 |
|
| China releases US human rights record in 2002 （6） |
| CCTV.COM 2003-04-03 14:04:45 |
|
The wrong verdicts are closely related to confessions from innocent people extracted by police. According to an ABC （American Broadcasting Company） news report on March 15, 2002, every year thousands of criminals are convicted on the basis of confessions obtained from police interrogations.
Also according to the ABC news report, in 1993, Gary Gauger, a man in Illinois, was forced to confess he had killed his parents, a crime he did not commit, when he broke down after 21 hours of police interrogation. He was then sentenced to death for double murder. Two years later, the real killers confessed to the crime in an unrelated federal investigation. Gauger was freed in 1996, after spending three years behind bars.
The United States is one of the few countries to impose capital punishment on child offenders and mentally ill people in the world. Twenty－three U.S. states permit the execution of child offenders （under 18 at the time of the crime）. Two thirds of the executions of child offenders over the past decade worldwide were carried out in the United States.
Since 1985, 18 child offenders had been executed, half of them in Texas State （May 9, 2002, EFE）. The executions in 2002 also included three child offenders and one mentally ill man. There were 80 child offenders on death row, and the figure in the case of the mentally retarded was estimated to be around 200 to 300. （The Amnesty International）
Prisons in the United States are jam－packed with inmates. According to a report of the Bureau of Justice Statistics under the Department of Justice released on August 25, 2002, the adult U.S. correctional population reached a record of almost 6.6 million at the end of 2001, or fourfold of the 1980 figure. About 3.1 percent of the nation's adult population, or 1 in every 32 adult residents, were on probation or parole or were held in a prison or jail. Roughly two million Americans are currently behind bars. （more）
|
|
Editor: Yang Feiyang Source:Xinhua
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
