Press briefing note on USA/Death Penalty

Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: Ravina Shamdasani
Location: Geneva
Date: 29 May 2015
Subject:  USA / Death penalty

We welcome the abolition of the death penalty in the state of Nebraska on Wednesday, making it the nineteenth state in the US to have done so. Nebraska has not executed any inmates since 1997. The number of people executed each year, and the size of the population on death row in the US have progressively declined in the past 10 years. In 2014, the death penalty was carried out only by seven states, and the number of executions was 35, the lowest since 1994.  

We hope that Nebraska’s example will be considered by the other states (Colorado, Delaware, Montana and Kansas) whose legislative bodies are currently debating the abolition of the death penalty. We also echo the recommendation of the Human Rights Committee in March 2014, which called on the US Federal Government to "consider establishing a moratorium on the death penalty at the federal level and engage with retentionist states with a view to achieving a nationwide moratorium", as a first step towards abolition.

ENDS

For more information and media requests, please contact please contact Ravina Shamdasani (+41 22 917 9169 / rshamdasani@ohchr.org ) or Cécile Pouilly (+41 22 917 9310 / cpouilly@ohchr.org).

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