Capital punishment

Some excitement and moral superiority feelings over the fact that we are backing a UN resolution asking for all countries to stop using the death penalty. This will have as much impact as most UN resolutions of course.

I don’t support use of the death penalty, but tend to think we have better things to do that tell other countries how to run their justice systems.  But anyway it is interesting to look at who does still use it, and how.

According to Wikipedia, 90 countries have totally abolished it, 11 only have it for incredibly rare stuff such as war time treason, 32 have it in theory but not in practice, and 64 still have it and use it. That’s around one third of the197 countries.

But six countries account for 91% of executions, and China alone accounts for 65%.  And if Amnesty is right the actual level in China might be a magnitude higher than officially reported.

NZ chalked up a fairly large 85 executions until they were abolished.  84 men and Minnie Dean. Also 84 of them were for murder.  Who knows what the other was for?

Also did you know one of the people executed in NZ murdered his pregnant girlfriend by burying her alive in the Mt Vic Tunnel site, where he was working?