Stop Child Executions!
Which Countries Still Use the Death Penalty against Child Offenders?
Recorded executions of child offenders since 2000 |
Five countries –
China,
the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Iran,
Pakistan and
the USA –
are known to have executed child offenders since
2000. Child offenders are currently under sentence of death in at least two
other countries - the Philippines and Sudan.
The profiles below give information on each country’s use of the death penalty against child offenders; on the relevant international treaties to which the country is a party; and on what the monitoring bodies set up under those treaties have said about the country’s use of the death penalty against child offenders.
All nations except the USA, have become parties to one or both of the international treaties of worldwide scope prohibiting the use of the death penalty against child offenders without making an explicit reservation to that prohibition. As stated previously, these treaties are the ICCPR, whose Article 6(5) contains the prohibition, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), where the prohibition appears in Article 37(a).
States parties to these treaties are required to submit periodic reports on the measures they have taken to give effect to the treaties’ provisions. The reports are examined by the expert bodies set up to monitor implementation of the treaties – the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child respectively.
When representatives of governments that have executed child offenders have appeared before these committees during the examination of their countries’ reports, they have generally avoided mentioning the matter or have given confusing replies. These evasive responses indicate that the responsible officials are aware that their country is obliged to respect the prohibition. Only the USA has openly acknowledged executing child offenders and claimed for itself the right to do so. As shown in the graph below, the USA has executed more child offenders than all other countries combined.
China is a party to the ICCPR and the CRC.
In May 1996 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed concern “that national legislation appears to allow children between the ages of 16 and 18 to be sentenced to death with a two-year suspension of execution” in China. It recommended that Chinese legislative measures be reviewed to ensure their conformity with Article 37 of the CRC.
In October 1997 a revision of the Chinese Criminal Law came into effect eliminating the practice of imposing suspended death sentences on prisoners convicted of crimes committed when they were 16 or 17 years old. Previously, Article 44 of China’s Criminal Law had allowed for offenders aged 16 or 17 to be sentenced to death with a two-year suspension of execution “if the crime committed is particularly grave”.
However, reports since 1997 suggest that people under 18 at the time of the offence have continued to be executed because the courts do not take sufficient care to determine their age. Some lower courts appear to have disregarded the Supreme People’s Court “Explanation concerning specific questions on the implementation of the law in handling juvenile criminal cases" of 2 May 1995, which states: "In trying juvenile criminal cases, the age of the defendant at the time of the crime should be treated as an important fact and investigated fully. . . if it is not established clearly and it impacts on whether or not to pursue criminal charges and the type of criminal punishment in a public prosecution, it should be returned to the Procuratorate for supplementary investigation”.
Two child offenders were executed in 2003 and 2004. In March 2003 the Hebei Legal Daily reported that Zhao Lin, aged 18 years and three months, had been executed in January for a murder committed in May 2000, when he was 16 years old. The murder had taken place in Funing County, Jiangsu Province. Press reports on the case indicate that the court and the police were fully aware that he was not 18 at the time of the crime, but because officials appear from these reports to have been unaware of legal stipulations outlawing the execution of child offenders, he was executed nonetheless.
In a second case, Gao Pan, a farmer from Liguo Village, Gaoyang County, Hebei Province, was executed on 8 March 2004 for a crime committed on 9 August 2001, before he was 18 years old.
Gao Pan was originally sentenced to death on 28 May 2002 by Baoding City Intermediate People’s Court, having allegedly murdered a neighbour during an attempted robbery on 9 August 2001. Gao appealed against the sentence, saying that as he was not 18 years old at the time of the crime, he should be given a lighter sentence.
The evidence used by the state prosecution in an attempt to prove that Gao was 18 years old at the time of the crime included a household registration document signed by the head of Gao’s family, his grandfather, Gao Baixue. However, an examination of the document – which did not even record the day in August 1983 when Gao was supposedly born – by competent bodies in Beijing and Tianjin suggested that the signature was false. According to press reports, the same jurisdiction which issued the household registration documents has issued numerous other documents bearing incorrectly recorded dates, including dates of birth on official identity cards.
Documentation produced by police departments at the time of Gao’s arrest state that he was 17 years old at the time of the crime, with his date of birth shown as 11 August 1983 – using the traditional lunar calendar – which is 6 September 1983 using the western calendar. It should be noted that apart from doubts over his age due to conflicting information on official documents, there was added confusion because different calendrical systems were used. Furthermore, Gao, his family and neighbours all said he was born in the year of the Rat in Chinese astrology, which would have been 1984. On other forms of official documentation, such as Gao’s elementary school certification and records held by provincial administrations, his recorded date of birth is 11 August 1984, a full lunar year after other dates suggested by the courts to be his true date of birth.
Gao, his family, and his lawyer asked for further investigations to be carried out to verify Gao’s true age, and offered to pay for a test to verify his age by examining a sample of his bone tissue. All of these requests were refused by Hebei Province High People’s Court. The court stated that the household registration document was “more reliable than a confession” as evidence, and that it was therefore “no longer necessary” to conduct tests on Gao’s bone tissue.
According to one report, at the appeal hearing on 24 April 2003 Gao’s defence lawyer produced 32 items of evidence supporting the claim that Gao was not yet 18 years old at the time of the crime. However, the appeal was rejected and the sentence was upheld.
Gao and his lawyer reportedly told the court of their intention to petition the Supreme People’s Court and the National People’s Congress for further checks on Gao’s age to be carried out, including analysis of a sample of Gao’s bone tissue. However, while the lawyer was in Beijing, he heard on 12 March that Gao had been executed on 8 March 2004.
Several prominent Chinese legal scholars and lawyers have commented on this case. For example, Professor He Jiahong from the Academy of Law at China People’s University has said: “Because this case involved the death penalty, I feel that the requirements for evidence should have been higher than in an ordinary criminal case. […] If a person is to be deprived of their life, the ascertainment of key facts in the case should be in accordance with our country’s laws and regulations. Evidence has to be ample, fully comprehensible and there should be high standards. There should be no areas of doubt before it can be said that this standard has been achieved. With regard to this case, I personally do not feel as though these standards were achieved.”
The DRC is a party to the ICCPR and the CRC.
Kasongo, a 14-year-old child soldier, was executed in January 2000 within half an hour of his trial by a special military court. The special military courts were abolished in April 2003.
DRC representatives told the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in May 2001 that other child soldiers sentenced to death had been pardoned; they did not mention the execution of Kasongo. The Committee urged the country “to ensure respect for article 37(a) of the Convention [on the Rights of the Child] and that no person under 18 is sentenced to the death penalty”.
Iran is a party to the ICCPR and the CRC.
Amnesty International has recorded 10 executions of child offenders in Iran since 1990. Most of these reports have been based on reports in the Iranian news media.
One execution was reported in 1990, three in 1992, one in 1999 and one in 2000.
On 29 May 2001 the official news agency IRNA reported from the city of Ilam that Mehrdad Yousefi, aged 18, had been hanged for a crime committed two years earlier.
Two further executions were carried out in early 2004. Mohammad Zadeh and Salman were reportedly executed on 25 January and 12 May 2004 respectively. Both had been 17 at the time of the crimes.
On 15 August 2004 a 16-year-old girl, Ateqeh Rajabi, was reportedly executed in Neka in the northern Iranian province of Mazandaran for "acts incompatible with chastity" (amal-e manafe-ye ‘ofat). Ateqeh Rajabi was reportedly publicly hanged on a street in the city centre of Neka.
According to reports, Ateqeh Rajabi had been sentenced to death approximately three months earlier. During her trial, at which she was reportedly not represented by a lawyer, the judge allegedly severely criticized her dress, harshly reprimanding her. It is alleged that Ateqeh Rajabi was mentally ill both at the time of her crime and during her trial proceedings.
The case reportedly attracted the attention of the Head of the Judiciary for the Mazandaran province, who ensured that the case be heard promptly by the Supreme Court. In Iran, all death sentences have to be upheld by the Supreme Court before they can be implemented.
The death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court, and Ateqeh Rajabi was publicly executed on 15 August. According to Peyk-e Iran newspaper, the lower court judge who issued the original sentence was the person who put the noose around her head as she went to the gallows.
It was further reported that although Ateqeh Rajabi’s national identity card stated that she was 16 years old, the Mazandaran Judiciary announced at her execution that her age was 22.
The co-defendant of Ateqeh Rajabi, an unnamed man, was reportedly sentenced to 100 lashes. He was released after this sentence was carried out.
Some death sentences have been commuted. In November 1999 Azizullah Shenwari, then around 11 years old, was abducted near his home in Landi Kotal, Khyber Agency, Pakistan, and was reportedly used by drug traffickers to carry narcotics. A year later his family received a letter from a jail in Yazd, Iran, informing them that he had been sentenced to death for drug trafficking. With the help of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, his family raised the case with the Iranian consulate, and in June 2001 Amnesty International members sent urgent appeals urging the Iranian authorities to commute the death sentence.
In July 2001 a judicial official denied that Azizullah Shenwari had been sentenced to death, while a letter from the Iranian authorities to Amnesty International stated that the sentence had been commuted. In September 2001, possibly as a result of the international attention to the case, Azizullah Shenwari's uncle was able to meet Azizullah Shenwari.
In August 2004 Amnesty International learned that an appeal court in 2003 had commuted the death sentence to 10 years' imprisonment.
Iranian representatives told the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in May 2000 that death sentences imposed on child offenders had not been carried out and that the death penalty was not “imposed on children under 18”. The Committee strongly recommended that Iran “take immediate steps to halt and abolish by law the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed by persons under 18”.
A bill to raise the minimum age to 18 is reportedly under consideration in Iran. Amnesty International is seeking details of the legislative status of the bill.
Pakistan became a party to the CRC in 1990.
Amnesty International recorded two executions of child offenders in Pakistan in the 1990s – one in 1992 and one in 1997.
The Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000, abolishing the death penalty for people under 18 at the time of the offence in most parts of the country, entered into force on 1 July 2000. However, the Ordinance was not extended to the Provincially and Federally Administered Tribal Areas in the north and west. One young man, Sher Ali, was executed in the Provincially Administered Tribal Area in November 2001 for a murder committed in 1993 when he was 13 years old.
Although most of the outstanding death sentences imposed on child offenders before July 2000 have now been commuted, an unknown number of sentences are still outstanding while the courts determine the age of the convicted prisoners. Child offenders continue to be sentenced to death, mainly because their age has not been determined. The issue of age is generally not raised by the family’s legal counsel until a child has been sentenced to death. Often judges do not raise the issue of age unless the child looks like a minor.
In October 2003 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child stated that it was “deeply concerned about the reports of juvenile offenders sentenced to death and executed” in Pakistan. It recommended that Pakistan take immediate steps to ensure that the prohibition of the death penalty against offenders under 18 is guaranteed, and that death sentences imposed before the promulgation of the 2000 Ordinance are not carried out.
As part of an Amnesty International campaign to end the use of the death penalty against child offenders throughout the world, many appeals were sent to President Pervez Musharraf in early 2004 urging him to commute the death sentences of all child offenders in Pakistan and to ensure that no further child offenders were sentenced to death, in accordance with Pakistan's obligations under international law. President Musharraf did not reply to the appeals.
The Philippines is a party to the ICCPR and the CRC.
Philippine law precludes the use of the death penalty against people under 18 at the time of the crime, yet at least seven child offenders are currently under sentence of death. Amnesty International is calling on the Philippine authorities to remove the death sentences of the seven child offenders.
At least seven child offenders, including one female, are currently under sentence of death in the Philippines, although the country’s laws prohibit the execution of child offenders. Larina Perpinan was 17 years old when she was arrested with 10 others for the kidnap and ransom of an elderly woman, who was later released unharmed. Upon her arrest, Larina Perpinan lied about her age and name to “avoid trouble at home.” She received poor legal counsel during her trial and was sentenced to death in October 1998. Although she later produced a birth certificate proving her age to be 17 at the time of arrest, the judge has reportedly refused to reverse the death sentence.
Sudan is a party to the ICCPR and the CRC.
Child offenders have been among several groups of people sentenced to death by a special court in the western province of Dafur since 2002. The special court’s procedures fall far short of international norms for a fair trial.
In October 2002 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that Sudan “guarantee that sentences of capital punishment are not given for acts committed when the perpetrator was a child under 18”.
The USA is a party to the ICCPR.
Of the 38 US states whose laws provide for the death penalty, 19 allow its use against child offenders. Two states, South Dakota and Wyoming, raised the minimum age in state law to 18 in March 2004, bringing to 19 the number of retentionist states in the USA which have a minimum age of 18 in law. US federal law and US military law also set a minimum age of 18 at the time of the offence for application of the death penalty.
In its decision in the case of Stanford v. Kentucky, the US Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that the use of the death penalty against offenders aged 16 or 17 was not contrary to the US Constitution. One of the grounds for the decision was that there was insufficient evidence in the form of state legislation to indicate a “national consensus” against the use of the death penalty for offenders under 18.
This decision is now to be reconsidered. In January 2004 the US Supreme Court announced that it would consider an appeal in the case of Roper v. Simmons, in which the state Supreme Court of Missouri had ruled that the execution of a person who was under 18 at the time of the offence was unconstitutional. Oral arguments in the case will be heard in October 2004, and the decision is likely to be announced in the first half of 2005.
In a recent ruling on another issue, the Supreme Court held in 2002 in the case of Atkins v. Virginia that the execution of prisoners with mentally retardation was unconstitutional. Here the majority of the court found that a “national consensus” had developed against such executions. They cited among other things the “large number” of states which had adopted legislation prohibiting executions of offenders with mentally retardation and “the consistency of the direction of change”, namely “the complete absence of States passing legislation reinstating the power to conduct such executions”. Amnesty International believes that the same reasoning should now lead the Supreme Court to declare the use of the death penalty against child offenders to be unconstitutional.
In July 2004 Amnesty International and 16 other recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize submitted an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief to the US Supreme Court urging that it find the death penalty for those under 18 at the time of the crime to be unconstitutional. Citing the evolution of international law and practice, the brief recommended that the Court "should consider the opinion of the international community, which has rejected the death penalty for child offenders worldwide".
Twenty-two child offenders have been executed in seven US states since 1977. Over 70 child offenders are currently under sentence of death in the country.
In April 2003 the US authorities revealed that children as young as 13 were among the foreign nationals being held at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. One detainee, Omar Khadr, a Canadian national, may be suspected of involvement in the shooting death of a US soldier in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old. Amnesty International has urged the Canadian authorities to seek assurances from the USA that it will not seek the death penalty against Omar Khadr should he be brought to trial before a military commission set up by the US authorities. Amnesty International opposes the military commissions.
When the USA ratified the ICCPR in 1992, it made a reservation stating that it reserved the right “to impose capital punishment. . . for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age”. Eleven other states parties to the ICCPR formally objected to the reservation. The UN Human Rights Committee stated in 1995 that it believed the reservation to be “incompatible with the object and purpose” of the ICCPR and recommended that the reservation be withdrawn. The Committee also deplored provisions in a number of US state laws allowing for child offenders to be sentenced to death as well as “the actual instances where such sentences have been pronounced and executed” and exhorted the authorities “to take appropriate steps to ensure that persons are not sentenced to death for crimes committed before they were 18”.
In October 2002 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights held in the case of Michael Domingues v. United States that the USA had "acted contrary to an international norm of jus cogens" in sentencing to death a person who was 16 years old at the time of the crime (see page 4).
Two other prisoners were executed despite requests from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that the executions be stayed while it considered the prisoners' petitions. Douglas Christopher Thomas was executed in Virginia in January 2000, and Napoleon Beazley was executed in Texas in May 2002 (see page 1); both had been 17 years old at the time of the crimes. In December 2003 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concluded in both cases that the USA had "acted contrary to an international norm of jus cogens" in executing a person for a crime committed at the age of 17 and that it had "failed to act in accordance with its fundamental human rights obligations as a member of the Organization of American States" by permitting the execution to proceed "notwithstanding the Commission’s request" that the USA stay the execution "pending the outcome of the proceedings before the Commission". It recommended in both cases that the USA provide the prisoner's next of kin with "an effective remedy, which includes compensation".