PGA President, Dip. Margarita Stolbizer's Parliamentary declaration on the Saldaño case
President of Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA), Dip. Margarita Stolbizer (Argentina), denounces the use of the death penalty by the United States and calls for the commutation of death sentences to life imprisonment. She urges all 31 retentionist American States to respect the principles and norms upheld by the U.S. Constitution, as well as international instruments to which the United States has adhered (inter alia the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, and the American Convention of Human Rights).
It is necessary to emphasize our categorical and unconditional defense of the right to life and the integrity of the people, and the absolute rejection "per se" of any penalty adopted by a State-- of any kind and under any circumstance-- that impairs said fundamental rights inherent to the human condition. Relevant United States authorities have the opportunity to take steps in this direction in the Saldaño case.Dip. Margarita Stolbizer,(Argentina)
[Read Dip. Margarita Stolbizer's Parliamentary declaration here for more details on the Saldaño case.]
Dip. Stolbizer is joined by PGA member parliamentarians around the world who express concern about the serious fundamental human rights violations of individuals who have been sentenced to death, as the death penalty constitutes a cruel and unusual punishment, and violates due process as well as the principle of equality before the law (Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution). The methods used to carry out capital punishment sentences have been considered to amount to torture as there have been recent malfunctions of lethal injection chemicals used for executions in the US which have resulted in physical pain and suffering. When death sentences are executed they are irreversible by definition, and they deprive individuals (the convicted person and also the victims, who want to see justice for the real perpetrators) and the State of any possible form of remedy to human errors. Such errors may affect judicial determinations by the Judges and juries sitting in any given Court-case: when such errors occur and the death penalty is applied, the justice system perpetrates a supreme injustice and a disservice to society.
Moreover, as revealed by scientific studies, the death penalty has no deterrent effect. In addition to a wide consensus among criminologists that the imposition of the death penalty does not deter the commission of future crimes in the psychological attitudes of offenders, empirical statistical evidence shows that the murder rate in abolitionist states within the US is lower than that of retentionist states. As late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote in his concurrent opinion Furman v. Georgia (1972), the evidence shows no correlation between the existence of capital punishment and lower rates of capital crime... no alternative but to conclude that capital punishment cannot be justified on the basis of its deterrent effect.
About PGA
Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA), a non-profit, non-partisan international network of legislators with approximately 1400 members in 142 countries, informs and mobilizes parliamentarians to advocate for human rights and the rule of law, democracy, human security, non-discrimination, and gender equality. PGA’s Campaign for the Abolition of the Death Penalty advocates for the prohibition of the death penalty worldwide and to the emergence of an international legal norm prohibiting capital punishment.
