Abolished in France in 1981, the death penalty still made many victims in the world, from north to south. For the association together against the death penalty, the struggle should never stop. Explanations.
Paris, March 14, 2025, in front of the Lucie and Raymond Aubrac college, the students come and go to the heckling. At their age, it is difficult to stay focused for more than 30 minutes. Then a little lady in a rolling chair sneaks between the wide sweatshirts and the Raplapla backpacks, in a hesitant French she challenges teenagers, sitting in groups in the concrete courtyard. “Which tree do you know?” She asks, pointing to the few prisoners of the 4 walls. The roots of beech trees may be taken in cement, their branches full of buds stretch towards ether, full of hope. The American, Sunny Jacobs, knows this feeling: condemned to death in 1976 she spent 17 years in prison, including five years in isolation (Florida not having room for women in the corridor of death), before being innocent.
In the large conference room, dozens of chairs have been arranged and Sunny faces around fifty adolescents. young people have already exchanged on the subject with their teachers and a member of the association together against death (ECPM), they are shared – like what is happening in the society of adults. But facing Sunny, the arguments for the death penalty tend to lose in force. Sunny Jacobs not only survived a very particular trauma – survive his death sentence by society, having escaped the childhoods of her children – but she shows an extraordinary energy so that such injustice does not renew itself. With her husband, Peter Pringle, who died in 2022, also a former death sentence, they set up a center in Ireland, the Sunny Center, intended to receive and treat the survivors wherever they come from. The ECPM association is convinced of this: we can make lobby for the abolition of the death penalty with politicians, states, but witnesses like Sunny Jacobs or Kenyan, Pete Ouko, who was also in France in March, have a capital place, on the ground, to work as close as possible to citizens whose opinions are often modulated by news, various facts.
“Our witnesses are identified through associations, citizen defense groups who work on the subject of death row. We are very careful, in these interactions, to the psychological profile of people, because testifying can sometimes revive the trauma, answer questions from young people can be hard and violent. Our approach is not to exploit a weakened audience, “explains Aminata Niakate, lawyer at the Paris Bar, Paris Councilor and President of ECPM since 2020.” What I find impressive with these people is that they have gone 10, 20, 30 years to isolation, that they have sometimes lost all hope, but that they are so happy to get out that they do not demonstrate anger or resentment. They know in their flesh, the horror that it is, the death penalty, they survived, and it becomes the goal of the life they have left, to abolish it. They do it voluntarily! »»
A situation that improves each year
Each year, the association publishes a report to show how the abolition of the death penalty is evolving in the world. According to Aminata Niakate, “abolition is one of the rare human rights constantly increasing”: out of the 198 states, 80 % no longer performs. Whether countries have abolished or decided a moratorium on death penalties. Each year a new country is added to the list. “We consider that the continent where the abolition is advancing the fastest right now, it is Africa (with a downside in the DRC where the moratorium ended because of the context of tension). There are still countries where we execute due to homosexuality. China remains world champion of death penalties (even if the figures are secret-defense) ”! If the association has published this year a report devoted to Iran, it is because it is the country which executes the most in terms of proportion with its population: “The situation has worsened with the women’s, life, freedom movement. There is a political instrumentalization of the death penalty against the populations. In 2024, moreover 4 executions took place in public, in order to send a signal, cause amazing. If demonstrators have been executed, the vast majority of people are for drug trafficking. By crossing the figures, we find in 2024 the figure of 975 people (including 31 women and 1 minor) executed, a figure undoubtedly below reality, which does not take into account the summary executions, reported in the field. In fact, since 2022, the number of executions has almost doubled. But the population remains mainly opposed to the death penalty: in 2024, 649 death sentence were forgiven by the families of the victims and their sorrows were commissioned in life for life, “said the lawyer.
“Our job is to plead with states so that they abolish or reduce the fields of the death penalty. We work with networks of parliamentarians, the ministers of justice, journalists and awareness of public opinion which does not always have the courage to face these questions head -on ”.
In France, a subject still relevant, despite the abolition
As shown in the recent mobilization for the repatriation of Serge Atlaoui, sentenced to death in Indonesia in 2005 and repatriated to France in February 2025, the French are affected by the death penalty. The same goes for repeated requests not to execute the American, Hank Skinner, married to a Frenchwoman, who spent 27 years in the death corridor before dying of illness behind bars. A documentary entitled: A moment in the life of Hank Skinnerproduced by Jordan Feldman and broadcast by Canal Plus, reports the two weeks preceding one of his execution dates of March 24, 2010 through the gaze of his wife, Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner. Today there would remain five French people sentenced to death abroad, who are often the subject of diplomatic negotiations. “We consider some prisoners as hostages, this was the case for example of Olivier Rondeau who was detained in Iran since 2022 and who has just been released in March”.
However, far from the eyes does not mean far from the heart. The association feels the need to continue to plead in France. As soon as an attack or a particularly sordid news item taps news, some media are launching surveys on the opinion of the French concerning the death penalty, which normally turns around 50/50 but tends to switch to difficult times. “Terrified people have this reflex of the death drive. In our opinion, these surveys do not have to be: we do not ask for the opinion of the French on slavery or the penalization of homosexuality. It’s the same thing ”. The association therefore deploys all its arguments thanks to its witnesses (“we are rarely for the death penalty when one has before you someone who could have had a cut head”, underlines the president) but also thanks to a booklet translated in English and in Arabic where the facts are recalled black on white: the death penalty is not dissuasive, it constitutes a torture, does not make society more sure and corresponds to a gesture of vengeance more than a gesture of vengeance (As demonstrated by the presence of families of victims in executions, for example). “In addition, the execution times that exist after the conviction plunge families unable to mourn and after, they understand that this does not bring the victim. Sometimes, in the case of judicial errors, for example, the death penalty is also an obstacle to the truth. ” The lawyer still wishes to recall that when François Mitterrand was elected with the promise of the abolition, the French were the vast majority of them favorable to capital punishment. “It took great political courage to the candidate and Robert Badinter (honorary president of the association) to set up this law: it is no coincidence that the date of World day against the death penalty is October 10,” she recalls, it is the day of publication of the law in the Official Journal “.
A inhuman sentence from start to finish of the chain
Last February, a death sentence of South Carolina asked to be executed by execution peloton, a method rarely chosen in a country which advocates lethal injection. “It was the only choice he had, after the three executions in the state by lethal injection subjected prolonged agonies and potentially close to torture to men he loved as brothers,” said his lawyer Gerald King. In recent years, in fact, the craftsmen of death in American penitentiaries have faced an unprecedented crisis: lethal products out of stock or poorly dosed, defective equipment, killing can no longer pass for painless (they have never been!). “In the United States, the methods of execution have been planned to be the least traumatic for the executioners especially since the generalization of the lethal injection which immobilizes the prisoner, to sleep and then kills it without anyone intervening physically on his body. The crisis found at the moment (Alabama and Louisiana have set up the execution by nitrogen mask) demonstrates the barbarism of the execution and that there is no repair, no solution, to expect the death penalty. “
Very committed to matters of equality and human rights, Aminata Niakaté, chairs the parity-equality commission of the National Union of Liberal Professions. Very invested in her profession, she also chaired the equality committee of the National Council of Barreaux between 2018 and 2020. An approach that goes hand in hand with its functions within ECPM. “Lawyers have the abolition in their DNA. The world coalition has been founded in contrast to the death penalty, of which the Paris bar and the CNB are members. In the field, lawyers are privileged partners: we form lawyers in the countries concerned to work properly which can be complicated. In a country like Cameroon, the death row inmates are held away from the capital where the bar is located, it is necessary to access this difficult province … These law professionals need support, that’s why during the 8the World Congress against the death penalty held in Berlin, we rewarded the Defense Prize, the Cameroonian lawyer network against the death penalty (Racopem), “explains the president who also hopes, with the recent creation of a school of abolition with the Council of Europe, to train new generations in abolition.
