“Amnesty International USA welcomes Gov. Wolf’s decision to halt executions. The world is moving away from this cruel and barbaric punishment…” Hawkins said in a statement on Friday. “The United States cannot truly be a global leader in human rights while the death penalty remains the law of the land.”
On Friday, Pennsylvania’s newly elected governor Wolf issued a moratorium on the death penalty, saying that the practice was ineffective, unjust and expensive, according to US media reports.
The moratorium will remain in effect until a report is made by the state’s legislative commission and will grant a reprieve to the death row inmate Terrance Williams, who was scheduled to be executed on March 4.
“Pennsylvania is now moving toward the national consensus that the death penalty is broken, costly and needs to be abolished,” Hawkins said in the Amnesty International statement.
Some executions carried out in the United States have reportedly caused the convicted person to suffer, as in a 2014 case where Dennis McGuire was killed by a previously untried drug mixture causing an unexpectedly longer period of time for him to die.
The death penalty is legal in 32 out of 50 US states. According to the US watchdog group Death Penalty Information Center, there were 3,035 people on a death row as of October 2014.
