07/03/2013 Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Strasbourg, 07.03.2013 – “I warmly welcome last night’s 27-20 vote by the Maryland Senate to repeal the death penalty,” said Renate Wohlwend (Liechtenstein, EPP/CD), the general rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on abolition of the death penalty.
“I now urge the Maryland House of Delegates to join the tide of history and also to pass this law, which would finally open the door to ending executions in the state, making it the eighteenth US state to do so. This is a small but encouraging step in America’s long journey towards abolition.”
The 47-nation Council of Europe is a death-penalty-free zone.