United States - Report of the Secretary-General to the Human Rights Council - Call for Input - Death penalty - April 2025
Country: United States of America
Partners: World Coalition Against the Death Penalty
Issues: Death Penalty
Report Type: Call for Inputs
Miscarriages of justice in death penalty cases confirm that the death penalty does not make society safer. When criminal legal systems dedicate time and resources toward wrongful convictions and death sentences, they squander resources that they should be using to conduct fair and thorough investigations, uphold the right to a fair trial, address the underlying causes of crime, and provide support to crime victims. Miscarriages of justice are not typically the results of "simple human error." Rather, evidence demonstrates that official misconduct pervades cases that result in wrongful death sentences. Hence, efforts to reform procedures or improve reliance on scientific evidence will not address the root causes of miscarriages of justice. Abolition of the death penalty is the only way to prevent this arbitrary deprivation of life.
Exoneration does not erase the grave human rights violations that people who have wrongfully been sentenced to death experience. Moreover, exonerees continue to experience human rights violations after exoneration. Abolition of the death penalty will not prevent miscarriages of justice, but it will mitigate the unnecessary and extreme psychological and physical toll on survivors. In the interim, criminal legal systems must step up efforts to provide full remedies to people who survive death row and are exonerated.
