The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area the Russian Federation to abolish the death penalty and to conclude its ratification of Protocol No. 6 to the ECHR.71 The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe has called on the Russian Federation to ratify Protocol No. 6 to the ECHR as soon as possible.72 The Russian Federation confirms that the legislative abolition of the death penalty is one of the goals of the juridical and legal reforms currently under way and that government departments are currently engaged in intensive preparations for the State Duma’s ratification of Protocol No. 6 and the introduction of the relevant amendments and additions to the Criminal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the Criminal Execution Code of the Russian Federation.73 Moratorium In 1996, the president instituted a moratorium on both the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty.74 Furthermore, a ruling of the Constitutional Court placed a temporary prohibition on the passage of death sentences on 2 February 1999. On 15 November 2006, the State Duma extended the moratorium on the death penalty by three years, until early 2010.75 The Russian Constitution guarantees the right to trial by jury in cases where the death penalty is a potential sentence.76 Accordingly, the Constitutional Court adopted a resolution prohibiting the passage of death sentences until such time as jury trials are introduced throughout the Russian Federation. At the time of the resolution, jury trials were available in only nine of Russia’s 89 constituent entities. The introduction of jury trials will remove the bar that the Constitutional Court has placed upon the passage of death sentences. The UN Human Rights Committee has expressed its concern that the current moratorium will automatically end once the jury system has been introduced and has called upon the Russian Federation to abolish the death penalty de jure before the 71  Resolution 1277, 23 April 2002; Parliamentary Assembly session: 24 to 30 June 2006, 29 June 2006. 72  Report by Mr. Alvaro Gil-Robles, Commissioner for Human Rights, on his visits to the Russian Federation on 15 to 30 July 2004, and from 19 to 29 September 2004, document CommDH(2005)2 of 20 April 2005. 73  Comments by the Government of the Russian Federation to the concluding observations of the Human Rights Committee, U.N. Doc. CCPR/CO/79/RUS/Add.1, 2 February 2005, para. 11. 74  Presidential Decree No. 724, op. cit., note 70. 75  Lenta.ru, “Gosduma otscrochila vvedenie smertnoi kazni v Rossii”, [“State Duma delays the introduction of the death penalty in Russia”], 15 November 2006, http://lenta.ru/news/2006/11/15/ court2. 76  Article 20 (2) of the Constitution. 24