The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), with the sup­port of the Foreign Office of the Federal Government of Germany, recent­ly under­took a project exam­in­ing the U.S. death penal­ty through a human rights lens. DPIC has added a series of human rights pages to its web­site, refram­ing three aspects of the death penal­ty – race, con­di­tions of con­fine­ment, and exe­cu­tions – in light of human rights norms and treaties.

The page on U.S. exe­cu­tions high­lights var­i­ous human rights issues relat­ed to meth­ods of exe­cu­tion, includ­ing lethal injec­tion, and the inter­na­tion­al community’s response. The con­di­tions of con­fine­ment page dis­cuss­es ongo­ing prac­tices that vary from the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, more com­mon­ly known as the ​“Nelson Mandela rules.” This includes human rights issues asso­ci­at­ed with pro­longed soli­tary con­fine­ment – the death-row phe­nom­e­non – and the phys­i­cal con­di­tions of impris­on­ment. The page on race pro­vides a his­tor­i­cal and legal overview of con­cerns about racial bias with­in the U.S. death penal­ty, as well as spe­cif­ic exam­ples of pos­si­ble racial discrimination.

As part of this project, DPIC held a series of webi­na­rs and a pan­el at the German embassy in Washington, D.C., all of which were record­ed and are avail­able on the human rights pages. These events fea­tured notable experts and pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for mem­bers of the pub­lic, acad­e­mia, and the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to learn more about these human rights issues.

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