Readings - Why Is Texas #1 In Executions? | The Execution | FRONTLINE | PBS WATCH SCHEDULE TOPICS ABOUT FRONTLINE SHOP TEACHER CENTER There are many legal and cultural explanations for why Texas executes far more people than any other state and is doing so at a pace that has no parallel in the modern era of the death penalty in the U.S. What follows is a summary of the analyses. Texas has become ground zero for capital punishment. Between 1976 (when the Supreme Court lifted its prohibition on the death penalty) and 1998 Texas executed 167 people. Next in rank was Virginia which executed 60 during the same period. Why do capital murder cases proceed through the Texas state court system with a speed unimaginable in other parts of the country? Brent Newton, in an article entitled "Capital Punishment: Texas Could Learn a Lot from Florida," [1] argues that there are three procedures unique to the state's judicial system that enable it to execute convicted murderers with astonishing frequency: 1. Texas' appellate judges are elected to office and hence serve according to the pleasure of the public. Not surprisingly, they require a record of toughness on criminals in order to win re-election.

Also, there are many indications that elected appellate judges generally are of a lesser quality than their appointed counterparts in other states. Newton even claims that these elected judges do not carefully consider the complexities of each specific death penalty case. As evidence, Newton argues that "[e]specially during the past few years...the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has refused to publish most of its decisions in death penalty cases, including many cases that discuss important issues of first impression. Often these opinions take positions entirely inconsistent with prior decisions by the court and fail to mention the conflict. Generally speaking, there is a hit-and-mostly-miss quality in the Court of Criminal Appeals' death penalty decisions. Only a few judges during the past decade have been capable of or willing to write thoughtful, scholarly decisions, whether granting or denying relief." Additionally, Newton notes that these judges tend to dismiss habeas corpus appeals even in cases where there appears to be glaring unanswered questions about the defendant's guilt. 2. Texas does not have a public defender system for indigent defendants, and instead relies upon court-appointed lawyers who likely do not have experience in capital murder defenses or appeals.

Newton notes that incompetent defenses in capital murder cases are legion in Texas, and that, even in a death penalty appeal, bad lawyering is hard to prove. One decision, which turned down a defendant's habeas appeal due to bad lawyering, concluded that "[t]he Constitution does not say that the lawyer has to be awake" during trial proceedings. Furthermore, Texas was not obliged to provide lawyers free of charge to post-conviction habeas appeals until September 1, 1995, and the amount the state is willing to pay lawyers for these appeals is sufficiently low that most defendants still do not receive counsel for their appeals. 3. Until the early 1990s, Texas did not permit jurors to adequately consider mitigating evidence in the sentencing phase of a trial. Thus, there are a number of people currently on death row that may well not be there had information about their mental illness or youth been weighed. In addition, some other features of the Texas judicial system streamline the process between conviction and execution for death row inmates. Texas gives the bulk of clemency power to its Board of Pardons and Paroles and not to the governor.

Indeed, the Board must vote to recommend commutation in order for the governor to grant clemency. Stephen E. Silverman examined the impact of this procedure on the frequency of executions. In a law review note, entitled "There is Nothing Certain Like Death in Texas: State Executive Clemency Boards Turn a Deaf Ear to Death Inmates' Last Appeals," [2] Silverman argues that the Supreme Court appears to affirm the constitutionality of curtailing repeated habeas appeals in part because of the existence of executive clemency. However, the Governor of Texas' inability to grant clemency himself is an unconsidered loophole in the procedural safeguards that the Court cited in its argument. In other words, Texas--as well as eleven other states--can execute inmates who might have been granted executive clemency had the governor had the power to do so. Silverman thus concludes that "[t]he assertion by three Justices of the United States Supreme Court that state clemency procedures adequately protect against executing those later able to make convincing claims of innocence may not be accurate. Even though only twelve states that provide for the death penalty require some sort of panel decision to grant clemency, these tend to be states with the most aggressively enforced capital murder laws.

The dilution of responsibility that operates as a consequence of giving no single person the power to commute a death sentence could tend to reduce the chances for the condemned to have an opportunity to have his clemency appeal receive meaningful consideration." Moreover, Jordan Steiker, of the University of Texas Law School, notes that execution dates in Texas are set by the trial judge, not by the governor, thus removing an informal power of clemency. The governor is unable simply to not assign an execution date. Many governors in other states have that power. More generally, Steiker points out that Texas, unlike many other states, has worked out the statutory and procedural "kinks" in death penalty cases and appeals. In particular, Texas' 1995 law expediting state appeals has successfully cut down the time between conviction and execution. [3] He argues that Texas doesn't sentence more people to death than a number of other states, but it executes a higher percentage because many other states' procedures have not been fully tested and affirmed. Steiker believes that other states will soon catch up with Texas' execution rate.

Indeed, Virginia came relatively close to matching Texas' rate in 1998: Texas executed 20 individuals, and Virginia executed 13. Finally, it bears noting that the 5th Circuit of the Federal Court of Appeals is strongly pro-death penalty, and hence places extremely few roadblocks to executions in the states over which it has jurisdiction. In comparing the Fifth Circuit with the neighboring Ninth Circuit (which has jurisdiction over California and other Western states), Michael Sharlot, dean of the University of Texas Law School, states that "The Fifth Circuit is a much more conservative circuit. It is more deferential to the popular will." [4] Some have speculated that the Texas execution rate also reflects a heritage of frontier justice coupled with modern urban crime. However, James W. Marquart, Sheldon Ekland-Olson, and Jonathan R. Sorensen offer a more complex thesis.

In their book, The Rope, the Chair, and the Needle: Capital Punishment in Texas, 1923-1990, [5] they argue that Texas' execution rate reflects the Southern "cultural tradition of exclusion," and that "[s]uch exclusion was a basic element of the legacy of slavery." In other words, the South has a cultural tradition of dehumanizing certain groups of people, which has made it easier for Southerners to separate themselves from those who do not adhere to the normal social (and in this case, legal) code. The authors argue that this cultural tendency accounts for the fact that, in 1992, "the states in the former Confederacy accounted for approximately 90 percent of the total executions in the first two decades following Furman [v. Georgia]." [6] The authors argue that Texas provides the clearest case study to help explain this larger Southern phenomenon. One way they show how Texas' current execution rate continues certain social norms of the former Confederacy is by exploring the historical relationship between state-sanctioned executions and illegal lynchings.

Lynching, in their interpretation, did not represent justice but rather the clearest way to exclude someone (or, implicitly, a whole group) from society. A member of a society who breaks the law experiences the force of justice; the representative individual who is forcibly rejected by, or excluded from, society is lynched. Based on this understanding of lynching, their findings are compelling: there is a direct, inverse relationship between executions and lynchings over the course of the twentieth century. Executions simply replaced lynchings as the accepted way to sate the popular (white) need to "dehumanize" or "exclude" certain groups from normal society. If lynchings reminded white folk and black folk alike who was an "insider" and who was an "outsider"--who was "us" and who was "them"--then executions were implemented to serve the exact same purpose. How could the coldly bureaucratic and legalistic execution serve the same socio-cultural purpose as the heated, violent and carnival-like lynching? The authors' argument is quite complex. The end of the Civil War undermined the disenfranchisement of blacks that had characterized the ante-bellum South.

Lynchings had been a tool white Southerners used to combat their insecurity about the status of blacks. However, white insecurity diminished as the Southern states enforced segregation and so it was only natural that "local mobs gave way to centralized state-sanctioned executions." The authors thus claim that lynchings in Texas (and across the South) declined in the early twentieth century because "the enactment of Jim Crow and related disenfranchising legislation, buttressed by the Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896," codified and enforced the social and cultural demands that had often culminated in lynchings. Of course, Texas now executes a far wider racial and ethnic mix of individuals than African-Americans. How, then, could it be that Texans and Southerners in general continue to approach society in such a provincial and exclusivist way? Indeed, the authors recognize that we can no longer simply regard the Southern predisposition toward the death penalty as a continuation of the ideals of the Confederacy.

The authors claim that the shift to state-sanctioned executions and away from lynchings now also reflect the success of the civil rights movement to "redefine the boundaries of 'place' in a more inclusive fashion." Thus, the authors conclude, Texas' support for state-sanctioned executions both reflects the continuing legacy of slavery on cultural beliefs, as well as the transformation of Southern cultural beliefs due to the civil rights movement. They portray this paradoxical development in the following way: Texas (and Southern states generally) still executes a lot of people, but there now is a greater regard for the defendant's rights. They argue that "this broader attention to the protection of rights, along with the associated hesitancy to exclude individuals from the life-protecting boundaries of the community, are specifically evidenced in the three trends [of] in the post-Furman years: decreased sentencing disparities, narrowed locus of discrimination, and lengthened time from conviction to execution." Texas' current execution policy, then, reflects the continued struggle between the Old and New South. And, needless to say, that cultural struggle will continue for the foreseeable future. Ned Walpin is research associate for FRONTLINE ONLINE.

[1] Texas Lawyer, February 26, 1996. [2] 37 Ariz. L. Rev. 375 [3] This law sets significant time constraints on applications of habeas appeals, and it limits the number of appeals a defendant can make. [4] As quoted in Robert Bryce, "Why Texas is Execution Capital," The Christian Science Monitor, December 14, 1998. [5] Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. The percentage declines slightly when one tallies all executions from 1976-Jan 1999. High executioners | The Economist High executioners China executes many more people than anywhere else. Changes to its laws may reduce a grim total Jul 28th 2010 Tweet CHINA executes more of its own citizens than any other country, and more than all others in the world combined. “Thousands” of Chinese were executed in 2009 according to Amnesty International's annual study , which states that an exact number is impossible to determine because information on the death penalty is regarded as a state secret. But this gruesome record may yet change.

The National People's Congress is reported to be reducing the number of offences that are punishable by execution. Among the crimes that currently carry the death penalty are bribing an official and stealing historical relics. Related items The US executes more people every year than Yemen, Sudan and Afghanistan. | Public Radio International The US executes more people every year than Yemen, Sudan and Afghanistan. yemen_deathpenaltyg.jpg Today is International Human Rights Day. So here in the United States, it’s worth revisiting a debate that nearly every other developed nation has already sorted out: Is it a human right NOT to be legally murdered by your own government? The United Nations thinks so. In February, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said , “Capital punishment is inconsistent with the mission of the United Nations to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights and the dignity and worth of the human person.” The UN has long pushed for global abolition of capital punishment. Since 2007, the General Assembly has approved four separate resolutions calling on member states to accept an international moratorium. Of the 190-plus member states, about 150 have eliminated the death penalty or no longer practice it.

Even Russia has a moratorium that’s been in effect since 1996. And that leaves the rest — the countries that shoot, hang, lethally inject, and behead people as punishment for their alleged crimes. Amnesty International documents capital punishment around the globe and publishes its findings in an annual report that ranks the world's states by the number of people they execute annually. The most recent report came out in April and covered the calendar year of 2012. We will have to wait a few months for the new report to tell us all about state murder in 2013. For now, here are the most up-to-date statistics on capital punishment across the globe. In 2012, 21 countries executed people. Here are the top 10 killers. 1) China The remains of South African Janice Linden, a woman executed in China after a drug smuggling conviction in 2011 (Getty Images) Executions: 3,000 (estimate) Executions are considered state secrets in China, so it’s difficult to estimate statistics. Amnesty doesn’t even try anymore, except to say that the number is in the thousands.

NPR reported the number for 2012 at about 3,000. That’s a huge number, but it’s better now than in the 1990s, when China executed an average of 15,000 people per year. In addition to capital sentences for murder, many of the sentences were for drug trafficking and financial crimes. 2) Iran Iranian-Kurds protest the execution of Kurdish rebels in Iran, in the northern Iraqi Kurdish city of Arbil, on Oct. 31. (Getty Images) Executions: 314+ (the “+” indicates that Amnesty suspects the number might be much higher) Iran is one of several countries that Amnesty singles out for using torture to extract confessions that often lead to execution. Some of these “confessions” are broadcast on state television. 71 percent of the state-acknowledged executions in 2012 were for drug charges. Other non-murder executions were for adultery, sodomy, apostasy, and crimes against the state. Two men received death sentences for third offenses involving drinking alcohol.

The election of President Hassan Rouhani has some in the west hoping for better foreign relations with Iran and for more attention to human rights at home. The latter’s not looking so good. The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center estimates that Iran has so far executed 529 people in 2013. Three hundred of them took place after Rouhani came to power. Iran’s use of the death penalty attracted global attention of an offbeat sort in October of this year, when a man identified only as “Alireza” survived his prescribed hanging. The Iranian judiciary decided to spare him a second execution attempt. 3) Iraq An Iraqi man walks past a billboard depicting the fall of executed dictator Saddam Hussein. (Ahmad al-Rubaye/Getty Images) Executions: 129+ Another lasting triumph of the US invasion... If civil society means executing people, as it does in the United States, then perhaps we can say “Mission Accomplished” when it comes to Iraq. Executions in Iraq nearly doubled in 2012 from 2011. This year, as of early November, Iraq has already executed 132 people according to official state-issued numbers.

That includes 42 executions over a span of two days in early October. Like Iran and some other countries on this list, Iraq has a serious torture problem. Amnesty reports that Iraqi interrogators in 2012 beat suspects with cables, suspended them by their arms, burned their faces with cigarettes, and administered electric shocks. Whatever gets the confession. Again, some confessions are televised. And then the confessors are executed. 4) Saudi Arabia Lebanese activists protest outside the Saudi embassy in Beirut on April 1, 2010 (Anwar Amro/Getty Images) Executions: 79+ Saudi Arabia is a close ally of the United States and a fellow fan of capital punishment. Saudi Arabia’s claim to fame when it comes to capital punishment is that most of its prisoners are executed by public beheading. Amnesty describes one 2012 case in which a Sudanese man was beheaded, his head sewn back onto his body, and then his body hung from a pole. Non-murder executions in 2012 included sorcery, rape, and aggravated robbery. Defendants rarely received legal counsel or representation. The Saudi execution of foreign nationals is an especially troubling trend for observers.

Twenty-seven of the 79 people executed in 2012 were foreign nationals. Foreign maids are a particularly at-risk group. They are isolated, have few financial or political resources, and remain trapped in massively imbalanced power relationships with their employers. In January, Saudi Arabia beheaded a 24-year-old domestic worker from Sri Lanka named Rizana Nafeek . The charge was for murdering an infant that was under her care. She insisted until her death that the infant had choked to death. 5) United States Demonstrators wait as they call for Georgia state officials to halt the scheduled execution of Troy Davis. (Getty Images) Executions: 43 What's there to say? Some lowlights: Amnesty notes the “discriminatory application” of capital punishment in the United States. As we know, you're more likely to be put to death if you are a person of color and/or poor. In 2012, the United States was the only country in the Americas to execute prisoners. Japan and the United States were the only member countries of the G8 to execute prisoners in 2012.

And 174 of the 193 member states of the United Nations did not execute a prisoner. Texas led the way with 15 executions, followed by Oklahoma (6), Mississippi (6), Arizona (6). At the time of the report, there were 3,170 people on death row. Things look mixed going forward. Only nine states carried out executions in 2012 compared to 13 in 2011. And Connecticut abolished the death penalty, making it the 17th abolitionist state, and the 5th state since 2007. Still, the United States has executed 36 prisoners so far in 2013, making it unlikely to match last year's total but still killing more than its global share. Most recently killed was Jerry Martin , an inmate sentenced to death for killing a guard while attempting a prison escape in 2007. Martin had been serving a 50-year sentence for attempted murder. He became the 16th prisoner executed this year in the state of Texas. Yemeni policemen prepare Yahia al-Raghwa for execution in Sanaa on July 6, 2009.

(Getty Images) Executions: 28+ Yemen, along with Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia accounted for 99 percent of all executions in the Middle East. Amnesty is especially critical of Yemen for executing prisoners who were juveniles at the time of their crimes. Yemen is a signatory to the Convention of the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil Political rights, international agreements that say no-one who committed a crime before the age of 18 can be sentenced to death. That hasn’t stopped the country from executing juveniles. Many defendants have a hard time proving their age. About 80 percent of Yemenis have no birth certificate, and even in cases where a birth certificate was available, prosecutors and judges have ignored the law and imposed the death sentence. 7) Sudan Mary Serezina, 45, a Sudanese death-row inmate sentenced for the killing of a relative (Getty Images) Executions: 19+ Sudan has a proclivity for executing political activists, according to Amnesty. It also made news in 2012 when two women were sentenced to death by stoning after having been convicted of adultery.

The convictions were eventually overturned and the women were released." Mugshots of Afghans executed in prison in 2012. (Getty Images) Executions: 14 Afghanistan executed one-third of the prisoners the United States did in 2012. Remarkable, in a way. Like Iran and Iraq, Afghanistan has a serious torture problem. Non-murder executions in 2012 were for rape, kidnapping, and treason. Hamid Karzai’s government was in the news just last week, when a draft revision of Afghanistan’s penal code revealed that stoning would be the official punishment for adultery. After days of global outcry, the justice ministry announced that the sentence had been considered for the code but rejected. Protesters outside the Gambian embassy in Senegal on Aug. 30, 2012. (Seyllou/Getty Images) Executions: 9 Gambia renewed executions in 2012 for the first time in 27 years after its president, Yahya Jammeh, announced plans in August to execute every one of the country's 47 death-row prisoners by mid-September.

Soon after, nine prisoners were executed by firing squad on the same day, in secret. Authorities didn't notify families. They didn't return the bodies. They didn't even reveal where the bodies were buried. The location remains unknown. Global condemnation was swift. President Jammeh reinstated the moratorium on capital punishment before executing any of the remaining death-row prisoners. An execution room at the Tokyo detention house in Tokyo, 2010. (Jiji Press/Getty Images) Executions: 7 Like Gambia, Japan carried out death sentences in 2012 after a period of hiatus. Japan's break was just 20 months, but it was enough to stir hopes that the country was shifting away from capital punishment. That was until Japan hanged three men convicted of multiple murders. Since then, the country has executed 13 more people, and Amnesty is concerned about the escalation . So, curious where your country stands?

Countries with no death penalty Albania, Andorra, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bhutan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cambodia, Canada, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cote D'Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Holy See, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niue, Norway, Palau, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome And Principe, Senegal, Serbia (including Kosovo), Seychelles, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Timor-Leste, Togo, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Ukraine, United Kingdom

, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela.

Countries that are "abolitionist in practice" (no executions for 10 years or more) Algeria, Benin, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo (Republic of), Eritrea, Ghana, Grenada, Kenya, Laos, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mongolia, Morocco, Myanmar, Nauru, Niger, Papua New Guinea, Russian Federation74, Sierra Leone, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Tonga, Tunisia, Zambia.

Countries with the death penalty Afghanistan, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Botswana, Chad, China, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cuba, Dominica, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad And Tobago, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United States Of America, Vietnam, Yemen, Zimbabwe. While you are here... The work we do has never been more important — whether it’s because of “news” that might not be news at all or healing the deep divides in our country. Now more than ever, we need conversation, perspective and diverse voices. Will you support PRI in our efforts to create a more informed empathetic world?

Report: Executions rise in 2013, China tops the list - CNN.com Report: Executions rise in 2013, China tops the list By Sophie Brown, CNN Updated 4:16 AM ET, Thu March 27, 2014 Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds. Convicted murderer Adan Sheikh Abdi is tied to a post before being executed by firing squad in August, 2013 in Somalia. Story highlights Amnesty study says executions jumped by 15 percent in 2013 China executed more people than rest of world combined A dramatic rise in executions was reported in Iran and Iraq There's no evidence capital punishment deters crime, report says Virtual "killing sprees" in Iran and Iraq led to a spike in the number of executions globally last year, according to Amnesty International, at odds with a steady decline in the use of the death penalty around the world over the last two decades.

Executions by beheading, electrocution, firing squad, hanging and lethal injection rose by almost 15 percent in 2013 on the previous year, the organization said in its latest report on the death penalty released Thursday. China executed more people than any other country last year. Although Chinese authorities treat official execution statistics as a state secret, Amnesty International estimates thousands are killed under the death penalty every year, more than the rest of the world combined. Excluding China, executions rose to at least 778 last year, up from 682 in 2012. Iran came in second, with at least 369 put to death by the state, followed by Iraq (169), Saudi Arabia (79), and the United States (39). JUST WATCHED MUST WATCH Texas executes Mexican citizen 01:37 The United States was the only country in the Americas that performed executions, although use of the death penalty declined last year, to 39 executions from 43 in 2012. Texas accounted for more than 40 percent of all American executions. In total, 22 countries practiced capital punishment last year, one more than in 2012.

Four of those countries -- Indonesia, Kuwait, Nigeria and Vietnam -- resumed executions after a hiatus. Amnesty International could not confirm if executions took place in countries in conflict, but said it "cannot be excluded" that executions took place in Syria and Egypt. At the end of 2013, more than 23,000 people were on death row around the world. "The virtual killing sprees we saw in countries like Iran and Iraq were shameful," Amnesty International's Secretary General Salil Shetty said in a statement . He added, "those states who cling to the death penalty are on the wrong side of history and are, in fact, growing more and more isolated." Steady decline Despite "alarming levels of executions in an isolated group of countries," Amnesty noted that the majority of the world is abolitionist in law or practice. The use of the death penalty has declined in the last 20 years, and the number of countries enforcing the death penalty has fallen from 37 in 1993 to 22 last year -- evidence that executions are becoming "a thing of the past," the report said.

Some countries that performed executions in 2012, including Gambia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, suspended use of the death penalty last year. No executions were carried out in Europe and Central Asia -- marking the first time since 2009. Belarus -- the only country in the region that still has the death penalty -- did not execute anyone in 2013. In the Middle East and North Africa, many of those executed were convicted under "vague anti-terrorism laws," the report said. In Iran, where official figures indicate a rise in executions of 18% on 2012, Amnesty International said it had recorded "numerous cases" in which it appeared the death penalty had been used to oppress activities of Iran's ethnic minorities. Iraq saw an increase in executions of more than 30% compared to the previous year, the highest figure since 2003.

Most executions in recent years are thought to have resulted from convictions under an anti-terror bill that covers acts such as "provoking, planning, financing, committing or supporting others to commit terrorism." The report said new counter-terrorism laws proposed by authorities in Egypt would expand the scope of the death penalty, and could pose a particular concern for the Muslim Brotherhood movement, which authorities classified as a terrorist organization in December, 2013. On Monday, a court sentenced more than 500 supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsy to death for killing a police officer. Despite the high number of executions in China, there were "limited signs of progress," according to the report. China's Supreme Court announced an end to the practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners, and issued legal guidelines to ensure greater procedural protections in death penalty cases. JUST WATCHED MUST WATCH Syrians being tossed off buildings? 02:56 In Africa, some countries including Benin, Ghana and Sierra Leone moved closer to ending the death penalty through constitutional and legal review processes that "created real opportunities for the abolition of capital punishment." In Somalia, however, executions rose dramatically in Somalia from six in 2012 to 34 last year.

Death for theft, drugs, blasphemy Crimes that attracted the death penalty ranged from murder, robbery, drug trafficking, and corruption, to acts which Amnesty said should not be considered crimes at all, including "adultery," "blasphemy," and "sodomy." The report noted that many countries use "vaguely-worded political 'crimes' to put real or perceived dissidents to death." In North Korea, where the organization said at least 70 executions took place according to reliable reports, people were apparently executed for cannibalism, pornography, escaping to China and watching banned videos from South Korea. Public executions were carried out in Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Somalia, but in many instances executions took place in secret. Iranian authorities acknowledged executing at least 369 people in 2013, but credible sources reported "many hundreds" more" undocumented cases, the report said. In some countries, including Afghanistan, China, Iran, Iraq and North Korea, confessions were extracted through torture or other ill-treatment, according to Amnesty, and proceedings in most countries that still execute prisoners did not meet international fair trial standards. A deterrent?

In five countries, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia and South Sudan, prisoners sentenced to death were not informed of their execution beforehand -- neither were their family members or lawyers. Almost all countries justified the use of the death penalty as an alleged deterrent against crime, a position which Amnesty said was becoming increasingly "untenable and discredited." The organization, which opposes the death penalty in all cases, called on governments who "still kill in the name of justice" to suspend the use of the death penalty immediately, with a view to abolishing it. Death penalty: Top 5 countries to execute the most people - Pakistan - CSMonitor.com Death penalty: Top 5 countries to execute the most people Save for later Saved According to Amnesty International ’s annual Death Sentences and Executions report, at least 527 people were executed in 23 countries in 2010, plus thousands in China . The number of people executed worldwide since 2007 is more than 2,500. Here are the five countries registering the most executions since 2007: 5.

Pakistan Pakistan made the Top 5 despite a moratorium on executions imposed by the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party that prevented the government from executing anyone in 2009 or 2010. In 2007, 135 people were executed and 36 were in 2008. Despite the moratorium on executions, Pakistan continued to sentence people to death – 276 in 2009 and 365 in 2010 – and thousands of people remain on death row from previous sentences, as noted by Monitor correspondent Issam Ahmed Iran Human Rights | Amnesty International USA Amnesty International USA Victories Iran Human Rights Amnesty International continues to document serious human rights violations in Iran including detention of human rights defenders and other prisoners of conscience, unfair trials, torture and mistreatment in detention, deaths in custody and the application of the death penalty. Iran executes more people than any country in the world, other than China. Ethnic, religious and linguistic minority communities face persistent persecution. However, some signs of hope have appeared since the election of Hassan Rouhani in June 2013.

In September 2013, human rights attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh, on whose behalf Amnesty International activists and its partners campaigned since her arrest three years ago, was released from prison, along with other prisoners of conscience. Iran Human Rights Amnesty International continues to document serious human rights violations in Iran including detention of human rights defenders and other prisoners of conscience, unfair trials, torture and mistreatment in detention, deaths in custody and the application of the death penalty. Iran executes more people than any country in the world, other than China. Ethnic, religious and linguistic minority communities face persistent persecution. However, some signs of hope have appeared since the election of Hassan Rouhani in June 2013. In September 2013, human rights attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh, on whose behalf Amnesty International activists and its partners campaigned since her arrest three years ago, was released from prison, along with other prisoners of conscience. Human Rights Concerns For the past several years, Iranian authorities have been engaged in the brutal repression of Iranian civil society.

Targets include labor activists who seek to form independent trade unions, women's rights activists, in particular those involved with the Campaign for Equality who work for equitable treatment under family law, students, journalists, bloggers, and those who advocate for cultural rights for Iran's ethnic and linguistic minorities. Hundreds of people are in detention; many of those serving prison terms have been convicted in unfair trials before Revolutionary Courts on vague charges including "propaganda against the state" or "endangering the security of the state." Iranian authorities have used these vague charges to suppress the right of its citizens to peaceful expression and association. The Iranian government has also endeavored to prevent Iranians from accessing information by blocking internet sites and even harassing the family members of journalists for BBC Persian and VOA Persian, which continue to broadcast news into Iran. Many people have reported having been tortured in order to force them to make public confessions that can be used against them in legal proceedings. Some detainees - including Sattar Beheshti - have died in custody after being subjected to torture. Furthermore, Iran executes more people than any other country in the world except for China. Iran executed at least 544 people in 2012.

Iran is also one of the handful of countries in the world that continue to execute juvenile offenders. Most of the people executed have been convicted of drug-related offenses while many executions are carried out in public. Upcoming Iran Programs on Repression of Academic Freedom In anticipation of Amnesty's upcoming campaign on the persecution of students, scholars and scientists in Iran, AIUSA is holding two public programs: one at the New School University in New York on November 13 (in partnership with the New School's Center for Public Scholarship, Scholars at Risk, and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran and the other at Georgetown University in Washington on November 16 (in partnership with the Committee of Concerned Scientists, the American Physical Society, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran). Hundreds of students in Iran have been banned from continuing their higher education because of their political activities or involvement in peaceful expression of their opinions, while scholars are fired from their jobs or even imprisoned for their scholarly activities. Texas carries out landmark 500th execution - U.S. News U.S. News Texas carries out landmark 500th execution By U.S. News Email David J.

Phillip / AP Jean Wilkins Dember, 83, joins others Wednesday, June 26, as they protest the 500th execution in Texas outside the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit. Kimberly McCarthy was set to be executed Wednesday evening. By Sophia Rosenbaum, Staff Writer, NBC News Texas on Wednesday executed its 500th inmate since it reinstated the death penalty in 1982, passing a grim milestone in the state that has executed more prisoners than any other in the country. As a few dozen protesters gathered outside the prison in Huntsville, Kimberly Lagayle McCarthy, 52, was put to death by lethal injection at 6:37 p.m. (7:37 p.m. ET), according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, making her one of a small number of women to have been executed. John Hurt, a spokesman for the Texas prison system, told The Dallas Morning News that McCarthy joked with prison staff and was "not downcast" in her final hours. She was offered the same meal as other inmates: pepper steak, mashed potatoes with gravy, mixed vegetables and white cake with chocolate icing.

McCarthy, a former cocaine addict, was convicted of killing her 71-year-old neighbor during a 1997 robbery. She was found guilty of using a butcher knife and a candelabra to beat and stab retired college professor Dorothy Booth. Using the same knife, she severed Booth's finger to steal her wedding ring. McCarthy was granted a retrial by an appeals court in 2002 on the ground that police had obtained her confession illegally, but she was sentenced to death row again. Members of Booth's family say they don’t care about Texas' macabre tally, only about justice for their loved one. "The only significance for us is that Kimberly McCarthy, because of her crack cocaine addiction or her sociopathic personality, deprived us of Dorothy Booth," Randy Browning, Booth's godson, told The Dallas Morning News . "Whether it's the 500th or the 5,000th, it doesn't matter." Browning had said he planned to attend the execution Wednesday evening. A death row inmate is executed every three weeks in Texas, a rate that far exceeds that of any other state. Texas is the leader in executions in the U.S.

by about 400, with Virginia a distant second. Since the Supreme Court ruled on death penalty laws in 1977, Texas has accounted for 40 percent of the more than 1,300 executions nationwide. Despite a cultural shift away from the death penalty in many parts of the country, 32 states still allow it. The rate of executions has declined in recent years in Texas, as well. More than three dozen people were executed in 2000, but this year, McCarthy will be the eight person subjected to capital punishment. Reuters Kimberly McCarthy in an undated Texas Department of Criminal Justice photograph. But many Texans support the death penalty, according to a 2012 poll by the Texas Tribune and the University of Texas. Only 21 percent said they were opposed. Gov. Rick Perry is among the majority. "I think our process works just fine," Perry said in 2012 during his unsuccessful presidential bid. "You may not agree with them, but we believe in our form of justice." McCarthy will be the first woman put to death in the U.S. in more than three years and the 13th since the Supreme Court's ruling.

The last woman executed in the U.S. was Teresa Wilson Lewis in Virginia on Sept. 23, 2010. Related: On death row, Jodi Arias would be the rare woman In the past year, McCarthy’s execution had been pushed back twice, most recently in early April. Her attorney, Maurie Levin, continued to fight for McCarthy, but her latest appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was rejected Tuesday. Levin said black jurors were improperly blocked from McCarthy's trial, a claim the convicted woman made in her appeals. Follow @NBCNewsUS "The shameful errors that plague Ms. McCarthy’s case — race bias, ineffective counsel and courts unwilling to exercise meaningful oversight of the system — reflect problems that are central to the administration of the death penalty as a whole," Levin said. McCarthy's trial was decided by an all-white jury despite Levin's claim that four non-white jurors qualified. McCarthy is black, and Levin said the Dallas County jury selection process has a "troubling and long-standing history of racial discrimination in jury selection." There are currently 283 men and women on death row in Texas.

China Secret Executions Amnesty Report - Business Insider print Chen Xinyuan, left, from Taiwan, and five other convicted drug traffickers are escorted by the police after being sentenced to death at a public trial in Fuzhou, in China's Fujian province. AP Photo China is carrying out thousands of secret executions but refusing to report them, according to a report released this week by Amnesty International. Amnesty believes China executed several thousand people last year — more than all other countries put together — but its government won't confirm any exact numbers. The Chinese government continues to impose death sentences for crimes that don't warrant it under Chinese law, such as drug-trafficking or financial crimes, and after unfair trials, the report states. Mabel Au, director of the Hong Kong branch of Amnesty International, told Radio Free Asia that China stopped publicizing its execution numbers in 2008 or 2009, and that the group put together its tally by scouring official media reports and adding up the figures. She added that China also harvests organs for transplant from executed prisoners, but is working to stop the practice. And China holds the world record for the number of offenses punishable under the death penalty — 55.

L awyer Sui Muqing told RFA the government could begin phasing out the death penalty by reducing the number of capital offenses. However, the Chinese people oppose abolishing the death penalty because they see it as a way to punish corrupt officials, Muqing says. Officially, China's Supreme People's Court claims the number of executions has dropped by half since the court resumed reviewing death sentences in 2006. But most trials in China are closed to to the public , making it difficult for the media or human rights groups to investigate. Worldwide there were at least 682 executions last year , the group reports, and the top five countries were China, Iran (314), Iraq (129), Saudi Arabia (79), and the U.S. (43). Executions in Iraq have nearly doubled from 2011, when there were only 68 people put to death. However, except for the U.S., most of these countries are under-reporting executions, according to Amnesty.

China Executed 2,400 Prisoners Last Year Says Human Rights Group China Executed 2,400 Prisoners Last Year Says Human Rights Group By Madeline Grant On 10/21/14 at 10:46 AM Criminals are sentenced to death during an open trial in Zhuzhou, central China's Hunan province December 26, 2006. China Daily/Reuters World China Death Penalty Human rights Amnesty International China executed 2,400 prisoners last year, according to a report released on Monday by a leading US-based human rights group. The Dui Hua foundation, a San Francisco-based organisation which works to uphold human rights in China and America, estimated that approximately 2,400 people were executed in China in 2013, a 20% drop since 2012. The report added that the 2014 figure will be unlikely to change. Try Newsweek for only $1.25 per week Although the figure is a state secret, China is believed to execute far more people than any other country. Chinese prisoners are typically executed using lethal injection, and in some cases, by firing squads.

According to Amnesty International’s annual report on the death penalty, “excluding China, at least 778 people were executed worldwide” throughout 2013. Dui Hua’s estimate would place the number of executions in China at three times as many as the rest of the world put together. The Amnesty report also noted that their monitoring indicated death sentences “in the thousands”. However the organisation was unwilling to attempt more specific estimates due to the refusal of Chinese authorities to make statistics public. Chiara Sangiorgio, Amnesty International’s death penalty expert, told Newsweek that despite “some limited positive steps”, secrecy has made it difficult to evaluate the general situation in China. "The lack of transparency around the use of the death penalty makes it impossible to assess the true reality of capital punishment in the country, or indeed if there has been any ‘progress’ towards abolition,” she said. She added that capital punishment can still be granted for non-lethal crimes such as drug trafficking and embezzlement, which in the UK carries an average sentence of five years in jail.

The Dui Hua foundation said that they had obtained their statistics by analysing “data points” published in the Chinese magazine Southern Weekly that conform to information leaked to Dui Hua by a Chinese official earlier this year. China has moderated its use of the death penalty in recent years, and is thought to have executed fewer people following a 2007 decision to give the Supreme People's Court the authority to review all death sentences. In a landmark case in June this year, Li Yan, a Chinese woman who killed her abusive husband after suffering months of domestic violence had her death sentence overturned by the Supreme Court. In 2011, China also banned the use of capital punishment for offenders over the age of 75 and removed 13 offences from the list of 68 crimes punishable by death. However since the offences were all economic-related crimes which, in practice, rarely incurred the death penalty, the move was viewed as a token gesture in some quarters. Amnesty International deemed the law change “legal housekeeping”. Iran and Iraq follow China as the countries where the death penalty is most widely practiced, at second and third respectively.

According to Amnesty statistics at least 369 executions were carried out in Iran, and 169 in Iraq throughout 2013. Saudi Arabia (79) and the USA (39) take fourth and fifth place with Somalia (34) in sixth place.

Question: What country executes more people than any other?
Answer: China