PREVENTION AND CONFLICT

The Enigma of the ‘Most Serious’ Offenses

This working paper is part of the Extrajudicial Executions Series. 

The paper deals with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights’ provision that ‘in countries which have not abolished the death penalty, sentences may be imposed only for the most serious crimes ….’ Situating the provision in the context of its drafting, the paper clarifies that, while its ambiguity reflected a lack of consensus regarding the particular crimes for which capital punishment was prohibited, it served as a ‘marker’ for the policy of moving toward abolition through restriction, encouraging a subsequent process of dynamic interpretation.

The paper goes on to describe how the situation as regards the scope and practice of capital punishment has changed since the provision was drafted, necessitating a constant reappraisal of the meaning that should be attached to the concept of ‘most serious crimes’.

The paper then traces the abolition of capital punishment in the United Kingdom and the part played by the failed attempt to define, within the crime of murder, a category of the ‘most serious’.

The paper concludes with a discussion of the necessity for open review, research and publication of statistics on the use of the death penalty so as to inform the public of the manifold problems of the enforcement of capital punishment within a legal structure that is seeking to embrace the concepts of the rule of law and respect for human rights.

2006. Roger Hood, Emeritus Professor of Criminology, University of Virginia School of Law; Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College; Oxford University.