Capital punishment remains the mandatory punishment in Trinidad and Tobago for murder and for treason.

Thus, it appears that during the period 1999 2003, further progress has been made in reducing the range of offences subject to capital punishment and in the further elimination of mandatory capital statutes.

During the period under review, there have been a number of successful legal challenges to mandatory death sentences.

Crimes against children such as sexual abuse, torture and forced labour, and offences resulting in death or disability, could entail capital punishment.

In Morocco, the death penalty is mandatory for eight types of homicide, including beating and wounding leading to death without intention and perjury leading to a death sentence against an innocent person .

As regards the retentionist countries that replied to the seventh survey, Bahrain noted that death was the mandatory penalty for certain offences against drug laws, although it should be noted that no persons had been executed for such an offence between 1999 and 2003.

Popular opinion in Puerto Rico is strongly against the death penalty and a coalition of religious, community organizations and political leaders have vowed to continue fighting attempts to impose capital punishment on the island.

3. Restrictions on the use of the death penalty

In 1987 the Philippines removed capital punishment from it legal order, so that no provision of criminal law included a possibility to sentence any person to death.

(a) The Covenant does not prohibit the death penalty, although it subjects its use to severe restrictions.

(c) To progressively restrict the use of the death penalty and reduce the number of offences for which it may be imposed

3. That, while the Covenant does not prohibit the death penalty, it refers to its abolition in terms which strongly suggest that abolition is desirable

As regards the imposition of death sentences by de facto abolitionist countries, they continued to be imposed in the Gambia, Mali and Togo during the period 1999 2003.

Yet in none of the responding countries was life imprisonment without the possibility of parole formally mandated as the mandatory or the maximum discretionary penalty to replace the death penalty.

Hands Off Cain 2004 Report, p. 35.

Moreover, the death penalty was imposed by the colonial administration even though it was anathema to the people of Puerto Rico.

Governments of countries in which the death penalty is still enforced are urged to deploy every effort that could lead to the restriction of its use with the aim of its abolition, the desirability of which has been affirmed by the General Assembly repeatedly as well as by the Commission on Human Rights in its resolution 1997 12.

Juristic organizations were said to be discussing the question of restriction of the scope of capital punishment or total abolition of the death penalty.

In Kenya, while the Justice Minister had declared the newly elected Government's intention to abolish the death penalty and the President had commuted all death sentences, the national Constitutional Conference decided in March 2004 to retain the death penalty for murder and the rape of minors, abolishing it for treason and robbery with violence.

Permanent Representative Annex A The Criminal Justice System of Singapore in Relation to Capital Cases

This violation is separate from and additional to the violation of article 6 established by the Committee on the basis of the mandatory nature of the death sentence.

469. The Special Rapporteur was informed that the death penalty is mandatory for, inter alia, the production and trafficking of heroine and discretionary in the case of possession of more than 100 grams of heroine.

Countries that were already completely abolitionist were asked whether they had any policy to promote abolition in other countries whether there had been any attempts to reintroduce the death penalty whether they had adopted a policy relating to extradition of persons charged with capital offences and what alternatives to the death penalty had been established.

1110 2002 (Rolando v. The Philippines), where the author had been convicted of statutory rape and sentenced to death, the Committee recalled its jurisprudence that the automatic and mandatory imposition of the death penalty constituted an arbitrary deprivation of life, in violation of article 6, paragraph 1, in circumstances where the death penalty was imposed without any possibility of taking into account the defendant's personal circumstances or the circumstances of the particular offence.

There has also been progress in abolishing the mandatory imposition of the death sentence in several countries and in restricting further the imposition of the death penalty on those under the age of 18 at the time of the offence and on those who are mentally retarded or suffering from mental illness.

16. Romania had consistently sought to strengthen its legal machinery and develop preventive mechanisms and a humane criminal justice system.

School attendance was obligatory and parents that prevented the children from attending school were punished.

It must again be emphasized that many countries do not publish official statistics on sentences and executions.

From 1987 to 1993, the legal order of the Philippines did not include a possibility to sentence a person to death, or even the institution of capital punishment.

1. That the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not prohibit the death penalty, although it subjects its use to severe restrictions

(f) A prohibition of retroactive criminal punishment and a prohibition of providing for the death penalty by law (sect. 69)

. application (optional, compulsory)

33. One of the principal punishments, along with criminal detention, fixed term imprisonment, life imprisonment and the death penalty, is control (art. 33).

The penalty is increased to between four and seven years of hard labour if the abortion leads to the woman's death (art.

Mandatory rules

(b) Countries that were abolitionist for ordinary crimes, meaning that the death penalty had been abolished for all ordinary offences committed in peacetime, such as those contained in the criminal code or those recognized in common law (for example, murder, rape and robbery with violence).

And he had created it exactly because mandatory sentencing laws were taking the judgment out of judging.

Ronald Jones served eight years of a death sentence for rape and murder of a 28 year old woman.

(f) Anyone sentenced to death shall have the right to appeal to a court of higher jurisdiction, and steps should be taken to ensure that such appeals shall become mandatory

The State party should limit the cases in which the death penalty is imposed, ensure that it is applied only for the most serious crimes, and officially abolish the sentence of death by stoning.

Under the provisions of the Military Code of El Salvador, the death penalty is mandatory for treason, espionage, rebellion and conspiracy to desert, but the judge has discretion to decide to apply it to a few of the most culpable ringleaders.

Ambiguity and subjectivity have no place in matters of life and death. Yet, when it comes to the imposition of capital punishment, both are prominent.

During the period 1999 2003, the policy of not extraditing persons who might face the death penalty to countries that retain it without a firm commitment that it will not be imposed nor the person concerned executed has been further developed and institutionalized.

For the first time, the Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution on capital punishment in which it called upon all States that have not yet abolished the death penalty progressively to restrict the number of offences for which the death penalty may be imposed .

Advisory opinion of 8 September 1983 on Restrictions to the death penalty.