U.S. Votes No, as Record Variety of Nations Adopt UN Resolution for Global Moratorium on the Death Penalty

With the support of a record 125 nations, the United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling for a world moratorium on using the death penalty with a view towards its ultimate abolition. The United States voted no, placing it in the corporate of Iran, Iraq, Saudia Arabia, China, North Korea, and Vietnam.

The ultimate vote, taken on the 15^th anniversary of the General Assembly’s first adoption of a moratorium resolution on December 15, 2007, was 125 nations in favor, 37 opposed, and 22 abstentions. Support for a world execution moratorium topped the previous record of 120 attained in 2018 and matched in 2020. In November 2020, 120 nations supported the resolution, 39 opposed, and 24 abstained.

In a joint statement, Penny Wong and Arnoldo André Tinoco, the foreign ministers of Australia and Costa Rica who led the moratorium discussion, characterised the supermajority vote “of virtually two thirds” of the world’s nations as “historic.”

“The record level of support for the resolution shows that nearly all of Member States agree this brutal and inhumane punishment must end,” they wrote. “Already, 4 out of each five countries have abolished the death penalty or now not apply it.”

The U.S. vote dissatisfied death penalty opponents who considered the resolution a serious opportunity for the Biden administration to take motion to advance the President’s campaign pledge to work to finish the death penalty.

Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, who signed into law the bill abolishing the death penalty in Maryland in 2013 and now serves as a commissioner on the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, urged Biden to support the moratorium resolution. “All of America’s European allies, every country within the Western Hemisphere and a fast-increasing variety of African nations might be amongst th[e] super-majority” supporting the resolution, he wrote in a December 12 commentary in America Magazine. “Why then would President Biden—who has done a lot to repair America’s alliances abroad—have us side with Iran, Saudi Arabia and North Korea in voting for continued use of the death penalty on this planet? … It’s time for America to stop giving political cover on the world stage to Iranian and Saudi executions.”

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of greater than 230 national organizations, wrote to President Biden upfront of the vote advocating support for the moratorium or, in the choice, that the U.S. abstain. Its letter, co-signed by 48 other organizations, said that “[a]ny criminal-legal system truly dedicated to the pursuit of justice should recognize the humanity of all who encounter it and never sanction using a discriminatory practice that denies individuals their rights, fails to respect their dignity, and stands in stark contrast to the elemental values of our democratic system of governance.” The continued use of the death penalty in the US, the Leadership Conference wrote, “flouts human rights laws and norms.”

Moratorium resolutions have been introduced in each two-year session of the U.N. General Assembly since 2007. In its first 12 months, it passed 104-54 and has gained additional support every time since. The U.S. has consistently opposed the resolution.

Prior to the ultimate vote this session, the U.S. Mission to the UN wrote a letter
to the committee chair setting forth the premise for its opposition to the resolution. The U.S. diplomats wrote: “the last word decision regarding these issues should be addressed through the democratic processes of individual Member States and be consistent with their obligations under international law. International human rights law establishes clearly that Member States may, inside certain established parameters, use [the death penalty] …. Accordingly, the U.S. doesn’t understand the lawful use of this manner of punishment as contravening respect for human rights, each because it pertains to the convicted and sentenced individual in addition to the rights of others. Those states wishing to abolish the death penalty inside their jurisdiction may decide to ratify the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR.” The letter urged U.N. Member States to as a substitute “focus their attention toward addressing and stopping human rights violations which will result from the improper imposition and application of capital punishment.”

In a column in Verdict Justicia, Amherst College professor Austin Sarat criticized the U.S. response as “legalistic” and said it “obscures the problem in principle. America should acknowledge that the death penalty can’t be squared with a commitment to human rights. It should support the moratorium resolution wholeheartedly,” he wrote.

“It’s time for [President Biden] to place this country on record as committed to ending the death penalty,” Sarat wrote. “Doing so would send a robust signal of where he wants to guide the country on this issue and in addition would lend support to groups working to finish the death penalty each on this country and in nations like Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea, and Iran which still use it. … If we don’t accomplish that, we’re giving aid and luxury to the very regime whose acts we denounce when that regime carries out its most brutal deeds.”