I am writing in response to Abdul Rahman Abdul Talib's claim ( Apostasy - no justification for Islam to change policy ) that "scientific proof has shown that capital punishment is effective in curbing violent crime much to the embarrassment and dismay of the Europeans". I think this is a serious misrepresentation of the facts with regards to capital punishment.

In reality, scientific studies have consistently failed to find convincing evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than other punishments. The most recent survey of research findings on the relation between the death penalty and homicide rates, conducted for the United Nations in 1988 and updated in 2002, concluded: ". . .it is not prudent to accept the hypothesis that capital punishment deters murder to a marginally greater extent than does the threat and application of the supposedly lesser punishment of life imprisonment."

Reviewing the evidence on the relation between changes in the use of the death penalty and homicide rates, a study conducted for the United Nations in 1988 and updated in 2002 stated: "The fact that the statistics continue to point in the same direction is persuasive evidence that countries need not fear sudden and serious changes in the curve of crime if they reduce their reliance upon the death penalty".

Recent crime figures from abolitionist countries fail to show that abolition has harmful effects. In Canada, for example, the homicide rate per 100,000 population fell from a peak of 3.09 in 1975, the year before the abolition of the death penalty for murder, to 2.41 in 1980, and since then it has declined further.

In 2003, 27 years after abolition, the homicide rate in Canada was 1.73 per 100,000 population, 44 per cent lower than in 1975 and the lowest rate in three decades. Although this increased to 2.0 in 2005, it remains over one-third lower than when the death penalty was abolished.

With regards to his statement that "the Americans clearly support capital punishment" it must highlighted that in 2004, New York's highest court found the state's death penalty statute unconstitutional. In 2006, the New Jersey legislature imposed a moratorium in that state, and established a commission to study all aspects of the death penalty in New Jersey. In its final report in January 2007, the commission recommended abolition of the death penalty.

In January 2000, the former governor of the state of Illinois, George Ryan, declared a moratorium on executions. His decision followed the exoneration of the 13th death row prisoner found to have been wrongfully convicted in the state since US reinstated the death penalty in 1977. During the same period, 12 other Illinois prisoners had been executed. In January 2003, Governor Ryan pardoned four death row prisoners and commuted all 167 other death sentences in Illinois.

The death penalty diverts attention from consideration of alternative and more effective measures needed to prevent crime. Instead it fuels a culture of violence, is often applied in a discriminatory and arbitrary manner and has no place in a modern society respecting human rights values.

Amnesty International believes that the death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. It violates the right to life. It is irrevocable and can be inflicted on the innocent. It has never been shown to deter crime more effectively than other punishments.

The writer is executive director, Amnesty International Malaysia.