Le couloir de la mort: à la recherche d’une définition juridique

Only about thirty countries continue to apply the death penalty in their criminal justice systems. One aspect of this fundamentally positive development is that there are a large number of countries in a period of transition. Some fifty states appear to have ended the practice of executions without, however, formally abolishing the death penalty in law. For several of them, courts continue to sentence offenders to death, although there seems to be very little chance that the sentence will actually be carried out. In a number of states that no longer appear to employ the death penalty, there is nevertheless a refusal to acknowledge the existence of a moratorium. As a result, a large number of people have been sentenced to death and are awaiting their execution, in principle, for many years, despite the likelihood that they will never be executed. This article explores the concept of the ’death row phenomenon’, recognized by the European Court of Human Rights in the celebrated Soering v. United Kingdom judgment.