Amnesty International released their 2012 annual report on capital
punishment this week, highlighting information on the differing ways
countries handle execution around the world.
Here are five of the most interesting death penalty facts from last year:
1. The United States ranked fifth for the highest number of executions.
The U.S. takes a spot behind China,
Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia for the most executions in the world
last year, sitting ahead of Yemen and the Sudan.
This ranking comes as no surprise to Brian
Evans, Amnesty International's acting director on the Death Penalty
Abolition Campaign, who said the same countries are in the top eight every
year. (See video: "Inside
Death Row.")
But why is the U.S.—which seems like somewhat of an outlier politically,
culturally, and geographically—always in the top five?
According to Evans, the U.S. has a strict attitude toward punishment in
general. Having a severe attitude toward the death penalty is only natural
when you consider that the U.S. leads the world in mass incarceration of
prisoners and holds records for solitary confinement and sentences to life
in prison.
2. Saudia Arabia saw the execution of one man by "crucifixion."
Methods of execution vary between regions based on culture and available
technology, and they usually include standard tactics, such as hanging,
beheading, firing squad, and lethal injection. In Saudi Arabia, however, one
accused man was put on display after being beheaded in a practice known as
crucifixion, according to the country's state news agency, SPA.
The reasoning behind executions also vary around the world. In Papua New
Guinea, for example, a woman and her two daughters are currently being held
captive with charges
of sorcery and risk a death sentence. It's common in the Pacific country
for those accused of sorcery, especially women, to face horrific acts of
violence that often end in death.
3. China keeps its execution numbers secret.
The Chinese government is notorious for keeping statistics about their
criminal executions secret, and in past years, Amnesty International was
forced to rank China based on the minimum number of executions that
researchers could confirm. Since that number was always drastically lower
than the assumed reality, researchers now use reliable media sources and
human rights groups—rather than official government sources—to estimate the
number of executions in China.
Using this data, the 2012 report
estimates that thousands of criminals were killed in China last year alone,
while the tally for the rest of the world combined stands at 682.
4. Japan's executions actually increased in 2012 after a long hiatus.
While the global trend for the death
penalty is actually declining around the world, Japan—and other notable
countries such as India and Pakistan—resumed executing criminals after a
long stint of being execution-free. At least seven death row inmates were
killed in Japan last year, ending a 20-month period without executions.
Why the change? "It all depends on which political party is in power," Evans
said. One prime minister will come into power and abolish the practice, then
the next will just reinstate it, leaving the lives of criminals in the hands
of changing political whims.
5. Just 21 countries in the world carried out the death penalty last year.
In the broad scope of things, only a fraction of the world's total countries
(the total being 195 by National
Geographic's count) actually used execution as a means of punishment
last year. That number is down from 28 countries just a decade earlier,
suggesting a downward trend in the global practice.
The few countries that do still practice execution are situated in "regional
pockets" around the world, Evans noted. Just four countries in the Middle
East, for example, are responsible for all the executions in the region. And
in the U.S., death penalty laws differ by state, with hotbeds of execution
in the U.S. South, Ohio, and Arizona.
In December 2012, 111 countries—or more than half the world's
countries—voted in favor of a United Nations resolution that would declare a
global moratorium on executions.
As for the other countries? "They'll come around when they take a longer
look at their death penalties," Evans said, "but it'll be a while."