According to Amnisty International, in 2005, 94% of the world’s 2.148 executions (in 22 countries) took place in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the USA. More than 20,000 people are still condemned to death throughout the world. These figures are however only approximate which is due to the secrecy linked to the death penalty. Many governments, such as China’s, refuse to publish official data about executions, Vietnam has even declared such statistics a secret of state.
On 30 November 1786, the Great Duchy of Tuscany (Italy) was the first territory to abolish the death penalty. In 1849, the Roman Republic (which didn't last long) became the first country to ban the capital punishment in its constitution. Venezuela abolished the death penalty in 1863 and Portugal did so in 1867 - for all crimes except military - however the last execution in Portugal had taken place in 1846. The ban was extended to all crimes in 1976. Many western countries only abolished it some years ago, in the seventies and eighties. In the United States, the state of Michigan was the first state to ban the death penalty, in 1847. The 160-year ban on capital punishment has never been repealed. Currently, 12 states of the U.S. and the District of Columbia ban capital punishment.
Nowadays capital punishment is no longer applied in the majority of countries: 88 countries have abolished it for all crimes. Eleven others reserve the right to apply it for exceptional crimes such as war crimes. To those 99 States, we can add 30 countries, considered by Amnesty International as "de facto abolitionists", since they have not applied capital punishment for ten years at least, even if it is still foreseen in their laws. One of those countries is Morocco where abolitionists are putting pressure to the government to chance the law – no execution has taken place there for 13 years. Since 1990, the abolitionist cause has progressed significantly, 40 countries having banned capital punishment.
At the same time, the use of the death penalty against child offenders –under 18 at the time of the crime – is clearly prohibited under international law, yet a handful of countries persist with child executions. Since January 1990 Amnesty International has documented 46 executions of child offenders in eight countries– the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the USA, China and Yemen. The USA carried out 19 executions – more than any other country. During the same period, several countries raised to 18 the minimum age for application of the death penalty, in accordance with international law. Yemen and Zimbabwe raised the minimum age to 18 in 1994, as did China in 1997 and Pakistan in 2000. One sad example is that of Napoleon Beazley, a boy who was executed in 2002 in Texas for a murder committed eight years earlier when he was 17 years old. At the trial the white prosecutor described him as an “animal” in front of the all-white jury. Witnesses at the trial cited his potential for rehabilitation. He was a model prisoner.
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