The death penalty and the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment 2012, para. 62

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Paragraph text: The death penalty cannot be applied for crimes committed by persons under 18 years of age. In Michael Domingues v. United States (2002), the Inter-American Commission canvassed international legal and political developments and State practice concerning the execution of juveniles and reached the conclusion that the state of international law had evolved so as to prohibit, as a jus cogens norm, the execution of persons who were under 18 years of age at the time of committal of their crimes. This is in line with the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee. In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the United States Supreme Court held that under the evolving standards of decency test, it was cruel and unusual punishment to execute a person who was under the age of 18 years at the time of the murder. Remarkably, in January 2012, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, one of the most persistent retentionist countries, adopted the Islamic Penal Code which established new measures to limit the sentencing to death of juveniles (A/HRC/21/29 and Corr.1, para. 8). The abolition of the death penalty for juveniles is based on the fact that their limited capacity has a direct impact on their effectively benefiting from the right to a fair trial and that it is inherently cruel to execute children and would therefore amount to a violation of the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Body: Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment

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