The UN Human Rights Committee, established under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ratified by the USA in 1992), has said: “The execution of a person whose guilt has not been established beyond reasonable doubt constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of life”.
Missouri accounts for 99 of the 1,595 executions in the USA since 1976, when the US Supreme Court upheld new capital laws. There have been 13 executions in the USA this year, two of them in Missouri. Since 1973 in the USA, at least 200 people have been convicted and sentenced to death and later exonerated, including four in Missouri. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty unconditionally in all cases.
