Dear Editor,

In Spain, murderer and rapist José Franco de la Cruz was released from prison after serving 21 years of his sentence. Within months of his release, he was re-arrested by the police for the alleged sexual assault of a homeless girl. Repeat offenders should be banned from society; their sentence should be life imprisonment.

According to a study released by Human Rights Watch, the lethal injection, with which many are condemned to capital punishment, can cause huge suffering during one's final agonies — contrary to what death penalty proponents assert.

The USA and China lead the list of countries with the most death sentences. According to Amnesty International, in 2005, over 2,000 death row inmates were executed in 22 countries, and more than 5,000 people were prosecuted.

The death penalty seems not to worry political leaders, who are censured from this degrading practice. In the past 25 years, the number of countries which sentenced the condemned to the death penalty has declined by 50 per cent . Mexico and Liberia are the countries that recently eliminated the death penalty from its legislation.

In other countries, however, the death penalty is applied only in cases of urgency. The death penalty is applicable in nearly all African states, some Arab and Oriental countries, and Russia.

Critics assert that the death penalty is inhumane and turns the government into an executor, preventing the repair of judicial slips that can be irreparable.

While in some developed countries the death penalty has been banned from legislation, Japan is not only opposed to follow this example, but has revived the death penalty in recent years. This reactivation of hangings — a cruel and medieval practice for such an advanced technological nation as the Empire of the Rising Sun — has brought censure on Japan from various human rights advocacy associations.

It is also argued that the death penalty has been universally accepted throughout the ages. This is not a valid argument though, because slavery also existed and today its abolition is looked upon as a social and moral achievement.

Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Commission has ratified a resolution asking countries to ban the death penalty, and to protect the dignity and inalienable rights of every human being at every moment of his or her existence from conception till natural death.

Clemente Ferrer

Madrid, Spain

clementeferrer3@gmail.com