Thirty-five years after the US Supreme Court gave the green light for executions to resume in the USA after nearly a decade without them, officials there are clearly failing to lead their country away from the death penalty as expected of them under international standards. This document accompanies a new Amnesty International report ‘An embarrassment of hitches’ which is set against the backdrop of continuing litigation surrounding the lethal injection method of execution and offers some reflections on the USA’s death penalty.
