6 th
Legal
Capital Punishment
Background
Capital punishment, also called the death penalty, has been in use by governments for centuries. The methods by which nations execute criminals have changed dramatically throughout history. In the past, barbaric techniques were employed, such as beheading, stoning, guillotines, and firing squads, while today, more modern methods such as lethal injection are used. Despite technological and medical advances, many countries still use older methods for capital punishment, mostly in nations such as China and Iran. In general, nations reserve the right to execute criminals in cases involving heinous murders or treason, though in several countries lesser crimes warrant the ultimate punishment, such as in China and the Philippines, where criminals are sentenced for such transgressions as government bribery, drug related offences, and tax crimes. Currently, ninety-four nations have outlawed the use of the death penalty, ten reserve the right to use it in times of war and thirty-five still have it in their legal statutes, though it has not been used for at least ten years within their borders. Twenty-three nations continue to sentence and execute their citizens. In 2010, thousands of executions took place in the world, China leading with over one thousand recorded, followed by Pakistan with
365, Iraq with 279, Iran with 252, and Nigeria with 151. It is also thought that many government executions go unreported, so these figures may be artificially low.
The main arguments against the death penalty cite the fact that all people have the right to live, so the death penalty in inherently inhumane. In addition, those against claim that with execution, criminals have no chance for rehabilitation. While in many cases, an argument in favor of the death penalty is that it costs less to execute a criminal rather than let them serve a

life sentence in prison, though many studies and reports find the opposite to be true. In recent years, nations have begun using DNA technologies to return defunct cases in which the accused had been sentenced to death, only to find that the wrong conclusions had been drawn and an innocent person was on death row. This has led many to question the use of capital punishment, as there could be inmates on death rows across the globe with evidence proving their innocence yet to be discovered. The United Nations has been involved in the topic for many years due to the fact that capital punishment raises a question of innate human dignity and because of the international nature of crime.
UN Action
The United Nations Charter calls for the cessation of unnecessary death and affirms the
UN’s stance against cruel and unusual punishment. The first UN action to specifically address the issue of capital punishment was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that all people are born with the right to life, and capital punishment infringes on that right.
Despite these documents many nations still used the death penalty, which lead to the UN to produce the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1996. The Covenant again encouraged all nations to become abolitionist, but asked for countries that continue to use the death penalty to only use it for the most serious of crimes. With many nations continuing their use of capital punishment, the UN organized a global moratorium on the use of the death penalty.
Many countries agreed to temporarily end their use of capital punishment, and this action has been viewed as an important step in the abolitionist movement within the UN.
Many resolutions have been passed in the UN that call for the death penalty’s elimination. Resolution A/RES/ 55/111 reiterates the UN’s position on the gross violation of human rights that occurs when executions are preformed, especially those that are considered

arbitrary or extrajudicial, or those involving minors. In the resolution, it is stated that the
International Criminal Court should be involved in cases involving summary executions as defined by the Geneva Conventions. Resolution A/RES/35/95 calls on nations that execute the most to stop, and for nations that have stopped using it to not begin using it again. UN actions have not been successful in the past because of countries’ claim that national sovereignty gives them the right to utilized capital punishment, regardless of the human rights issues that may be involved.
Solutions
Many solutions have been introduced in the past, some more successfully than others.
One of the main arguments for the death penalty is that it has a deterrent effect on other criminals. While in theory this may seem logical, trends in crime seem to prove the opposite.
Canada abolished its death penalty in 1973, and before that date, there were about three serious crimes per hundred thousand people, and since the death penalty’s abolition, that has decreased by about half. For Canada, as well as other nations, abolishing the death penalty led to less crime. Additional moratoriums on the death penalty would create international pressure on countries that still retain the right to use capital punishment. With the moratoriums, nations would temporarily rid their legal systems of the death penalty and could see how the country is affected. This period of abolition could prove to these nations that the death penalty is not required to maintain order in society. The logistics of the death penalty must be evaluated by nations who still use it in order to evaluate whether monetarily it makes sense to keep using the death penalty. This evaluation could lead some nations to realize their dependence on executions is not necessary and life sentences in prison serve the same purpose while costing less both economically and in a humanitarian sense. The fact that DNA evidence has been used to prove

many criminals innocent must also be taken into account when deciding whether capital punishment is the right penalty for crimes.
Questions
1. Does your country currently use capital punishment?
2. If so, to what extent and for what crimes?
3. Does capital punishment have a deterrent effect on a population, and if so, is the effect sizable enough to be worth implementing the death penalty?
4. Does the UN have the authority to implement policies regarding capital punishment?
5. What are practical alternatives to capital punishment?
6. How is your nation’s policy on extradition related to capital punishment?
Links http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/mar/29/death-penalty-countries-world# http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/ http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=18 http://www.aclu.org/capital-punishment http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/93902/capital-punishment