17/07/2013 Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Strasbourg, 17.07.2013 – Marina Schuster (Germany, ALDE), the Parliamentary Assembly’s General Rapporteur on the abolition of the death penalty, regrets the execution, on 16 July 2013 in Texas, of John Manuel Quintanilla, who had married a German national whilst on death row.
“In many parts of the world, executions are becoming a thing of the past. All the Council of Europe's 47 member states have either abolished capital punishment or instituted a moratorium on executions.
In the United States, the trend is toward fewer executions and death sentences, with more states repealing the death penalty. Texas, too, should feel encouraged to join the majority of states around the globe who reject the death penalty as a moral or practical response to the grievous, even heinous, crime of murder.
We call on the authorities to immediately suspend the use of the death penalty, as a first step toward full abolition,” Ms Schuster said.