The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is “deeply concerned by the imminent execution of two men” in Texas and Alabama on Thursday, said spokesperson Seif Magango in a statement. “This follows the execution of six people in five US states over a 12-day period last month,” he recalls.
“This increase in the rate of executions is deeply worrying,” insists the spokesperson. Derrick Ryan Dearman is scheduled to be executed Thursday in Alabama, where he was convicted of murdering several people with axes in 2016. The same day, Robert Roberson, a 57-year-old autistic man, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the state penitentiary of Huntsville, Texas, for the death of his two-year-old daughter, Nikki, in February 2002.
Roberson’s lawyers say her daughter did not die of shaken baby syndrome but of pneumonia, made worse by being prescribed the wrong medication. Robert Roberson’s case attracted the attention of the Innocence Project, which works to overturn wrongful convictions.
“We oppose the death penalty, in principle, in all circumstances,” insists the UN spokesperson. “It is incompatible with the fundamental right to life and increases the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people,” he underlines.
According to him, “the evidence also suggests that it has little or no deterrent effect on crime.” There have been 19 executions in the United States this year, including the September 24 execution in Missouri of Marcellus Williams. His case was also championed by the Innocence Project due to doubts about his guilt.
