2001 Amnesty International Prison Report

Torture/ill-treatment in prisons and jails
Torture and ill-treatment were reported in prisons, jails and juvenile detention facilities. Abuses included beatings and excessive force; sexual misconduct; the misuse of electro-shock weapons and chemical sprays; and the cruel use of mechanical restraints, including holding prisoners for prolonged periods in four-point restraint as punishment. Many reported abuses took place in isolation units or during forced removal of prisoners from cells (''cell extractions'').

Cruel conditions in supermaximum security (supermax) prisons, where prisoners are held in prolonged isolation, continued to be reported. AI's requests to tour such facilities in Illinois and Virginia were turned down by the authorities.

• Up to 30 guards were alleged to have been involved in the systematic ill-treatment of five prisoners in a high security wing of Cook County Jail, Illinois, in July. It was alleged that guards kicked and punched the prisoners without provocation during cell searches and subjected them to racist abuse in retaliation for having reported earlier ill-treatment of jail inmates. The prisoners - who were also reportedly beaten after they were shackled - sustained lacerations, bruising and bone fractures. A civil lawsuit in the case was pending at the end of the year.
   

In July, three Cook County sheriff's deputies were indicted on first degree murder charges for the beating of inmate Louis Schmude in a holding cell in another detention facility in May; he died hours later of a ruptured spleen.

• In September the US Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation into Red Onion State Prison, one of two supermax prisons in Virginia where there had been persistent allegations of excessive use of force by guards, including misuse of firearms, restraints and electro-shock weapons. AI renewed its call for the suspension of the use of all electro-shock weapons in Virginia prisons following the death in Wallens Ridge Prison, the state's other supermax prison, of a diabetic prisoner shocked with a stun weapon in July (see below). The Department of Corrections refused to ban the equipment and turned down a request by AI to tour Wallens Ridge Prison.

Abuse of incarcerated children
Children in detention were subjected to ill-treatment which included the cruel use of restraints and prolonged isolation as punishment. Many children continued to be prosecuted as adults and sent to adult prisons where, in some states, they were not separated from adults and were held in inhumane or inappropriate conditions. A study of the juvenile justice system published in April, sponsored by the US Justice Department and six of the country's leading foundations, found that youths from ethnic minority groups, especially African Americans, were more likely to be imprisoned and to serve longer sentences than white youths charged with similar offences.

• In February a lawsuit was filed alleging widespread abuse at the State Training School in Plankinton, South Dakota, a juvenile detention facility. Children were reportedly placed in punitive handcuffs and shackles; forced to lie spread-eagled in four-point restraints for hours at a time, including overnight; and girls were forcibly stripped by male staff while held in four-point restraint. It was also alleged that children, some of them mentally ill, were routinely held in isolation for 23 hours a day, sometimes for months at a time.
   

In December a federal judge approved a settlement which placed strict limits on the use of force and punishment at Plankinton. This included a ban on restraints as punishment and the removal of four-point rings used to tie inmates to beds, and the setting of limits on the length of time children could be confined to cells.

Ill-treatment of women prisoners
Male guards continued to have unsupervised access to women prisoners or detainees in women's prisons and local jails. There were allegations of sexual abuse of female prisoners by male staff in states including California, Connecticut, New York, South Carolina and West Virginia. Draft legislation was introduced in New York to ban pat-down searches of women prisoners by male staff.

 

• Reports of ill-treatment of inmates at Wayne County Jail, West Virginia, included claims that women prisoners were made to parade partially naked in front of male inmates, forced to undergo strip searches by male guards, fondled by male officers or watched while dressing. One prisoner said she was coerced into a sexual relationship with a guard who later resigned. There were also allegations of assaults by guards against both male and female inmates and the abusive use of pepper spray. The results of a Justice Department investigation into allegations of federal criminal civil rights violations by guards at the jail were not known by the end of the year.
• In October a state legislative committee held hearings on ill-treatment in two California prisons, Valley State Prison for Women and the California Institute for Women. Women prisoners testified about medical neglect and sexual abuse by male staff.

Deaths in prison

• Lawrence Frazier, a diabetic, died in July after being restrained by guards and zapped with a 45,000 volt electro-shock stun gun after becoming delirious and ''combative'' in the Wallens Ridge Prison infirmary where he had been taken for hypoglycemia. Although the prison authorities said afterwards that a doctor had ruled out the stun weapon as a cause of death, this was discounted by many observers as the doctor had had no access to the autopsy results. Inquiries into the death were still pending at the end of the year.
• In October a state jury acquitted a former prison guard on a charge of aggravated battery and coercion to falsify reports in the case of Frank Valdez who died in Florida State Prison in July 1999. The guard was accused of beating Valdez and breaking his jaw after he was handcuffed. Frank Valdez died the next day after an altercation with four other guards whose trial on second-degree murder charges was still pending at the end of 2000.
• In June, eight prison guards accused of staging ''gladiator style'' fights among prisoners at Corcoran State Prison, California, between 1989 and 1995, were acquitted of criminal charges after a jury trial. Guards had shot 31 prisoners, seven of them fatally, while breaking up the fights. Although the guards were acquitted, the state had earlier been forced to change its policies after an independent panel found that 80 per cent of the shootings had been unjustified. State legislative hearings in 1998 had found a pattern of brutality at the prison.

Death penalty
In 2000, 85 prisoners were executed in 14 states, bringing to 683 the total number executed since the US Supreme Court lifted a moratorium on executions in 1976. The USA continued to violate international standards by using the death penalty against the mentally impaired, individuals who were under 18 at the time of the crime, and defendants who received inadequate legal representation.

In January, the Governor of Illinois declared a moratorium on executions in his state owing to its ''shameful'' record of wrongful convictions in capital cases. His decision fuelled calls for executions to be halted elsewhere in the country, as concern about the fairness and reliability of the capital justice system grew. The New Hampshire legislature voted to abolish the death penalty, but the state governor vetoed the bill. Amidst a wave of national and international appeals, the Governor of Maryland commuted the death sentence of Eugene Colvin-El shortly before he was due to be executed in June, because of lingering doubts about his guilt. In November, the Governor of North Carolina commuted the death sentence of Marcus Carter hours before his execution, after 11 years on death row. The governor cited concern about the fairness of Marcus Carter's trial.

A Justice Department review of federal death sentences, made public in September 2000, found widespread geographic and racial disparities in the application of the federal death penalty nationwide. The first federal execution since 1963, scheduled to take place on 12 December, was stayed for six months by President Clinton pending more analysis of the Justice Department review.

Texas executed 40 prisoners during the year, a record in any one year. In December, the 150th prisoner was executed under the five-year governorship of president-elect George W. Bush.

Execution of child offenders

• Chris Thomas, Steve Roach, Glen McGinnis and Gary Graham were executed for crimes committed when they were 17. Gary Graham was put to death in Texas in the face of widespread national and international protest and serious doubts about his guilt. More than 80 prisoners remained on death row in 16 states at the end of the year for crimes committed when they were 16 or 17.

Execution of the mentally impaired

• Thomas Provenzano, who was executed in Florida in June, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. A judge found him competent for execution despite agreeing that the prisoner believed he was being killed because he was Jesus Christ. On 20 June, Thomas Provenzano was already strapped down for execution, with the lethal injection needles inserted, when a court issued a stay. Twenty-four hours later, Thomas Provenzano was put through the same ordeal and executed.

Ineffective legal assistance

• On 27 October, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated a lower court ruling that death-row inmate Calvin Burdine should get a new trial because his lawyer had slept during the original proceedings. The State of Texas argued that it had not been proved that the lawyer's sleeping had rendered him ineffective, and the Fifth Circuit court agreed. A dissenting judge described the case as one which ''shocks the conscience''.

Violation of the Vienna Convention

• A Mexican national, Miguel Angel Flores, was executed in Texas on 9 November, despite appeals for clemency from the Mexican and other governments. He was denied his treaty-based consular rights, as were most of the 90 foreign nationals on death row in the USA. In November, the International Court of Justice in The Hague heard arguments in a case brought against the USA by Germany following the execution of two German nationals in Arizona in 1999. The Court had not issued a ruling by the end of 2000.

Other concerns
In June the parole board denied parole in the case of Leonard Peltier, imprisoned since 1977 for the murder of two FBI agents. There were concerns about the fairness of the proceedings leading to his conviction. In December President Clinton announced that he was reviewing the case for a possible pardon. AI had repeatedly called on President Clinton to grant clemency in the case.

Mazen Al-Najjar, a Palestinian immigrant jailed for more than three years on the basis of secret government evidence, was released in December after a court ruled that a summary of that evidence, which purported to show his links with a terrorist group, was insufficient to justify his detention. New proceedings had been ordered into the case by a court in May which found that his due process rights had been violated. AI called for a ban on the use of secret evidence to detain people during deportation proceedings.

In August AI wrote to the government to express concern about the treatment of Dr Wen Ho Lee, who was shackled and held in solitary confinement in federal detention pending his trial on charges of leaking nuclear secrets to China. Dr Wen Ho Lee was released in September after pleading guilty to one of the charges against him; the other charges were dropped. 

 

Facts and Figures on the Death Penalty Amnesty International

1. Abolitionist and retentionist countries
Over half the countries in the world have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice.
Amnesty International's latest information shows that:

• 88 countries and territories have abolished the death penalty for all crimes;
• 11 countries have abolished the death penalty for all but exceptional crimes such as wartime crimes;
• 29 countries can be considered abolitionist in practice: they retain the death penalty in law but have not carried out any executions for the past 10 years or more and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions, making a total of 128 countries which have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.
• 69 other countries and territories retain and use the death penalty, but the number of countries which actually execute prisoners in any one year is much smaller.
   

2. Progress towards worldwide abolition
Over 40 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes since 1990. They include countries in Africa (recent examples include Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire), the Americas (Canada, Paraguay, Mexico), Asia and the Pacific (Philippines, Bhutan. Samoa) and Europe and Central Asia ( Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey, Turkmenistan).

3. Moves to reintroduce the death penalty
Once abolished, the death penalty is seldom reintroduced. Since 1985, over 50 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or, having previously abolished it for ordinary crimes, have gone on to abolish it for all crimes. During the same period only four abolitionist countries reintroduced the death penalty. Two of them - Nepal and Philippines- have since abolished the death penalty again. There have been no executions in the other two (Gambia, Papua New Guinea).

4. Death sentences and executions
During 2005, at least 2,148 people were executed in 22 countries and at least 5.186 people were sentenced to death in 53 countries. These were only minimum figures; the true figures were certainly higher.

In 2005, 94 per cent of all known executions took place in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the USA.

Based on public reports available, Amnesty International estimated that at least 1,770 people were executed in China during the year, although the true figures were believed to be much higher. A Chinese legal expert was recently quoted as stating the figure for executions is approximately 8,000 based on information from local officials and judges, but official national statistics on the application of the death penalty remained classified as a state secret.

Iran executed at least 94 people, and Saudi Arabia at least 86. There were 60 executions in the USA.

The total figure for those currently condemned to death and awaiting execution is difficult to access, although human rights researcher Mark Warren has estimated the number at between 19,474 and 24,546. These figures are based on information from human rights groups, media reports and the limited official figures available. Again, the true total is probably higher.

5. Methods of execution
Executions have been carried out by the following methods since 2000:

- Beheading (in Saudi Arabia, Iraq)
- Electrocution (in USA)
- Hanging (in Egypt, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Pakistan, Singapore and other countries)
- Lethal injection (in China, Guatemala, Philippines, Thailand, USA)
- Shooting (in Belarus, China, Somalia, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam and other countries)
- Stoning (in Afghanistan, Iran)

6. Use of the death penalty against child offenders
International human rights treaties prohibit anyone under 18 years old at the time of the crime being sentenced to death or executed. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and the American Convention on Human Rights all have provisions to this effect. More than 110 countries whose laws still provide for the death penalty for at least some offences have laws specifically excluding the execution of child offenders or may be presumed to exclude such executions by being parties to one or another of the above treaties. A small number of countries, however, continue to execute child offenders.

Eight countries since 1990 are known to have executed 47 prisoners who were under 18 years old at the time of the crime – China, Congo (Democratic Republic), Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, USA and Yemen. China, Pakistan USA and Yemen have now raised the minimum age to 18 in law, The USA and Iran have each executed more child offenders than the other six countries combined and Iran has now matched the USA's total since 1990 of 19 child executions.

Eight child offenders were executed in Iran in 2005. A 17-year old boy was executed in May 2006.


7. The deterrence argument
Scientific studies have consistently failed to find convincing evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than other punishments. The most recent survey of research findings on the relation between the death penalty and homicide rates, conducted for the United Nations in 1988 and updated in 2002, concluded: ". . .it is not prudent to accept the hypothesis that capital punishment deters murder to a marginally greater extent than does the threat and application of the supposedly lesser punishment of life imprisonment."

(Reference: Roger Hood, The Death Penalty: A World-wide Perspective, Oxford, Clarendon Press, third edition, 2002, p. 230)

8. Effect of abolition on crime rates
Reviewing the evidence on the relation between changes in the use of the death penalty and homicide rates, a study conducted for the United Nations in 1988 and updated in 2002 stated: "The fact that the statistics continue to point in the same direction is persuasive evidence that countries need not fear sudden and serious changes in the curve of crime if they reduce their reliance upon the death penalty".

Recent crime figures from abolitionist countries fail to show that abolition has harmful effects. In Canada, for example, the homicide rate per 100,000 population fell from a peak of 3.09 in 1975, the year before the abolition of the death penalty for murder, to 2.41 in 1980, and since then it has declined further. In 2003, 27 years after abolition, the homicide rate was 1.73 per 100,000 population, 44 per cent lower than in 1975 and the lowest rate in three decades.

(Reference: Roger Hood, The Death Penalty: A World-wide Perspective, Oxford, Clarendon Press, third edition, 2002, p. 214)

9. International agreements to abolish the death penalty
One of the most important developments in recent years has been the adoption of international treaties whereby states commit themselves to not having the death penalty. Four such treaties now exist:

• The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has been ratified by 60 states. Seven other states have signed the Protocol, indicating their intention to become parties to it at a later date.
• The Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty, which has been ratified by eight states and signed by one other in the Americas.
• Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights), which has been ratified by 45 European states and signed by one other.
• Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights), which has been ratified by 38 European states and signed by 6 others.
   

Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights is an agreement to abolish the death penalty in peacetime. The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights provide for the total abolition of the death penalty but allow states wishing to do so to retain the death penalty in wartime as an exception. Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights provides for the total abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances.

10. Execution of the innocent
As long as the death penalty is maintained, the risk of executing the innocent can never be eliminated.

Since 1973, 123 prisoners have been released in the USA after evidence emerged of their innocence of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death. There were six such cases in 2004, two in 2005 and one so far in 2006. Some prisoners had come close to execution after spending many years under sentence of death. Recurring features in their cases include prosecutorial or police misconduct; the use of unreliable witness testimony, physical evidence, or confessions; and inadequate defense representation. Other US prisoners have gone to their deaths despite serious doubts over their guilt. The state of Florida has the highest number of exonerations: 22.

The then Governor of the US state of Illinois, George Ryan, declared a moratorium on executions in January 2000. His decision followed the exoneration of the 13th death row prisoner found to have been wrongfully convicted in the state since the USA reinstated the death penalty in 1977. During the same period, 12 other Illinois prisoners had been executed. In January 2003 Governor Ryan pardoned four death row prisoners and commuted all 167 other death sentences in Illinois.

11. The death penalty in the USA

• 60 prisoners were executed in the USA in 2005, bringing the year-end total to 1004 executed since the use of the death penalty was resumed in 1977.
• Around 3,400 prisoners were under sentence of death as of 1 January 2006.
• 38 of the 50 US states provide for the death penalty in law. The death penalty is also provided under US federal military and civilian law.