source: The Guardian

published: 12 January 2025

Image Credit: sakhorn38 at www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The good news: Zimbabwe has just banned the death penalty. While it should remove an exemption clause, which might allow for capital punishment’s return were a state of emergency to be declared, the decision is another welcome step in the global journey towards abolition: 113 states have now banned executions.

The bad news is that fewer countries have been killing more people in the last few years.

Last May, Amnesty International recorded 1,153 executions in 2023, a 31% increase from the previous year and the highest level for almost a decade. (The figure is an underestimate since countries including China, believed to be the world’s largest executioner, do not publish data on the death penalty).

There was no letup in 2024. Iran reportedly executed more than 900 people. Saudi Arabia is believed to have killed another 330, compared with 172 in 2023.

In the US, the toll was stable. But while more states have abolished capital punishment over recent years, there is a renewed push for executions in retentionist states. Three – Utah, South Carolina and Indiana – resumed killings last year after more than a decade.

Joe Biden’s decision to commute the sentences of 37 men under federal death sentences in December was welcome. He should have sent a still clearer moral message by doing the same for the remaining three, who committed terrorist or hate-motivated mass murder.

But the spur to his action was clear. Thirteen federal prisoners were executed in the first term of Donald Trump, a death penalty zealot – more than under the previous 10 presidents combined.

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