Death penalty which states

Safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty In , the UN Economic and Social Council adopted Safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty.

Member States which became parties to the Protocol agreed not to execute anyone within their jurisdictions. UN General Assembly resolutions In a series of resolutions adopted in , , , , , and , the General Assembly urged States to respect international standards that protect the rights of those facing the death penalty, to progressively restrict its use and reduce the number of offences whichare punishable by death.

More News Human Rights Council, Biennial high-level panel discussion on the question of the death penalty - Theme: Human rights violations related to the use of the death penalty, in particular with respect to the rights to non-discrimination and equality, 26 February Concept Note Webcast. Archive of statements, events and panels. Feature stories. Latest news. Call for inputs and submissions received. More from UN.

Across the 27 states that still use capital punishment, lethal injection is by far the most common method. But many pharmaceutical companies refuse to supply the required drugs, which has led to states authorising deaths that are potentially far less humane. This has been the case in South Carolina, which in May instituted a law requiring death row inmates to choose between being put to death by electric chair or firing squad.

Electrocution takes place in eight states and gas chambers are authorised in seven. Three states — Delaware, New Hampshire, and Washington — still permit hanging. The frequency of people put to death is also markedly different across the country. Texas has put people to death since , according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Virginia comes in at a distant second, with executions in that time period, followed by Oklahoma with , Florida with 99, and Missouri with Exacerbating the inconsistency, federal death penalties may or may not be carried out at all, depending on the views of the president or attorney general of the time.

Many argue that the constitutional concept of equal protection under the law is deeply compromised under this system. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.

Here are the questions used from this survey, along with responses, and its methodology. Findings about the administration of the death penalty — including the number of states with and without capital punishment, the annual number of death sentences and executions, the demographics of those on death row and the average amount of time spent on death row — come from the Death Penalty Information Center and the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Six-in-ten U. Support for capital punishment is strongly associated with the view that it is morally justified in certain cases. Nine-in-ten of those who favor the death penalty say it is morally justified when someone commits a crime like murder; only a quarter of those who oppose capital punishment see it as morally justified.

A majority of Americans have concerns about the fairness of the death penalty and whether it serves as a deterrent against serious crime. More than half of U. Opinions about the death penalty vary by party, education and race and ethnicity. Views of the death penalty differ by religious affiliation. Around two-thirds of Protestants in the U. Opposition to the death penalty also varies among the religiously unaffiliated. Support for the death penalty is consistently higher in online polls than in phone polls.

Survey respondents sometimes give different answers depending on how a poll is conducted. In a series of contemporaneous Pew Research Center surveys fielded online and on the phone between September and August , Americans consistently expressed more support for the death penalty in a self-administered online format than in a survey administered on the phone by a live interviewer.

This pattern was more pronounced among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents than among Republicans and GOP leaners, according to an analysis of the survey results. Phone polls have shown a long-term decline in public support for the death penalty. In phone surveys conducted by Pew Research Center between and , the share of U.

Phone surveys conducted by Gallup found a similar decrease in support for capital punishment during this time span. A majority of states have the death penalty, but far fewer use it regularly. As of July , the death penalty is authorized by 27 states and the federal government — including the U. Department of Justice and the U. But even in many of the jurisdictions that authorize the death penalty, executions are rare: 13 of these states, along with the U.