Eulàlia Iglesias

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 1 2005 (IPS) — As the United States approaches its 1,000th execution since capital punishment resumed here in 1977, human rights groups at home and abroad are using the grisly milestone to press for abolition of the death penalty.

Absent a last-minute reprieve by the governor of North Carolina, early on Friday morning Kenneth Lee Boyd will become the 1,000th person to be executed in the U.S. in the past 28 years.

Lee Boyd, 57, was given the death penalty for the murders of his estranged wife and her father. Another execution, of Shawn Paul Humphries for killing a convenience store owner in a robbery, is scheduled for Friday night in South Carolina.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that state laws to reform capital punishment were valid, ending a 10-year moratorium on the death penalty. The first execution took place on Jan. 17, 1977, when Gary Gilmore, 36, was shot by a firing squad at Utah State Prison.

The 1,000th person to be executed since then was originally to be Robin Lovitt, 42, but Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia spared his life on Tuesday. Lovitt was convicted for murdering a man with a pair of scissors during a robbery in a pool hall in 1988. His sentence was commuted to life prison without parole.

Warner said evidence from Lovitt’s trial had been improperly destroyed by a court clerk, depriving the defence of the opportunity to subject the material to the latest DNA testing. Lovitt was set to be executed by lethal injection Wednesday night.

Meanwhile 3,400 prisoners – including 118 foreign nationals – wait on death row in the U.S.

As the 1,000th execution approaches, Amnesty International, along with a broad spectrum of human rights organisations, social justice groups and concerned individuals, is calling on state and federal authorities to put an immediate end to all executions.

“The death penalty is by nature ineffective, arbitrary and does not deter crime. On the contrary, it creates more victims and demeans society as a whole,” the London-based group said in a statement.

In 1990, the U.S. General Accounting Office reviewed research on death sentences and found that in 82 percent of cases, the race of the victim (generally white) influenced the likelihood of the perpetrator (generally African American or minority) being charged with capital murder or receiving a death sentence.

Moreover, prosecutors in certain counties are far more likely to seek the death penalty than their counterparts elsewhere – meaning the geography of the crime influences the likelihood of receiving the death penalty.

Over 80 percent of all executions haven been carried out in the South, and are concentrated in only a handful of states. Nearly half of the 999 executions that have taken place in the U.S. occurred in just two states, Texas and Virginia.

According to Human Rights Watch, the quality of legal representation is also a significant factor in determining who is sentenced to death.

Doubts about the fairness of the death penalty and the possibility of executing the innocent have fueled the decline in U.S. public support for the death penalty. More than 120 people have been released from death row since 1976 due to evidence of their innocence.

An October Gallup poll showed 64 percent of the U.S. public supports use of the death penalty. But that is the lowest level in 27 years, down from a high of 80 percent in 1994.

“Americans pride themselves on their human decency and common sense, yet the death penalty contradicts both,” said Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. Programme at Human Rights Watch. “The country should reject such senseless cruelty.”

The United States is one of only a few constitutional democracies that execute criminal offenders. Although China accounts for 90 percent of all executions worldwide, the United States takes fifth place on the list of top executioners, with 59 executions in 2004.

Nowadays 121 countries have abolished the death penalty worldwide in law or practice. In the U.S., 12 twelve states do not have the death penalty, and at least two states – Illinois and New Jersey – have formal moratoriums on capital punishment, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

According to Amnesty International “the execution of 1,000 men and women by the state has resulted in immeasurable human costs – for the victims of violent crime, for the families of those who were executed, and for those who participated in these state-sanctioned killings”.

The group added that “it is time for the U.S. to realise the ultimate futility of the death penalty and follow the global trend towards abolition”.

On Wednesday, more than 300 cities around the world celebrated “Cities for Life, Cities against the Death Penalty”, which celebrates the anniversary of the first abolition of the death penalty by a European state, the Great Duchy of Tuscany in 1786.

Rome, Brussels, Madrid, Ottawa, Mexico City, Berlin, Barcelona, Florence, Venice, Buenos Aires, Austin, Dallas, Antwerpen, Vienna, Naples, Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Reggio Emilia, Bogotá, Santiago de Chile and about 300 smaller and larger cities came together to commemorate this event.

The initiative, now in its fourth year, is promoted by the Community of Sant’Egidio and supported by the main international human rights organisations, gathered in the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty.