UNGA Abolitionist Resolutions

1959  1396  http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/14/ares14.htm

1963 1918  http://www.refworld.org/docid/3b00f1cb6c.html 

1967 2334  http://www.worldlii.org/int/other/UNGARsn/1967/85.pdf

1968 2393  http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/23/ares23.htm

1968 2394  http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/23/ares23.htm

1971 2857  http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/26/ares26.htm

1972 3011  http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/27/ares27.htm

1977 32/61 http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/32/ares32.htm

1980  35/172  http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/35/ares35.htm
1989 44/128 http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/44/a44r128.htm

The Economic and Social Council resolutions 

1745 (LIV) of 16 May 1973

1984/50 of 25 May 1984

1989/64  24 May 1989

Compendium of United Nations Standards and Norms in Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice

United Nations compendium Capital punishment

Ezzat Abdel Fattah

A Study of the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment with Special Reference to the Canadian Situation

Borchard
Convicting the innocent 1932

AN EXAMINATION OF THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE UNITED STATES

HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION FEBRUARY 1, 2006

HEARINGS BEFORE SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES NINETY-SECOND CONGRESS

TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY UNDER ALL LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES

MARCH 9, 15, 16, 17 AND MAY 10, 1972

THE INNOCENCE PROTECTION ACT OF 2002

CONFERENCE THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

This was one of several reports prepared for the United Nations from 1959-1980. One notable report was by the eminent French jurist Marc Ancel, who concluded "all the information available appears to confirm that such a removal [of the death penalty] has, in fact, never been followed by a notable rise in the incidence of the crime no longer punishable with death."
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/907/is-the-death-penalty-an-effective-deterrent

Norval Morris
With respect to the influence of the abolition of capital punishment upon the incidence of murder, all of the available data suggest that where the murder rate is increasing, abolition does not appear to hasten the increase; where the rate is decreasing, abolition does not appear to interrupt the decrease; where the rate is stable, the presence of or absence of capital punishment does not appear to affect it.

Thorsten Sellin

Les débats concernant l'abolition de la peine capitale: une rétrospective

Déviance et société, Year 1981 Volume 5 Issue 2 pp. 97-112  

CHESNAIS JEAN CLAUDE

Histoire de la violence en Occident de 1800 a nos jours. Edition revue et augment‚ Paris Laffont 1981

“Les meurtres sont extraordinairement fréquents: il y a en a plus par habitant en Angleterre de XIIIe siècle que dans les Etats-Unis actuel. (…)  A Oxford, par exemple, le taux d'homicide au XIIIe siècle oscille entre trente cinque et soixante dix pour cent mille.“ p 39-40

The thing is, you don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime.

If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect.

Edwin Meese, Attorney General of the United States, 1986

Perhaps the bleakest fact of all is that the death

penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and

discriminatory manner, but also in some cases

upon defendants who are actually innocent.

William J. Brennan, Jr.  U.S. Supreme Court Justice

W. Brennan Neither Victims nor Executioners, 8 Notre Dame J. of Law, Ethics & Public Policy (1994).

Death penalty in Zurich, 400 years. 1400-1700

The archivist Gerold Meyer von Knonau has provided statistics for the canton of Zurich from the 15th century up to, and including the 18th century. 1445 persons were condemned to death (1198 men, 247 women). 915 of these were sentenced to be beheaded, 270 hanged, 130 burnt alive, 99 drowned, 26 broken on the wheel, 1 quartered alive, 2 buried alive, 1 immured, and the last one was impaled. The last three execution methods were in use in the 15th century, drowning was discontinued in 1613.

Year  population

Jahr - Einwohner
1467 - 27'800
1529 - 53'450
1585 - 77'750
1649   50 - 90'000
1671 - 111928
1671 - 120800
1690 - 119400
1751/52: 143400
1760/62 - 172200
1790/91 -180000
1808/12 – 189.457
 

By 1500 in England, only major felonies carried the death penalty - treason, murder, larceny, burglary, rape, and arson. From 1723, under the “Waltham Black Acts”, Parliament enacted many new capital offences and this led to an increase in the number of people being put to death each year. In the 100 years from 1740 - 1839 there were a total of up to 8753 civilian executions in England & Wales, the peak year was 1785 with 307 as transportation was not an option due to the American War of Independence. Remember that the population in 1800 was just 9 million.

Sir Samuel Romilly was right when he told an indifferent House of Commons in 1813 that "cruel punishments have an inevitable tendency to produce cruelty in the people. It is not by the destruction of tenderness, - it is not by exciting revenge, that we can hope to generate virtuous conduct in those who are confided to our care."

Baroness Wootton
“to imitate immoral actions doesn't seem a very sensible way to discourage them”

In: Louis Blom-Cooper ed. The hanging question: Essays on the death penalty. Gerald Duckworth. London, 1969. P 13

The Gowers Report and Capital Punishment

GEORGE H. DESSION

Report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (1949-1953): A Review

Melvin F. Wingersky

"The argument that capital punishment deters may be a valid assertion so long as it rests upon a hypothetical state of mind which is a fictional invariable. But it is not verified by experience which tells us that in a given community there will be found a segment of its population predetermined with pathological and criminal potentials transcending the deterring effect of any punishment including capital punishment. The psychological and sociological sciences do not support the belief that the fear of death is an effectual deterrent to crime. On the contrary, we more often encounter the opposite effect; the death penalty may be an incentive to murder, and here indirectly capital punishment tends to lower the respect for human life. The number of murderers who are mentally unstable is larger than we wish to admit. Even in some instances they are attracted to the spectacle of their own execution and attempt to secure it to insure their own destruction".

Ezzat Abdel Fattah. Ottawa 1972

A Study of the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment with Special Reference to the Canadian Situation

Lord Simon expressed he had no doubt that Capital Punishment prevented more murders to an extent that no other punishment could. It was not a matter of statistics but of the judgment and commonsense of every individual. In a speech in the House of Lords in 1948, Lord Jowitt said that "to his mind there was only one possible justification of Capital Punishment - that its potency as a deterrent reduced the number of murders. He believed it did: he could not prove it: it must be matter of impression and one's own personal opinion. Lord Brideman based his belief in the deterrent force of the penalty "more on what I think is my knowledge of human nature than anything else, and Bishop of Truro thought that on the value of the death penalty as a deterrent.... his own feelings were a surer guide than any statistics from other countries..... and he was sure that the death penalty would be a great deterrent to him if he were contemplating murder.

Krishna Kumari, Areti, Capital Punishment: The Never Ending Debate  http://ssrn.com/abstract=956229

Krishna Kumari, Areti, Role of Theories of Punishment in the Policy of Sentencing  http://ssrn.com/abstract=956234

Speaking in the House of Commons in 1878, Sir Joseph Pease said:

"The continual mitigation of law and of sentences has been accomplished with property

quite as secure, and human life quite as sacred"

“Executions are so much a part of British history that it is almost impossible for many excellent people to think of a future without them”

Viscount Templewood, In the Shadow of the Gallows (1951)

"There is no clear evidence in any of the figures we have examined that the abolition of capital punishment has led to an increase in the homicide rate, or that its reintroduction has led to its fall."'

REDUCING THE RISK OF EXECUTING THE INNOCENT THE REPORT OF THE ILLINOIS

GOVERNOR’S COMMISSION ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Abolir France 96 hiver 2016
http://www.amnesty.fr/sites/default/files/abolir_96_.pdf

“It has often been remarked that in this country a public execution is generally followed closely by instances of death by hanging, either suicidal or accidental, in consequence of the powerful effect which the execution of a noted criminal produces upon a morbid and unmatured mind.”

The Times of Jan. 25 1853  

DOES CAPITAL PUNISHMENT DETER CRIME?
http://docplayer.net/5159966-Does-capital-punishment-front-2-11-04-12-13-pm-page-1-does-capital-punishment-deter-crime.html

“After every instance in which the law violates the sanctity of human life, that life is held less sacred by the community among whom the outrage is perpetrated.”
1846 by Robert Rantoul Jr., a Massachusetts legislator,

Je vous demande si on ne pourrait pas diminuer le nombre des délits, en rendant les châtiments plus honteux et moins cruels. Ne remarquez-vous pas que les pays où la routine de la loi étale les plus affreux spectacles sont ceux où les crimes sont le plus multipliés ? N'êtes-vous pas persuadés que l'amour de l'honneur et la crainte de la honte sont de meilleurs moralistes que les bourreaux ? Les pays où l'on donne des prix à la vertu ne sont-ils pas mieux policés que ceux où Ion ne cherche que des prétextes de répandre le sang, et d'hériter des coupables?
http://www.monsieurdevoltaire.com/2014/09/prix-de-la-justice-et-de-l-humanite-partie-9.html

"The existence of capital punishment tends to cheapen human life. It tends to encourage both children and adults to believe that physical violence, the ultimate form of which is putting an individual to death, is a proper method of resolving social and personal conflict."

1959 House Doc. No. 2575, at 45. Quoted in Commonwealth v. Robert E. O'Neal

American Indian Executions in Historical Context

David V. Baker

Arizona Capital Case Commission

Abolition of the death penalty Massachusetts 1837

REPORT OX THE ABOLITION OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 1836

From the Legislative Documents of 1836.

Canada capital punishment

Material relating to its purpose and value

But Did They Listen? 

The New Jersey Death Penalty Commission

“Frequent executions dull the sensibilities toward the taking of life. This makes it easier for men to kill and increases murders, which in turn increase hangings, which in turn increase murders, and so on, around the vicious circle.”

Clarence Darrow, Crime its causes and treatment, New York,  1922

Karl Marx and the Death Penalty

Robert M. Bohm 25 September 2008 Springer

LAW REPORTS OF TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS

THE UNITED NATIONS WAR CRIMES COMMISSION

VOLUME XIII LONDON

Symbol and Substance in the Massachusetts Commission Report

Franklin E. Zimring

The Abolition of the Death Penalty in the United Kingdom

How it Happened and Why it Still Matters

The Application of Indiana Capital Sentencing Law

Indiana Criminal Law Study Commission

Dott. Claudio Giusti

giusticlaudio@alice.it 

Member of the Scientific Committee of Osservatorio sulla Legalità e i Diritti, Claudio Giusti had the privilege and the honour to participate in the first congress of the Italian Section of Amnesty International: later he was one of the founders of the World Coalition Against The Death Penalty. He writes on a regular basis about human rights, death penalty and American criminal law.