KEY POINTS:
New Zealand is working with other countries to put a resolution to the United Nations seeking the abolition of the death penalty worldwide, Prime Minister Helen Clark said today.
Miss Clark made the announcement at an event in Parliament, attended by Amnesty International representatives, to highlight World Day Against the Death Penalty.
New Zealand's last execution occurred 50 years ago, in 1957 and capital punishment was removed from the statute books in 1961, except for the crime of treason. That provision was finally repealed in 1989.
Miss Clark said 90 countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes, 131 had done so in law or in practice and 66 retained it.
"Capital punishment is the ultimate form of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment," she said.
"The death penalty violates the right to life...it is known to have been inflicted on the innocent."
Miss Clark said the resolution would ask countries to implement a global moratorium on executions as a first step towards the eventual abolition of the death penalty.
In Parliament today Miss Clark and Amnesty International's New Zealand director Ced Simpson, walked along the Death Penalty Timeline, laid out to show the history of abolition initiatives.
The Sensible Sentencing Trust's spokesman Garth McVicar said while there are no calls yet to re-introduce the death penalty in New Zealand, this is simply another example of putting offenders' rights before those of victims.
Mr McVicar said he is shocked because the trust deals with victims who have had loved ones murdered, and there is no worse form of treatment than that.
He noted that two countries New Zealand is working at achieving free trade deals with - the United States and China - carry out the largest number of executions each year.
The last person executed in New Zealand was farmer Walter James Bolton, 68, convicted of murdering his wife Beatrice.
He was hanged in Auckland Prison on February 18, 1957, the 54th person to be legally put to death before capital punishment was abolished.
It was a messy business, and it was believed some of those in the death chamber had to swing on his legs after the hangman miscalculated and Bolton did not die instantly from a broken neck.
"The spectacle for those required to attend was so horrifying that they indicated they would boycott any further execution," Auckland crown prosecutor Simon Moore said in a speech to the Criminal Bar Association in 2000.
- NZPA, NEWSTALK ZB
