UN High Commission for Human Rights Examines the Death Penalty

Today at UN Headquarters, Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck and death row exoneree

Kirk Bloodsworth

will appear on a panel scrutinizing the death penalty. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called on member states to abolish the practice. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the United States is fifth on the list of most confirmed executions for 2011, topped by China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Scheck and Bloodsworth will testify about the unacceptable risk of executing an innocent person. Seventeen people have been proven innocent through DNA testing after being sentenced to death in the U.S. Others were charged with capital murder but narrowly escaped the death penalty. Support for a moratorium has grown in the last five years, with five states abolishing the death penalty.

The Innocent and the Death Penalty

The Innocence Project’s

statement on the death penalty

For more about the global panel: ”

Moving Away from the Death Penalty

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