“Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is the execution of a convicted criminal by the state as punishment for crimes known as capital crimes or capital offences.”
Theoretical Part
Introduction
Practiced in the past in every society and being a reason for indignation in some countries even in medieval times, death penalty, also known as capital punishment nowadays remain in active practice only in 25 nations, while in 139 countries, it is already abolished (in few cases not counting exceptional circumstances such as war). Despite the fact that most countries of the world are considered as abolitionists, more than 60% of the worldwide population live in countries where executions take place insofar as the four most populous countries in the world (the People’s Republic of China, India, United States and Indonesia) apply the death penalty and are unlikely to abolish it at in the near future. The abolitionist countries are mostly European (all of the European Union) and Latino American, while the United States, China, India, Indonesia, Guatemala, and most of the Caribbean as well as some democracies in Asia and Africa retain it. Among nondemocratic countries, the use of the death penalty is common but not universal, what means that even when the sentence is available, it is not invariably carried out; a head of state or other authority can recommend a reprieve. Countries put in use a variety of procedures when carrying out executions, including lethal injection, electrocution, hanging, gassing, and shooting, in some Islamic countries it may come even to beheading, stoning and burying alive.
Nowadays, in most Countries that still employ capital punishment the death penalty is reserved as a punishment for premeditated murder, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice. In some countries with a Muslim majority, sexual crimes, including adultery, sodomy and acts that may be counted as especially perverting according to Islam or national constitution, carry the death penalty, as do religious crimes such as apostasy from Islam, the formal renunciation of one’s religion. In China human trafficking and serious cases of corruption are also punished by the death penalty(An Irony of fortune: Ancient China was the first state to ban the death penalty long way back in 747 A.C.). In militaries around the world courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offenses such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, marauding and mutiny.
As for juvenile capital punishments, the death penalty for juvenile offenders (criminals aged less than 18 years at the time of their crime) has become increasingly rare in every part of the world. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids capital punishment for juveniles, has been signed and ratified by all countries except for the USA and Somalia. The UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights maintains that the death penalty for juveniles has become contrary to customary international law.
The use of the death penalty is becoming increasingly restrained in retentionist countries. Singapore, China, Japan and the U.S. are the only fully developed countries that have retained the death penalty. In poorer countries, the death penalty is often employed as a tool of political oppression. On the contrary, most of European countries seem to be in one chord about the value of abolition. The European Union and the Council of Europe both strictly require member states not to practice the death penalty and the famous UN Moratorium on the Death Penalty is considered to be a condition of membership in the Council of Europe. Of all modern European countries, San Marino and Portugal were the first to abolish, while Belarus is the only country that still practices capital punishment. Latvia has abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes but retains it for crimes during wartime (It has also signed, but not yet ratified, Protocol No. 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights (which means total abolition of capital punishment).
Few, if any matters of both law and sociology have been as widely discussed and overviewed as was the idea of abolition of death penalty. From the very 70-ies, since the capital punishment for murder has been abolished in the UK, a great number of organizations, politicians, experts and other public figures have been speaking out about subject, with opinions often diverse, provocative and controversial, eventually emerging into two confronted camps: Those, who support the abolition, claim that the death penalty is too final and non-compromising way which doesn’t allow person to step on retrospective path of new life after finishing the sentence, doubting its sufficiency in reducing the crime more effectively than the life imprisonment. Arguing that the very essence of capital punishment violates the human rights of such an inalienable nature, as right to life and right not to be submitted to torture, the supporters of abolition state that besides of the killing a person, a mental and physical torture also take place during the execution process, as for example when the act of execution is of brutal and especially painful nature, or when the convict are forced to wait until the sentenced death penalty will be executed. On the contrary, supporters of capital punishment argue that it deters crime, prevents recidivism, and is an appropriate punishment for the crime of premeditative murder, nothing to say about child offending, high treason and so on. Trying to strengthen their position with facts and statistics, they keep pointing at UK, where since 1965, when hanging was abolished in the country, homicides in England and Wales amounted to 6.8 per million people; by 2005 it had more than doubled to 15 per million.
On the necessity of death penalty as the edification for society: “When no judge has at his disposal the supreme penalty which every thug carries in his pocket, then power has departed from legitimate authority and resides with the forces of anarchy.” (Gerald Warner, publicist, political expert, UK).
Religious communities have been deeply involved on both sides of the issue, drawing on teachings and traditions of justice and the dignity of human life.
With that entire struggle, the debates about the abolition of capital punishment are still continuing and in spite of growing popularity of abolition trend there still remain enough avid supporters of death penalty for unleashing new debates in upcoming two decades.
Statistical Data about death penalty in today’s world:
Use of the death penalty around the world (as of June 2009).
Abolished for all offenses (139)
Abolished for all offenses except under special circumstances (10)
Retains, though not used for at least 10 years (35)
Retains death penalty (25)*
(Note that, while laws vary between U.S. states, it is considered retentionist because the federal death penalty is still in active use.)
According to Hands Off Cain, a major NGO dedicated to death penalty abolition, , at least 5,727 executions were carried out in 25 States in 2008, 93% of registered executions took place in five countries: China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States, with China having a lion’s share performing at least 2000 executions out of total 5727, Iran hitting the next score with 346 officially proved acts of capital punishment.
Statistic shows that in countries which already abolished capital punishment, the murder rates are relatively lower than in countries still practicing the death penalty:
Empirical Part
The EU Guidelines on the Death Penalty
The EU has drawn up policy guidelines on the death penalty. These guidelines provide inter alia a set of criteria for making representations and outline minimum standards to be applied in countries retaining the death penalty.
The EU Guidelines on the Death Penalty were the first set of human rights guidelines adopted by the Council in 1998. This guideline stresses out the abolition of death penalty as a strongly held policy view agreed by all member states. The EU is opposed to capital punishment in all circumstances and considers that abolition of the death penalty contributes to the enhancement of human dignity and the progressive development of human rights.
In line with the Treaty on European Union obligation (Article 6) to respect fundamental rights, guaranteed by the European Convention of Human rights and Fundamental Freedoms, all EU member states have abolished the death penalty.
The Guidelines were reviewed in June 2008. The two main objectives of the Guidelines are to:
Work towards universal abolition of the death penalty, if necessary with the immediate establishment of a moratorium on the use of the death penalty with a view to its abolition.
Where the death penalty still exists, to call for its use to be progressively restricted and to insist that it be carried out according to minimum standards which are defined in an the Guidelines and based on international human rights obligations.
In order to achieve these objectives, the EU acts both in its bilateral relations with third countries and in multilateral fora:
At bilateral level, the death penalty is systematically addressed in human rights dialogues and consultations with third countries. In addition, the EU issues public declarations and carries out general demarches as well as intervening on individual cases. In addition, the EU pays particular attention to influencing countries whose policy on the death penalty is in a flux.
At multilateral level, the EU has been active for many years and achieved a breakthrough with the adoption, in December 2007, of a resolution by the UN General Assembly Resolution on a Moratorium on the use of the death penalty (62/149). The resolution was sponsored by a wide, cross regional alliance of countries and successfully repeated in 2008 (63/168).
In December 2007, the Council agreed to establish a ‘European Day against the Death Penalty’ to be celebrated on 10 October from 2008 onwards.
EU campaign for worldwide abolition of capital punishment
The European Union is planning to expand its campaign against capital punishment worldwide as part of its foreign policy. From a Brussels perspective, the campaign against capital punishment is a solid foreign policy objective because it is one of the few issues where the Union’s 15 countries agree completely.
From the 1999, when EU actively supported the UN moratorium on the death penalty, proposed by Italy, it has been leading an intense and effective campaign against the death penalty in third countries and having a dialogue about these matters with such greats of modern world, as China, U.S.A., Russia, India and Japan.
Cooperating with worldwide famous international organizations dedicated to abolish the capital punishment, such as Amnesty International and Hands off Cain and provided with the support of tremendous number of famous public figures, including the pope himself, the EU achieved major results in negotiating with African and Asian countries, including Togo, Senegal, Nigeria and Vietnam effectively carrying out the abolition process nowadays.
However, in many countries which still practice the death penalty, efforts and measures taken by EU seem to be ineffectual. Recently, third countries such as Palestine, Philippines and Belarus still put death penalty into a practice.
Of the 11 countries in Southeast Asia, only Cambodia and East Timor have abolished the death penalty. Some have increased the rate of executions. In Africa, the situation is even worse.
In November 2009, EU urged Russia to keep moratorium on death penalty. Russia undertook to scrap the death penalty when it signed Protocol 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, but it has not yet ratified the document. Taking into account that practice of capital punishment has got a strong public support in Russia, it remains still unclear whether the country will ratify it or not.
As for United States, current negotiations between the country and the EU do not seem to be prospective enough; instead, the relations appear a bit strained with two confronted camps. US already rejected several pleas from EU about not fulfilling an executive operation, in response, EU made the decision not to extradite suspects who face death penalty in US. The agreement, initiated in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the US, was sealed in Luxembourg by the bloc’s justice ministers. It is due to come into force on February 1. The current prevailing practice is for the US to provide guarantees that it will not carry out an execution on a case-by-case basis only.
EU’s negotiative efforts in China and Japan about the abolition of the capital punishment appear to be rather secluded; gaining only a minor response in both countries, while in India EU actively collaborates with the local abolition campaign leaded by Sikh community.
Conclusion
Over the last 30 years, the Council of Europe have been striving to abolish death penalty in Europe.Over the last 10 years not a single death execution has taken place in any out of 47 countries of the Council of Europe. In most of these countries death penalty is banned by law.
And yet the way towards universal abolition of death penalty remains as a long and unpaved one. Guided by the moral sets of fundamental human values, the EU, alongside with respective NGO’s, is heralding the campaign for abolition of what it considers to be inhuman and inadmissible. Notwithstanding the fact that there is no capital punishment anymore in most European countries, some countries are still using it and do seem to be likely changing their mind in the near future.
Vazha Tavberidze, University of Latvia


