The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area 75 2005 According to official statistics, 60 individuals were executed in 16 states in 2005. Of these, 19 executions were carried out in Texas; five each in Indiana, Missouri, and North Carolina; four each in Ohio, Alabama, and Oklahoma; three each in Georgia and South Carolina; two in California; and one each in Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, and Mississippi.183 2006 According to official statistics, 32 individuals were executed in the first half of 2006. Of these, 16 executions were carried out in Texas; three each in North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia; two in Oklahoma; and one each in California, Indiana, Nevada, South Carolina, and Tennessee. International Safeguards Pregnant women and minors Pregnant women cannot be executed under federal or state law. Women can be executed, and, according to unofficial statistics, there were 49 women on death row as of 31 December 2005.184 At the federal level, individuals who were below the age of 18 at the time of the crime cannot be sentenced to death.185 On 1 March 2005, the US Supreme Court took a decision to abolish the death penalty for defendants who were under the age of 18 when they committed their crimes.186 In Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court held that the execution of minors constitutes cruel and unusual punishment within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. The Court found that a national consensus had emerged that such executions are a disproportionate punishment for juveniles, whom society views as categorically less culpable than adult criminals. In July 2006, after having considered the second and third periodic reports submitted by the United States, the UN Human Rights Committee noted with concern reports that 42 states and the federal government had laws allowing persons under the age of 18 at the time the offence was committed to receive sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole, and that some 2,225 youth offenders were serving such sentences in US prisons. The Committee found that sentencing children to 183 184 185 186 The Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice. Death Penalty Information Center, www.deathpenaltyinfo.org. 18 U.S.C. § 3591(a)(2)(D), 18 U.S.C. § 3591 (b)(2). Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. (2005).