A/67/279 reasonable advanced notice of the scheduled date and time of execution, with a view to reducing the psychological suffering caused by the lack of opportunity to prepare themselves for that event (CCPR/C/JPN/CO/5, para. 16). Similarly, in Staselovich v. Belarus, 39 the Committee found that the failure of the authorities to notify the mother of the scheduled date for the execution of her son and their subsequent persistent failure to notify her of the location of her son’s grave amounted to inhuman treatment of the mother. Secrecy and the refusal to hand over remains to families are especially cruel features of capital punishment, highlighting the need for total transparency and avoidance of harm to innocents in the whole process. V. Death penalty as a violation of the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment A. Evolving standard 53. Developments with regard to methods of execution and the death row phenomenon show the dilemma of international jurisprudence and national courts in regard to the actual application of the death penalty and the contradiction with the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. While international human rights bodies have yet to take the step of holding the death penalty to per se run afoul of the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, there is clearly a trend in this direction at the regional and national levels. 54. The Special Rapporteur’s predecessor demonstrated the evolving standard regarding the prohibition of corporal punishment, asking whether, if even comparatively lenient forms of corporal punishment, such as 10 strokes on the buttocks, were absolutely prohibited under international human rights law, methods such as hanging, the electric chair, execution by firing squad and other forms of capital punishment could ever be justified under the very same provisions (A/HRC/10/44 and Corr.1, para. 38). 55. In the 1978 case of Tyrer v. United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights referred to the European Convention as a living instrument that needed to be interpreted in the light of present-day conditions. 40 In the Selmouni case (1999), the Court invoked this reasoning and argued that the definition of torture had to evolve with a democratic society’s understanding of the term. 41 Similar shifts in international law and, in particular, evolution of the understanding of prohibition of torture as encompassing prohibition of slavery and domestic violence or, more recently, the qualification of rape as falling within the scope of the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, show that the notion of torture has developed over time, and acts originally considered as lawful become unlawful and prohibited under the right to be free from torture (e.g., see A/HRC/13/39, para. 60). __________________ 39 40 41 14 Decision of 3 April 2003 in Mariya Staselovich (and Igor Lyashkevich) v. Belarus, communication No. 887/1999, para. 9.2. Judgement of 25 April 1978 in Tyrer v. the United Kingdom, Series A, No. 26, para. 31. Judgement of 28 July 1999 in Selmouni v. France, Application No. 25803/94, para. 101. 12-45812