DEATH PENALTY
WHEN LIFE GENERATES DEATH (LEGALLY)

INTERAMERICAN CONVENTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The Interamerican convention of human rights, subscribed in 1969 and come into force in 1978, said that political crimes can't be punished with death penalty. Here's what the 4th article says:

1. Everyone is entitled to his own life. This right must be protected by the law and, on principle, from the conception. Nobody must be arbitrarily deprived of his life.
2. In the States where death penalty is still in use, it can be comminated only for the heaviest crimes, after the emanation of a final verdict, by a competent court, in conformity with the law which regolates this kind of sanction, promulgated before the perpetuation of the crime. The resort to this kind of condemnation doesn't extend to the crimes for which it isn't now applied.
3. Death penalty mustn't be restored where it has been abolished.
4. Death penalty can't be applied for political crimes or relative crimes.
5. Death penalty mustn't be comminated to the young people under 18 or to the old people over 70, at the time of the crime, or to pregnant women.
6. The death condemned is entitled to ask amnesty, mercy or commutation of the pain, which can be conceded in all cases. Death penalty can't be applied when the condemned is waiting for the answer of the competent authority for the question above.

A death sentence can't be executed before the end of the appeal procedures or, if that is, of the question of mercy or suspension.