The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) held a hearing on Thursday 25 January on “the Abolition of the death penalty : current global trends and situation in the United States of America” which was chaired by Lord Richard Keen, Chair of the Committee.
Three experts from civil society had the opportunity to take the floor. Mr Raphaël Chenuil-Hazan, Director general of Ensemble contre la peine de mort (ECPM) first tackled global trends regarding the abolition of the death penalty. Ms Robin Maher, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), was online from Washington to share her analysis about the death penalty in the United States of America. Finally, Ms Bronwyn Dudley, Program Manager at the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, underlined amongst other things the resurgence of pro-death penalty narratives in Europe and the importance of legal instruments prohibiting the death penalty such as protocols n°6 et 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights.
The dialogue with the parliamentarians touched upon, inter alia, the situation in the United States, and in particular the execution planned in Alabama later on the same day of Kenneth E. Smith using a new and very controversial method (nitrogen hypoxia)1, the importance that the Council of Europe carries on with its work on the abolition of the death penalty including regarding the United States, the situation in other countries where European citizens are detained and can be sentenced to death and where the death penalty is used as a tool to terrorize the population.
1. The Ministers’ Deputies adopted a declaration on this issue. PACE’s General Rapporteur on the abolition of the death penalty firmly condemned this execution on social networks.
