The Economist 13/4/2013: La pena capital aún no ha muerto (en inglés)

Capital punishment Not dead yet
The death penalty declines, but too slowly for some
Apr 13th 2013 |From the print edition

ON APRIL 8th a court in Bali confirmed that Lindsay Sandiford, a British grandmother convicted of smuggling cocaine into Indonesia, had lost an appeal against the death sentence handed to her in January. Ms Sandiford, who may face a firing squad, remains one of the 23,000 or so condemned prisoners around the world. But the number of new death sentences decreased a little in 2012, according to a report which Amnesty International, a human-rights group, released on April 10th. Last year judges issued about 1,700 capital sentences, 10% less than the year before.

Those figures exclude China, which Amnesty removed from its reporting in 2009, for lack of information. Though China has reduced the number of capital crimes, more prisoners are executed there than in all other countries combined. Apart from China (and Syria’s battlefields), the charity recorded 682 executions in 21 countries. Three-quarters took place in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In Iraq the number of executions roughly doubled, to 129, of which 34 were carried out in one day.

America killed 43 criminals in 2012. That makes its executioners the world’s fifth busiest. The number is a lot lower than the 98 executions that took place in 1999, when American capital punishment peaked. Last April Connecticut became the 17th state to abolish the death penalty, and the fifth in six years. Several more are mulling the change.

The decline in American executions reflects a broader global trend. Last year Latvia became the latest of 97 countries to wipe the death penalty from its justice system. In a few recalcitrant places, capital punishment is holding steady or picking up. In most of the world politicians are smothering it.

From the print edition: International