Europe’s Stand to the Death Penalty

In our last week’s post you have been told interesting information about the death penalty in the United States and important events in the early and mid-20th century.

Today we will give you an insight into the developments in Europe concerning death penalty

The death penalty has been completely abolished in all European countries, except for Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Of all modern European countries, San Marino and Portugal were the first to abolish capital punishment.

In 2012, Latvia became the last EU Member State to abolish capital punishment in war time.

As of 2013, in Europe, the death penalty for peace-time crimes has been abolished in all countries except Belarus, while the death penalty for war-time crimes has been abolished in all countries except Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Except for Belarus, which carried out an execution in 2014, the last executions by a European country occurred in Kazakhstan (which is partly in Asia) in 2003, and Ukraine in 1997.

The absolute ban on the death penalty is enshrined in both the Charter of Fundemental Rights of the European Union and the European Convention of Human Rights of the Council of Europe, and is thus considered a central value.

  

Although Russia is no member of the European Union, it is worth mentioning that in Russia the death penalty has been indefinitely suspended (under moratorium), therefore the country is de facto abolitionist (in practice).

The abolition of the death penalty became a real trend since the end of World War II when human rights became a particular priority.

In 1950 the European Convention on Human Rights was adopted, however, some countries took many years to ratify it. The United Kingdom retained the death penalty for high treason until 1998, however, this rule was superseded by the absolute ban on the death penalty in 1976. William Joyce was the last person to be put on death row for high treason in the UK, on January 3, 1946.

2009 was the first year that no one was executed anywhere in Europe, however, in March 2010 Belarus executed the last two people on its death row.

The European Union has been against the death penalty for a very long time, supporting the European Convention. Its 2000 Charter of Fundamental Rights included an absolute ban on the death penalty in all circumstances. The Charter has been made legally binding by the Treaty of Lisboa as it got fully ratified and effected on December 1, 2009.

The treaty has also a provision for the EU to join the Council of Europe and accede to the European Convention on Human Rights. The EU has been an active advocate of abolish the death penalty worldwide and has been promoting a United Nations moratorium on the death penalty, however, some national governments such as Poland have opposed such moves.

A prerequisite for membership in the Council of Europe is abolition of the death penalty. As a result, no execution has taken place on the territory of the organisation’s member states since 1997 which is a great step forward!

The capital punishment issue is continuously monitored by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The current General Rapporteur on the abolition of the death penalty for the Parliamentary Assembly is French member of parliament Marietta Karamanli.

Death Penalty in the 21st Century
The only countries in Europe to have executed in the 21st century are:

- Belarus (last execution in 2014)

- Kazakhstan (last execution in 2003)

No member of the Council of Europe has carried out executions in the 21st century. The last execution on the present day territory of the Council of Europe took place in 1997 in Ukraine.

  

EU’s Import Ban on the Substance of Lethal Injection
Knowing about the current situation and opinion of death penalty within Europe, the United States of America should maybe think over abolishing this cruel way of killing criminals, as well, however, everybody has to build their own opinion about this sensitive topic and for sure, everybody has their own opinion regarding the death penalty.

One reason for the United States to prohibit death penalty would be the EU’s embargo on the substance thiopental sodium they use for lethal injections in the States.

Europe is, as mentioned above, absolutely against death penalty and stopped the import of this substance into the United States in 2011. The States, however, did not think over their current situation with death penalty - quite the opposite, in fact – they started researching on their own substance and managed to do so.

They began to use a toxic cocktail of three substances:

midazolam (leaves the doomed man unconscious)

vecuronium (paralyzes)

potassium chloride (stops the heart beat)

My colleague Christoph already mentioned this in his last week’s post:

With one person, Clayton Lockett, this toxic cocktail failed as the midazolam substance did not work, and the man had to suffer 43 minutes as this substance of the lethal injection was not as “effective” as the substance Europe had imported before.

Can you even imagine how cruel this is?

It is horrible and sad that in our modern society something terrible like this could even happen!

October, 10 – European Day
Against Death Penalty
There is no doubt – the European Day Against Death Penalty on October, 10 can certainly be justified. Even though, a lot could be achieved in terms of abolishing the death penalty, a worldwide unified regulation of prohibiting the capital punishment is still pending as the death penalty is still applied in approximately 68 states such as China, North Korea, Japan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia - to name but a few.

In some states, corruption, theft, kidnapping or drug trafficking is enough reason to be put to death! 
In Islamic countries even adultery, homosexuality or apostasy are considered to be crimes which are to be punished with the death penalty - this is incredibly insane!

There is still a lot to do in order to manage that there is a world-wide abolition of the cruel capital punishment. Organizations such as Amnesty International as well as numerous citizens’ movements will continue standing up for the abolition of the death penalty for good. As long as there is no worlwide ban on the capital punishment, many human rights organizations will not stop fighting against it and putting theirselves out for a world free of death penalty!

Next week:

Since we thoroughly talked about the death penalty we would like to show you the ropes of another sensitive issue, the right to bear arms, i. e. gun ownership in the States.

Keep your eyeballs peeled for our next blog post!

  

Bibliography:

www.wikipedia.org
www.google.com
www.youtube.com

"The Death Penalty...

(…) is discriminatory and does not do anything about crime.” (Bobby Scott, US politician)

“I support the death penalty. But I also think there has to be no margin for error.” (George Ryan, US politician)

These are only two of countless opinions (and actually almost everyone has an opinion) about the death penalty in the United States – a topic which makes the feelings run high. This article is to give you a further insight into its development in the course of the twentieth century as well as events that occurred within the last fifteen years.

Important Events in the Early and Mid-20th Century

The Progressive Period (also Progressive Era or Progressivism; 1890s-1920s) may had its roots as a social movement, e. g. poverty, violence, greed, racism or class warfare, however, it also brought about some changes in connection with the death penalty since it grew into a political movement. From 1907 to 1917, six states completely repealed it, and another three limited it to the rarely committed crimes of treason and first degree murder of a law enforcement official.

In 1901, when Theodore Roosevelt was elected president the Progressive Era gained a strong voice on a national level. There is, however, the thing that a mood is like a pendulum – it swings from one side to another and thus it was that these above-mentioned reforms did not last long. The atmosphere in the United States was frenzied due to the threat of an impending revolution in the wake of the Russian Revolution. In addition, the US had recently entered World War I, and there were intense class conflicts emerging. Between the 1920s and the 1940s the American abolition movement lost support.

Can there be a more humane way of executing inmates?

In fact, is there a humane way at all – and who defines what is humane and what cruel?

Being the first state ever to do so, Nevada introduced the use of cyanide gas in specially built gas chambers in 1924. Today, four other states apart from Nevada authorise lethal gas as a method of execution: California, Arizona, Mississippi and North Carolina.

Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified Dec 15, 1791)

“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

It appears that the governments decide on whether a form of punishment is cruel – and we elect these people. So is it really us who make this decision of vital importance? Don’t worry! It would be wrong to address this matter in this way since everyone has a different opinion and a government’s ruling does not necessarily have to comply with your point of view.

1930s: Executions carried out in the United States reach the highest level in the country’s history with an average of 167 per year; furthermore, the number of death sentences carried out between 1925 and 1949 peaked at a total of 3,644. It is assumed that the reason for this is due, in part, to the writings of criminologists, who said that capital punishment was necessary as a social measure but allegedly also due to the fact that Americans were suffering through Prohibition and the Great Depression (Schabas, 1997 and Bohm, 1999)

It appears to be quite ironic when you read the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 proclaiming a “right to life” and the United States was among the countries to vote in favour of the Declaration, yet still carrying out the death penalty on its own property.

By the 1950s, the public began to turn its back on capital punishment and the number of executions dropped dramatically.

Recent Developments

The state of Oklahoma was the first state to introduce lethal injection as a means of execution in 1977 and in 1982 the Texan inmate, Charles Brooks, Jr., was the first prisoner to be executed using this method. His last meal consisted of a T-bone steak, French fries, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, biscuits, peach cobbler and iced tea.

In 2011, Texas stopped granting last meal requests to condemned inmates due to an incident that occurred with Lawrence Russell Brewers execution who ordered a large special meal (consisting among many other dishes of two chicken fried steaks smothered in gravy with sliced onions; one pound of barbecue with half a loaf of white bread as well as a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts), but he then refused the meal when it arrived.

The US Supreme Court ruled on June 26, 1986 that execution of insane persons was an unconstitutional violation of the Eighth Amendment adding just two years later in 1988 that individuals under the age of 16 cannot face capital punishment (in 2005, the Court held that the execution of an offender under the age of 18 is cruel and unusual and there unconstitutional).

“(…) nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted.” – Eighth Amendment.

The topic of the death penalty has ever been highly controversial, though-provoking and therefore often been a matter of heated debates not only about pros and cons but also its constitutionality considering moral questions, the occurring costs and various other aspects such as, for instance, botched executions:

April 29, 2014. Oklahoma. Despite defence attorneys having frequently warned about the dangers of using an experimental drug protocol, Oklahoma scheduled the execution of Clayton D. Lockett and Charles Warner.

An hour before the execution of Mr Lockett began, the governor, Mary Fallon, was notified that the executioner was having problems finding a usable vein, but she did not intervene. After the first drug, a sedative, was administered and Clayton D. Lockett was announced unconscious and therefore ready to receive the other two drugs that would actually kill him, Mr Lockett was found not to be unconscious. Three minutes after the latter two drugs were injected, “Locket began breathing heavily, writhing on the gurney, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow.” The blinds were lowered to prohibit witnesses from seeing what was going on; 15 minutes later the witnesses were ordered to leave the room; 43 minutes later: Clayton D. Lockett died of a heart attack, while still in the execution chamber. This is, however, not the only example for botched executions.

The media, as always, also plays an important role in the formation of opinion about a certain topic and the death penalty marks no exception. When the film Dead Man Walking, starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, was released in 1996, it invigorated the debate on capital punishment. The film is based on the novel by Sister Helen Prejean who released her book of the same name about her role as spiritual adviser for two death row inmates in 1994.
 

Next week:

Europe’s role in US executions.
Moreover, we would like to recommend the following link:
Death Penalty

Bibliography:
Google
Wikipedia
Brainy Quote
Death Penalty Info
Death Penalty Abolitionist Movement
Death Penalty Pro and Con
Progressive Era