July 1
GLOBAL:
Singapore has most death penalties
In 2003, 84% of all known executions took place in China, Iran, the USA
and Vietnam, suggesting that neither ideology nor the religious profile of
a country determines its attitude towards capital punishment.
The highest per capita use of the death penalty is Singapore, with a
population of about 4 million and an average of about 70 executions per
year, mostly for drugs offences.
Since 1985, over 50 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or,
having previously abolished it for ordinary crimes, have gone on to
abolish it for all crimes. During the same period only 4 abolitionist
countries reintroduced the death penalty. One of them, Nepal, has since
abolished the death penalty again; one, the Philippines, resumed
executions but has since suspended them. There have been no executions in
the other 2 (Gambia and Papua New Guinea).
The US is an interesting departure from this global trend. In 1972, the US
Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional, but a 1976 ruling
by the Supreme Court overturned the earlier position, giving states the
freedom to bring back capital punishment. Today 38 of 50 states in the US
have capital statutes. Texas alone accounted for 24 out of a total of 65
executions in the US in 2003. Incidentally, during his tenure as Governor
of Texas, George Bush oversaw as many as 152 executions. The US also has
the dubious distinction of having executed 19 people under the age of 18
since 1990, more than any other country.
The 2 main reasons usually cited in support of capital punishment are
deterrence and retribution. However, statistics suggest that the
deterrence theory is questionable. Canadas national statistical agency
reports that the number of homicides in Canada in 2001 was 554, 23% lower
than the 721 homicides in 1975, the year before the death penalty was
abolished. Closer home and further back in time, 962 murders were
registered in the former princely states of Travancore and Cochin (Kerala)
between 1945 and 1950, a period in which the death penalty was abolished
in both states. However, in the 6 years from 1951 to 1956, after capital
punishment had been restored, the total number of murders registered was
967.
(source: The Times Of India)
