The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area Executions According to official statistics received, 60 persons were executed in the United States between 1 July 2008 and 30 June 2009.62 This constitutes almost three times the number of executions for the previous 12 months, which was unusually low as a result of the aforementioned issue surrounding lethal injections.63 Of these executions, 33 were carried out in Texas; five in Alabama; three in each of Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Virginia; and one in each of Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.64 International safeguards The US Constitution, which applies to both state and federal convictions, prohibits the imposition of the death sentence if the offender was under the age of 18 when the capital offense was committed65, is mentally retarded66, or is legally insane at the time of the scheduled execution67. Fair trial guarantees On 1 April 2009, the US Supreme Court decided that federally appointed counsel can represent indigent clients in state clemency procedures in capital cases.68 The case raised the issue of whether a federal law that provides lawyers for indigent death row inmates at the state level for parts of inmates’ appeals guarantees them the continuation of that representation through the state clemency process. The law says that such lawyers are to represent their clients in “all available post-conviction processes”, including “proceedings for executive or other clemency”. US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens stated that “[i]n authorizing federally funded counsel to represent their state clients in clemency proceedings, Congress ensured that no prisoner would be put to death without meaningful access to the ‘fail-safe’ of our justice system.” Foreign Nationals According to official data, as of 19 June 2009, there were 130 foreign nationals, comprising 34 nationalities, under sentence of death in the United States.69 62  Ibid. 63  “The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area, Background Paper 2008”, op. cit., note 1. 64  Response from the United States Mission to the OSCE, op. cit., note 56. 65  See Roper v. Simmons, 543 US 551 (2005). 66  See Atkins v. Virginia, 536 US 304 (2002). 67  See Ford v. Wainwright, 477 US 399 (1986). 68  See Harbison v. Bell, 129 S. Ct. 1481 (2009). 69  Response from the United States Mission to the OSCE, op. cit., note 56. 12