions at highest level in almost a decade': Amnesty International 2023 Report

Today, Amnesty International released its annual report on the state of death penalty around the world. Compiled by a brilliant team of experts, advocates, and human rights defenders, the report makes for sobering reading.

According to Amnesty’s data, at least 1,153 executions took place worldwide in 2023, the highest annual figure recorded since 2015, marking an increase of more than 30% from 2022. And this doesn’t even include the thousands believed to have been executed in China, which doesn’t release any official figures. In total, the five countries with the highest number of executions in 2023 were China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and the US.

This dramatic global rise in executions is largely due to developments in Iran, where the authorities executed at least 853 people in 2023. More than half of those were hanged for drug-related offences, which should not carry the death penalty under international law.

I am also concerned about the growing number of Iranians sentenced to die and executed for their support for the protest movement that took to the streets in the wake of the violent death of Mahsa Amini in 2022. I have recently written about the death sentence imposed on popular Iranian Hip Hop artist Toomaj Salehi – part of an appalling, brutal crackdown on artists, writers and journalists that must be stopped.

While the increased number of executions worldwide is a grave concern reflective of an equally concerning erosion of the rule of law, there is a silver lining in Amnesty’s report: judicial executions were recorded in only 16 countries – the lowest number since Amnesty started tracking them. And the broader trend gives me hope: 144 nations have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice, with more abolition legislation pending in several countries.

I have never made a secret of my position on the death penalty. It’s a cruel and inhumane punishment that has always been an instrument of oppression, often used to stifle dissent, and disproportionately targeting minorities and marginalised groups. And not surprisingly, it is staggeringly prone to error and injustice. In the US alone, for every eight people that have been executed, one innocent person has been released from death row – close to 200 people since the 1970s, often after decades of languishing in prison cells trying. As human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson has said so pointedly, “the death penalty is an imperfect sentence administered by imperfect people.” Even those who think the death penalty is morally justified must admit that the system is broken beyond repair.

For business, all of this should matter, and business leaders should pay attention to capital punishment as a fundamental failure in governance that tells us much about a country’s true commitment to democracy, fairness, and the rule of law. It’s one of the reasons I joined forces with many other business leaders and the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice in 2021 to launch Business Against the Death Penalty, a global campaign for universal abolition. There is no question: the world would be a better place without the death penalty.

👉🏻 Click here to read/download the full report

Source: Virgin, Richard Branson, May 29, 2024

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Florida executes Michael Tanzi

Florida on Tuesday executed a death row inmate described by one local detective as a "fledgling serial killer" for the murder of a beloved Miami Herald employee. Florida executed Michael Tanzi on Tuesday, 25 years after the murder of beloved Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta, who was attacked in broad daylight on her lunch break in 2000. Michael Tanzi, 48, was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford and pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET.

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USA | Why the firing squad may be making a comeback

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I spent 16 years in solitary in South Carolina. This is what it did to me. | Opinion

South Carolinian Randy Poindexter writes about the effects 16 years of solitary confinement had on him ahead of South Carolina’s planned execution of Mikal Mahdi , who spent months in solitary as a young man. For 16 years, I lived in a concrete cell. Twenty-three hours a day, every day, for more than 3,000 days, South Carolina kept me in solitary confinement. I was a young man before I was sent to solitary — angry, untreated and unwell. I made mistakes. But I wasn’t sentenced to madness. That’s what solitary did to me. My mental health worsened with each passing day. At first, paranoia and depression set in. Then, hallucinations and self-mutilation. I talked to people who weren’t there. I cut myself to feel something besides despair. I could do nothing as four of my friends and fellow prisoners took their own lives rather than endure another day of torturous isolation.

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Mikal Mahdi, 48, who was found guilty of killing an off-duty police officer and a convenience store worker, is the second inmate scheduled to executed by South Carolina's new firing squad A murderer who ambushed and shot an off duty police officer eight times before burning his body in a killing spree is set to become the second person to die by firing squad. South Carolina's highest court has rejected the last major appeal from Mikal Mahdi, 41, who is to be put to death with three bullets to the heart at 6pm on April 11 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. Mahdi's lawyers said his original lawyers put on a shallow case trying to spare his life that didn't call on relatives, teachers or people who knew him and ignored the impact of weeks spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teen.

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On March 19, I served as a witness to the execution of a man named Aaron Gunches, Arizona’s first since 2022. During his time on death row, he begged for death and was ultimately granted what is likely more appropriately described as an emotionless state-assisted suicide. This experience has profoundly impacted me, leading to deep reflection on the nature of death, humanity, and the role we play in our final moments. When someone is in the end stages of life, we talk about hospice care, comfort, care, easing suffering and humane death. We strive for a “good death” — a peaceful transition. I’ve seen good ones, and I’ve seen bad, unplanned ones.

Execution date set for prisoner transferred to Oklahoma to face death penalty

An inmate who was transferred to Oklahoma last month to face the death penalty now has an execution date. George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, is scheduled to die on June 12 for the 1999 murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday set the execution date. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board has a tentative date of May 7 for Hanson’s clemency hearing, executive director Tom Bates said.

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