GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Catherine Ashton, the foreign policy high representative for the European Union, Thursday 9 August repeated her call for a global moratorium on the death penalty, as a first step towards its abolition, after two men were executed in the US this week.
Marvin Lee Wilson, 54, who had a clinical diagnosis of mental retardation, was given a lethal injection by Texas Tuesday for murdering a police drug informer. “The High Representative recognizes the serious nature of the crime involved and expresses her sincere sympathy to the surviving family and friends of the victim. However, she does not believe that their loss has been mitigated by Wilson’s death,” Ashton said in a statement Wednesday.
Thursday she noted that Daniel Cook, killed Wednesday by the State of Arizona, had a severe form of mental illness, and she repeated the EU’s demand for a moratorium. A number of human rights groups had called for both men to be taken off death row. An appeal by Wilson’s lawyers to the Supreme Court, to stay his execution, was refused two hours before his death.
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