Death Penalty News

While Sierra Leone formally abolished the death penalty today, around 50 countries continue to use capital punishment. Methods vary from beheading, electrocution and hanging to lethal injection and shooting, according to Amnesty International. Here is a global overview: Abolished More than 100 countries have formally abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Nearly 1/2 of those are in Europe and Central Asia. But some 144 countries have abolished either in law or practice, according to an Amnesty tally last year. 3 more countries have ended capital punishment this year: Kazakhstan, Malawi and Sierra Leone, where the president signed the law consigning it to history today. United States Virginia became the 23rd American state to abolish the death penalty in March 2020, a decision which is highly symbolic because it is the first from the old Confederate south to do so. It also held the United States record for executions. 3 other states: California, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, have a mo...

Rural school teacher Pedro Castillo was largely unknown in Peru until he led a nationwide strike 4 years ago. Now the 51-year-old far-left unionist, rarely without the trademark white, wide-brimmed hat of his home region of Cajamarca, has a chance to become Peru's next president. Facing off against neoliberal Keiko Fujimori in elections on Sunday, Castillo has vowed to nationalize Peru's vast mineral resources, to expel foreigners who commit crimes in the country, and to move towards reinstating the death penalty. One thing unlikely to change under a Castillo presidency is the Peruvian state's socially conservative character: he is Catholic and vehemently opposed to gay marriage, elective abortion and euthanasia. He frequently quotes from the Bible to drive home his points. In April, Castillo surprised many by taking the lead in the race to become Peru's 5th president in 3 years. He had not ranked among the top 5 choices in opinion polls ahead of a 1st voting round cont...

Alejandro Giammattei, who is against same-sex marriage and abortion, has been sworn in as president of Guatemala. Giammattei was sworn in yesterday (January 14) following his surprise win in the presidential election of August 2019, the Washington Post reports. He replaced outgoing president Jimmy Morales and will hold office or a four-year term. His election will likely not be welcomed by the country’s LGBT+ population, as Giammattei has spoken out against same-sex marriage in the past. When asked in 2015 about same-sex marriage, he replied: “There is so much to solve in Guatemala that entering into that is counterproductive, that it is approved elsewhere does not mean that it is done here,” Prensa Libre reported. Alejandro Giammattei was elected president of Guatemala in August 2019. Giammattei – who is also a doctor – has also spoken out against abortion in the past, saying he is “a defender of life.” The 63-year-old won the election last year for Vamos, a...

Agence France-Presse -- Ecuador on Wednesday became one of 28 countries to legalise same-sex marriage, but in many other parts of the world homosexuality is illegal and sometimes subject to the death penalty. Here is an overview. Progress in the Americas The ruling by the highest court in traditionally Catholic Ecuador to approve same-sex marriage overrides the current constitution which defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Ecuador follows Argentina , Brazil , Colombia and Uruguay in allowing same-sex marriages in Latin America. Mexico ’s federal capital was the pioneer in the region, authorising gay civil unions in 2007 and marriages in 2009. Nearly half of its 32 states have followed. Chile legalised gay civil unions, which come with fewer rights, in 2015. Costa Rica ’s Supreme Court in August 2018 ruled that a ban on same-sex marriages was unconstitutional and gave parliament 18 months to amend the laws. Cuba decided in December 2018 to l...

The 63-year-old former paratrooper and veteran lawmaker is openly nostalgic for the 1964-1985 military dictatorship that imposed calm in the streets. But he denies being a threat to democracy, saying he will be a "slave to the constitution" who will govern "with authority but not authoritarianism." The man with the sharp blue gaze has vowed to ease gun laws to allow "good" people to dispense justice themselves. "If a truck driver is armed when someone tries to steal his cargo, the robber is killed," and the driver will go unpunished, he said the day after his election. "That will cut violence in Brazil for sure." Bolsonaro himself was the victim of violence. On September 6, as he was campaigning, he was stabbed in the stomach by a mentally unbalanced lone assailant in a crowd, nearly costing him his life. That only burnished his image as a "legend" -- the nickname his most ardent supporters have given hi...

The arrest of a man who has confessed to raping and killing an 11-year-old girl, and burning her remains, has revived the call among some members of Congress to reinstate the death penalty. Under the 1979 Constitution, the death penalty was abolished except for crimes of treason during times of war, and in 1993 Congress added the crime of terrorism. The last death sentence was issued in 1979, against a non-commissioned Air Force officer charged with spying. The president of the Judiciary, Duberli Rodriguez, said the global trend shows that the death penalty is not the answer to crime, and instead there should be stronger emphasis on the need for prevention and for stiffer sentences. He also noted that reinstating the death penalty would require amendments to the Constitution and to the Criminal Code. It would also affect the country's standing in the hemisphere's legal institutions. "We would have to leave the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and I ...

The initiative follows the terrible news that a father who raped and murdered his one-year-old child in the southern city of Puerto Montt, was given life imprisonment. A group of far-right lawmakers asked Chile's recently elected President Sebastian Piñera to pass a bill that would restore the death penalty in the country, with the pretext of the murder of a baby girl in the south of the country. In an open letter to the president, five legislators of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) argued that that the measure was necessary considering the “bad intentions” and “zero respect for life” of the murderer. Senator Ivan Moreira, from the same party —a far-right group with origins in Chile's former military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet— said he had always supported the death penalty and would approve the bill. The bill  would require a reform of the Constitution However, the bill would probably not pass because it would first require a reform of th...

According to recent Datafolha research, support for the use of the death penalty has grown significantly in the last nine years. The recent poll found 57% of those interviewed in favor of the adoption of capital punishment. In 2008, the last time that the institute polled on this subject, 47% held the same opinion. This is the highest number recorded since the Datafolha started polling on this subject in 1991. But it is within the statistical margin of error - 2 % points higher or lower - with levels recorded in 1993 and 2007, when 55% of the population said they were in favor of the punishment. The death penalty is not used in Brazil, although it is provided for during times of a declared state of war in paragraph 37 of article 5 of the Constitution. The last time Brazil was in a declared state was during the Second World War. In 2015, for the 1st time in more than 150 years, Brazilians were condemned to capital punishment. The executions of Marco Archer in January foll...

Guatemala's highest court has abolished the death penalty for civil cases in a landmark ruling announced Thursday. The Constitutional Court's decision is final and will take effect once it is published in the government's official gazette. Until now Guatemalan law has allowed for the death penalty in cases of murders of people younger than 12 or older than 60; kidnappings where the victim is severely hurt or dies; assassination of the president or VP; or in certain crimes related to drug trafficking. "We cannot allow us to be one of the last countries that apply that penalty," said Jose Alejandro Valverth Flores, one of the lawyers who had petitioned the Constitutional Court to declare unconstitutional the pertinent articles of the penal code and a law governing drug crimes. "We believe it is necessary for the respect of human rights in Guatemala," he added. The Central American nation has not applied a death sentence for some year...