Todesstrafe abschaffen!

Amnesty International wendet sich in allen Fällen gegen die Todesstrafe. Die Abschaffung der Todesstrafe bedeutet, eine zerstörerische und spaltende Politik zu beenden, die mit allgemein anerkannten Werten nicht übereinstimmt. Sie birgt nicht nur das Risiko eines nicht wieder gut zu machenden Justizirrtums, sondern ist auch für die öffentliche Hand kostspielig, auch in sozialer und psychologischer Hinsicht (eine Tatsache, die in der derzeitigen Wirtschaftslage der USA die Sorgen der Öffentlichkeit steigen lässt). Dabei ist bislang nicht nachgewiesen, dass die Todesstrafe eine abschreckende Wirkung hat. Ihre Anwendung erfolgt zudem tendenziell diskriminierend bezüglich ethnischer Herkunft und gesellschaftlicher Schicht. Sie macht eine Versöhnung oder Rehabilitation unmöglich. Sie bindet Ressourcen, die besser für die Arbeit gegen Gewaltverbrechen und für die von ihnen betroffenen Menschen eingesetzt werden könnten.

Bis heute haben 139 Staaten die Todesstrafe im Gesetz oder in der Praxis abgeschafft, eine deutliche Mehrheit. Das internationale Recht erkennt zwar an, dass einige Staaten die Todesstrafe beibehalten, diese Bestätigung der aktuellen Realität sollte aber nicht dazu auffordern, "die Abschaffung der Todesstrafe durch einen Vertragsstaat zu verzögern oder zu verhindern" (Artikel 6.6 des Internationalen Paktes über bürgerliche und politische Rechte). Die Generalversammlung der Vereinten Nationen hat in den Jahren 1997, 2008 und 2010 Resolutionen verabschiedet, in denen sie zu einem weltweiten Hinrichtungsmoratorium im Hinblick auf die Abschaffung der Todesstrafe aufrief.

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There have been more than 1200 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977, and more than 3200 men and women are on death row today. However, the number of death sentences passed each year in the USA continues to fall well below the peak in the mid-1990s. The number of people sentenced to death in the USA in each of the past five years, for example, was only about a third of what it was in each of the five years from 1992 to 1996. This pattern is reflected in Illinois too. In the 10 years between 2000 and 2009, on average, 3.3 death sentences were passed each year in Illinois. In the preceding decade, the average was more than three times greater, at 11.3 death sentences per year.

Arbitrariness, discrimination and error mark the death penalty in the USA, along with its inescapable cruelty. More than 130 people have been released from death rows on grounds of innocence since 1976. Public and political support for the death penalty has weakened in recent years, possibly a result of an erosion of belief in its deterrence value, an increased awareness of the frequency of wrongful convictions in capital cases, and a greater confidence that public safety can be guaranteed by life prison terms rather than death sentences. In 2008, Senior Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens revealed that he had decided, after more than three decades on the country’s highest court, that the death penalty was a cruel waste of time. "I have relied on my own experience", he wrote, "in reaching the conclusion that the imposition of the death penalty represents the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes". Since retiring from the Supreme Court in June 2010, he has said that there was one vote during his nearly 35 years on the Court that he regretted – his vote with the majority in Gregg v. Georgia in 1976 that allowed executions to resume in the USA.

Among other things, the Gregg v. Georgia ruling cited Section 210.6 of the Model Penal Code issued by the American Law Institute in the 1960s. This had sought to provide legislators in states which decided to retain the death penalty with rules aimed at maximizing fairness and reliability in capital sentencing. In 2009, the American Law Institute voted to withdraw §210.6 "in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment". In assessing whether to withdraw §210.6, the Institute had considered, among other things, the inadequacies of the US Supreme Court’s constitutional regulation of the death penalty and of federal habeas corpus review generally, the politicization of the death penalty, racial discrimination, systemic juror confusion in capital cases, the under-funding of defence counsel services, and death sentences against the innocent. See also USA: A learning curve, towards a 'more perfect world', October 2010, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/095/2010/en