DEATH PENALTY
WHEN LIFE GENERATES DEATH (LEGALLY)

RESOLUTION 1984/50 OF ECOSOC

The UN has adopted, on death penalty theme, this document, outcome of its Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which, in the spring reunion in 1984, has elaborated a series of principles to protect who could be death condemned.

1. In the States where death penalty is still in use, it can be applied only for the heaviest crimes - except the unintentional ones - which bring to letal or extremely heavy conditions.
2. Capital punishment can be comminated only for crimes for which this condemnation was provided when the crime was committed; if, after the crime, new law disposition provides lightest punishments, the condemned must benefit by them.
3. People minor than 18 years old at the time of the crime can't be sentenced to death; pregnant women, puerperae and people with mental deseases are excluded too.
4. Capital punishment can be comminated only if the accused's guiltiness is based on clear and convincing evidence which doesn't bring to reconstrucions unlike the facts.
5. Capital punishment can be executed only after the sentence of a competent court declared during legal proceedings, where it's possible to resort to the safeguards provided for a fair trial, such as it's sanctioned in the 14th article of the International convention about civil and politic rights, included the right to an adequate legal assistance during the whole proceedings.
6. Every sentenced to death must have the right of appeal to the highest grade court, and enterprises must be undertaken to ensure that these appeals will arrive to the right authorities.
7. Every sentenced to death must have the right to ask mercy or the commutation of the penalty; amnesty, mercy or commutation of the penalty can be conceded in all cases of capital punishment.
8. The sentence can't be executed during a trial of appeal or a request of mercy or commutation of the penalty.
9. If the sentence is finally executed, pains as light as possible must be inflicted to the condemned.