Most notable are the USA, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Somalia, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2021, recorded state-sanctioned executions totalled 579, while 2,052 death sentences were served worldwide.
Fifty-five countries still retain and implement the death penalty. On September 20, Equatorial Guinea became the latest country to abolish the death penalty when its president signed a new penal code into law. It will come into force in three months.
The 20 new death sentences imposed in 2022 are fewer than in any year before the pandemic, and just 2 higher than the record lows of the prior two years. With the exception of the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, the 18 executions in 2022 are the fewest since 1991.
In 1965, the death penalty for murder in Britain was suspended for five years and in 1969 this was made permanent. However, it was not until 1998 that the death penalty in Britain was finally abolished for all crimes. The last people executed in the UK were Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans on 13 August 1964.
All jurisdictions in Australia abolished the death penalty by 1985. In 2010, the Australian government passed legislation that prohibited the reintroduction of capital punishment.
Passage of the Abolition of the Death Penalty Act ended all capital punishment in New Zealand. The Cook Islands, which based its statutes on New Zealand law, formally retained the death penalty for treason until it was abolished in 2007. The death penalty was never used in the Cook Islands.
The death penalty is an inhuman and particularly cruel form of punishment. Germany is against capital punishment under any circumstances and, together with partners around the world, is resolutely campaigning for its abolition.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Russia, but is not used due to a moratorium and no death sentences or executions have occurred since 2 August 1996.
Excluding China, three middle Eastern countries — Iran (at least 314), Egypt (at least 83), and Saudi Arabia (65) — collectively accounted for 80% of the confirmed executions in 2021.
Today, executions in Japan are carried out by long drop hanging, which is intended to cause death by breakage of the neck.
Lisa Montgomery, White female, executed on January 13, 2021.
Unfortunately, most everything we know about the experience of death in the electric chair comes to us anecdotally and by trial and error; there have been no scientific studies of the possible pain and suffering associated with death by electric chair, although it has been assumed to be painless for a long time.
Although in 2022, World Coalition Against the Death Penalty announced that since 2007, at least 8,000 people were executed in China per year. The Chinese government has taken effective measures in order to limit use of the death penalty, proclaiming that it is doing this with the aim of completely abolishing it.
Saudi Arabia has a criminal justice system based on a form of Shari'ah reflecting a particular state-sanctioned interpretation of Islam. Execution is usually carried out by beheading with a sword and hanging but may occasionally be performed by shooting or firing squad.
The Donetsk People's Republic, a Russian occupied, partially recognized breakaway state in territory internationally recognized as part of Ukraine, introduced the death penalty in 2014 for cases of treason, espionage, and assassination of political leaders.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Vietnam for a variety of crimes. The Human Rights Measurement Initiative gives Vietnam a score of 4.4 out of 10 on the right to freedom from the death penalty, based on responses from human rights experts in the country.
Canada's last hangings were carried out in December 1962, although the de jure abolition of the death penalty did not come until 1976. However, every attempt to eliminate capital punishment has met with fierce opposition.
Under French law, it is forbidden to transfer people to a country where they could face the death penalty. The abolition of the death penalty was incorporated into the Constitution of the Fifth Republic by the Constitutional Act of 23 February 2007.
However, 32 offenses across 11 distinct pieces of legislation are still punishable by death, and Pakistan remains among the countries with the largest number of individuals under death sentence. According to the most recent official figures available, at the end of December 2021, 1,143 prisoners were on death row.
In 1988 Norway signed on to protocol 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights which bans the use of capital punishment in peacetime and ratified protocol 13 which bans all use of capital punishment whatsoever in 2005. Norway generally opposes capital punishment outside of the country as well.
In 2021, there were 55 people under sentence of death in South Korea. As of 2022, South Korea retains the death penalty under Article 41 of the Criminal Code but is classified as an "abolitionist in practice country," meaning that the death penalty has not actually been executed in the last ten years.
Over the last eight years, the number of death sentences and executions in Egypt has skyrocketed, with executions often carried out en masse. In 2020, the number of death sentences carried out tripled to over 130, including those convicted in both terrorism and regular criminal cases.
The last and most recent federal execution was of Dustin Higgs, who was executed on January 16, 2021. Higgs' execution was also the last under the presidency of Donald Trump.