Thompson v. Oklahoma

According to its own statement of purpose, Amnesty International (AI), sometimes called simply "Amnesty," is "a worldwide campaigning movement that works to promote all the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international standards." Among its campaigns are efforts to free "prisoners of conscience" or political prisoners; fair trials for all political prisoners; and abolition of the death penalty.

Amnesty opposes capital punishment for a number of reasons, holding that it is "cruel, inhuman and degrading," and violates the right to life; that innocent people can be killed, and since it is irrevocable, there can be no correction of the error; that it does not deter crime to any greater degree than other forms of punishment; that by committing an execution, the state is in effect sponsoring violence; and that capital punishment is often used as a weapon against minority groups and those opposed to the government.

The group reports that in 1996, more than 4,200 prisoners were executed worldwide, a staggering proportion of which--3,500--were killed in China. (And those are only the executions that have been reported.) China, the Ukraine, the Russian Federation, and Iran accounted for 92 percent of all executions in 1996. On the other hand, 25 countries have abolished the death penalty.