RESOURCES: International Reports Look at Human Rights Decisions and Death-Eligible Crimes

Two new reports on the death penalty are available from the international community. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States recently released a report containing excerpts from the most important death-penalty decisions issued by the IACHR in the past fifteen years, including cases from Barbados, Cuba, Guatemala, Guyana, Grenada, Jamaica, Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States. The International Commission against the Death Penalty released a report in January containing a country-by-country overview of crimes eligible for the death penalty around the world. The report analyzes whether the death penalty is really being restricted to the “most serious crimes.”

(“The Death Penalty in the Inter-American Human Rights System: From Restrictions to Abolition,” IACHR (Dec. 31, 2011); The Death Penalty and the ‘Most Serious Crimes’, International Commission against the Death Penalty (January 2013); posted by DPIC Feb. 15, 2013). See International and Studies. To obtain a copy of the IACHR report for only the cost of postage, contact DPIC.