Death Penalty
No executions have been carried out since 2006. Amendments to the Penal Code have reduced the number of capital offenses. State security, smuggling, arson resulting in death, and inciting armed riot cases are no longer capital crimes. In March 2010, the Justice Minister announced that the crime of rape may cease to be a capital offense. In the future it is possible that the death penalty will be limited to cases of murder.
At the end of 2010 the government reports that 46 people were under sentence of death and six new death sentences were imposed during the year. Amnesty International reports nine new death sentences in 2010.
Read more about this topic: Human Rights In Jordan
Famous quotes containing the words death and/or penalty:
“For death is not the worst, but when one wants to die and is not able even to have that.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)
“Wilful sterility is, from the standpoint of the nation, from the standpoint of the human race, the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race death; a sin for which there is no atonement.... No man, no woman, can shirk the primary duties of life, whether for love of ease and pleasure, or for any other cause, and retain his or her self-respect.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)