A/67/279 56. The question therefore arises of whether or not there is an evolving standard regarding the death penalty comparable to that regarding the prohibition of slavery and corporal punishment. In order to answer that question, the present report examines recognized standards on the enforcement of the death penalty and normative developments at the international and regional levels. 57. International law imposes severe restrictions on the death penalty and demands serious safeguards for it to be lawfully applied. It also outlaws it in some specific circumstances or with regard to specific groups of vulnerable persons. As stated by the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions in regard to the death penalty, non-compliance with these standards leads to arbitrary and thus unlawful deprivation of life. 58. In addition, and especially relevant to the emergence of a customary norm to consider the death penalty as running afoul of the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, is evidence of a consistent global practice by States that reflects the view that the imposition and enforcement of the death penalty in breach of those standards is a violation per se of the prohibition of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. This conclusion originates from the fact that international law does not attribute a different value to the right to life of different groups of human beings, such as juveniles, persons with mental disabilities, pregnant women or persons sentenced after an unfair trial, but considers the imposition and enforcement of the death penalty in such cases as particularly cruel, inhuman and degrading and in violation of article 7 of the Covenant and articles 1 and 16 of the Convention against Torture. 59. Accordingly, the mandatory death penalty, a legal regime under which judges have no discretion to consider aggravating or mitigating circumstances with respect to the crime or the offender, violates due process and constitutes inhumane treatment. Starting with the case of Hilaire v. Trinidad and Tobago (2002), there have been remarkable developments within the Inter-American Commission and Inter-American Court, leading to the conclusion that the automatic imposition of the death penalty without consideration of the individual’s circumstances is incompatible with the rights to life, humane treatment and due process. National courts have re-examined the constitutionality of the mandatory death penalty and, with the exception of Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, considered it as a violation of the prohibition of inhumane treatment. In Woodson v. North Carolina, the United States Supreme Court held the mandatory death penalty unconstitutional and in violation of the fundamental respect for humanity. 42 In Africa, the Supreme Courts of Malawi and of Uganda and, more recently in July 2010, the Court of Appeal of Kenya, rendered the mandatory death penalty unconstitutional. 43 In all of those cases, the courts held that it violated protection against subjection to inhuman or degrading punishment or treatment. 60. Under international law, the death penalty can only be carried out pursuant to a final judgement of a competent court and only applied to the most serious crimes. The possible safeguards given during legal process to ensure a fair trial in cases in which the death penalty might be imposed should be at least equal to those __________________ 42 43 12-45812 United States Supreme Court, Judgement of 2 July 1976 in Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280 (1976). Court of Appeal of Kenya, Godfrey Ngotho Mutiso v. Republic, H.C.CR.C.NO.55 of 2004, Judgement, 30 July 2010. 15