Clifford Chance has provided legal support to Reprieve for its contribution to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions’ call for input on whether the death penalty constitutes torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Reprieve is a legal action non-governmental organisation (NGO). Reprieve's mission is to fight extreme abuses of state power, using legal action, investigation, and public advocacy, with a particular focus on the death penalty, torture, arbitrary detention, and extrajudicial killing. Clifford Chance has a long‑standing relationship with Reprieve, a global strategic pro bono client of the firm. This partnership supports Reprieve’s human rights work, including its opposition to the death penalty and other serious human rights abuses.

Clifford Chance worked with Reprieve and partners to prepare submissions on international jurisprudence, setting out evolving standards in international and national law. The submissions argue that the death penalty amounts to torture and detail the physical and psychological effects of death row conditions, focusing on Reprieve's casework in Africa and Southeast Asia. The latter submission was prepared  with human rights charities LBHM (Indonesia), and HAYAT (Malaysia).

International jurisprudence and the death penalty

The first submission focuses on the development of customary international law, arguing that both state practice and opinio juris would support a finding by the Special Rapporteur that a customary norm against the death penalty in all circumstances has emerged. In particular, the submission sets out:

• A clear and sustained global movement away from capital punishment.
• Executions are increasingly confined to a very small number of jurisdictions, while many retentionist states are actively restricting or dismantling death penalty regimes.
• Courts, governments and international and regional bodies have consistently recognised the death penalty as incompatible with the right to life, human dignity, and the absolute prohibition on torture.
• Judicial reasoning at international and domestic levels, across Europe, the Americas and Africa, has evolved towards recognising that the death penalty is inherently incompatible with fundamental human rights, regardless of the method of execution.

Physical and psychological conditions of the death penalty

Clifford Chance also assisted Reprieve and partners with a submission on the operation of the death penalty using case studies taken from sub‑Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. The submission illustrates harmful practices through evidence and lived experience, including the case of Ali Kololo, a Kenyan man wrongfully sentenced to death following torture, an unfair trial and years in appalling prison conditions. In particular, the submission argues:

• Severe psychological and physical suffering is not confined to execution but is structural and cumulative.
• Harm begins at arrest and continues through pre‑trial detention, trial, sentencing and prolonged confinement on death row.
• Inherent features of capital punishment, including indeterminate delay, coercive interrogation, inadequate legal representation, harsh detention conditions, and the sustained anticipation of execution, combine to produce the well‑recognised “death row phenomenon”.

The submission concludes that the death penalty constitutes torture in practice because severe psychological and physical suffering is inherent, foreseeable and unavoidable at every stage of the capital process. These harms arise from the design of capital punishment and cannot be eliminated through procedural reform.

Katie Campbell (Head of Death Projects, Africa and Southeast Asia at Reprieve) commented; "the overwhelming evidence presented in these submissions makes clear that the death penalty should be recognised as torturous in all circumstances. We welcome the Special Rapporteur’s review of this issue and hope that our submissions support a finding that the imposition of the death penalty constitutes a violation of international law. We are extremely grateful to Clifford Chance for their expert legal research and drafting support."

The Clifford Chance team was led by Simi Arora-Lalani, with support from Laura Savage, Jack Foley and George Newick. Lauren Stewart, Aleisha Robinson, Jack Foley and George Newick worked on the jurisprudence submission whilst Jeffrey Benson, Laura Savage and Rumana Ali helped to prepare the physical and psychological effects paper.