According to a new report issued by Amnesty International, the United States is among four countries that carried out the vast majority of the 3,797 executions around the world in 2004. Amnesty’s report states that the nations carrying out the most executioners last year were China (3,400), Iran (159), Vietnam (64), United States (59), Saudi Arabia (33), Pakistan (15), Kuwait (9), Bangladesh (7), Egypt (6), Singapore (6), and Yemen (6). The report notes that the increase in executions in China is partly due to a new way of estimating such executions since the government does not publicly release this data. The use of the death penalty declined in the U.S. in 2004 compared to 2003.

Five nations abandoned the death penalty in 2004 (Bhutan, Greece, Samoa, Senegal, and Turkey), bringing the total number of countries that have abolished the death penalty in law or practice to 120. A third of those countries have abandoned the death penalty in the past 15 years, a trend that Amnesty International says shows a “continued move closer to the universal abolition of capital punishment.” Only 76 countries retain and use the death penalty, but few of those nations carry out executions each year. “The death penalty is cruel and unnecessary, does not deter crime, and runs the risk of killing the wrongly convicted, ” the report concludes.

(The (London) Independent, April 4, 2005, and “Facts and Figures on the Death Penalty,” Amnesty International, April 2005). See Amnesty’s Report and DPIC’s International Death Penalty.