Executions And Death Penalty Figures Revealed

Executions are becoming less acceptable, Amnesty says, but China still puts thousands of convicts to death.

Death sentences are "becoming a thing of the past", according to campaigners, despite at least 682 confirmed executions across the globe last year.

That is just two more executions - including beheadings, hangings and firing squads - than in 2011, according to Amnesty International.
A total of 21 countries were confirmed as having carried out executions in 2012, the same number as in 2011. Amnesty said this was significantly down from levels a decade ago, when 28 countries carried out executions in 2003.
The number of deaths sentences imposed fell from 1,923 in 63 countries in 2011 to 1,722 in 58 countries over the next 12 months.
Amnesty International secretary general Salil Shetty said there was a "worldwide trend against using the death penalty".
"In many parts of the world, executions are becoming a thing of the past," he said.
"Only one in 10 countries in the world carries out executions.
"Their leaders should ask themselves why they are still applying a cruel and inhumane punishment that the rest of the world is leaving behind."
The five countries that carried out the most executions last year were China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and USA, Amnesty said.
But the figures for the total number of death sentences do not include China, which is believed to perform thousands every year, because reliable data is not available.
Some human rights activist claim up to 8,000 people are put to death by the state in China every year.
The US executed 43 people in 2012, the same figure as in the previous year. A total of 77 new death sentences were imposed, the second lowest since the Supreme Court revised capital punishment laws in 1976, Amnesty said.
The latest death sentence was carried out in Texas as the report was published, with Rickey Lewis being put to death by lethal injection for the murder of a man and the rape of his wife during a break-in.
Amnesty expressed concern at a resumption of executions in several countries - India, Japan, Pakistan and Gambia - that had not used the death penalty for some time.
And the organisation flagged an escalation in the number of executions in Iraq in 2012, with the figure up to at least 129, which included 34 executions carried out in a single day.
The 'Deaths Sentences and Executions in 2012' report was released just days after Briton Lindsay Sandiford lost her appeal against her death sentence in Bali for smuggling £1.6m worth of cocaine.