The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area imprisonment prior to execution during which the judicial and administrative procedures essential to due process of law are carried out. (…) the process of carrying out a verdict of death is often so degrading and brutalizing to the human spirit as to constitute psychological torture.”138 With this landmark case, California outlawed the use of capital punishment. In 1991, three members of the Supreme Court of Canada, in their dissenting view, considered capital punishment per se cruel and unusual punishment.139 In 2001, in the case United States v. Burns, the Canadian Supreme Court stated that capital punishment engaged the underlying values of the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.140 The Albanian Constitutional Court abrogated the death penalty as incompatible with its 1998 Constitution, stating that “the death penalty is a denial of the right to life and constitutes inhuman and cruel punishment”.141 The Hungarian Constitutional Court has held that capital punishment imposes a limitation on the essential content of the fundamental rights to life and human dignity, eliminating them irretrievably. The Court stressed the relationship between the rights to life and dignity, and the absolute nature of these two rights, which together were the source of all other rights.142 Furthermore, the Constitutional Courts of Lithuania and Ukraine have also found that the death penalty per se violates the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.143 2. Other aspects of the situation of the death penalty in the OSCE region During the 2015 OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting, the issues of the abolition of capital punishment, prevention of torture and the protection of human rights in the fight against terrorism were discussed at Working Session 8: Rule of Law. It was recommended to OSCE participating States to give strong consideration to ratifying all international conventions and protocols on the death penalty and torture, to abolish the death penalty in all circumstances, not to reintroduce the death penalty once it has been abolished, to support the 2016 UN General Assembly resolution which will call for a global moratorium on the use of the death penalty, and to work to update OSCE commitments concerning the use of capital punishment. 138  California Supreme Court, The People of the State of California v. Robert Page Anderson, 493 P.2d 880, 6 Cal. 3d 628 (Cal. 1972), <http://online.ceb.com/calcases/C3/6C3d628.htm>. 139  Supreme Court of Canada, Kindler v. Minister of Justice of Canada (1991) 2 SCR 779, at 818: “If corporal punishment, lobotomy and castration are no longer acceptable and contravene section 12 then the death penalty cannot be considered to be anything other than cruel and unusual punishment. It is the supreme indignity to the individual, the ultimate corporal punishment, the final and complete lobotomy and the absolute and irrevocable castration”, <http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b6ed0.html>. 140  United States v. Burns, op. cit., note 36, p. 287. 141  Secretary General, op. cit., note 22, para. 29.; See also, <www.deathpenaltyproject.org/legal-resources/authorities-database/search/?id=1111>. 142  Secretary General, op. cit., note 22, para. 9; See also <www.mkab.hu/letoltesek/en_0023_1990.pdf>. 143  Ibid., para. 29. 33