Chapter 7 • The Right to a Fair Trial: Part II – From Trial to Final Judgement of the authorities – constituted an assault on precisely that which it is one of the main purposes of Article 3 to protect, namely a person’s dignity and physical integrity.”219 4.2.2 Capital punishment In international human rights law, recourse to capital punishment is surrounded by numerous safeguards aimed at limiting and eventually abolishing its use. For instance, article 6(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights allows the imposition of the death penalty only “for the most serious crimes”, a provision that has led the Human Rights Committee to conclude that, where the death penalty was imposed for a conviction of aggravated robbery, the mandatory death sentence violated article 6(2); this was so since the domestic court could not take into consideration mitigating circumstances such as the fact that the use of firearms in this case “did not produce the death or wounding of any person”.220 Other safeguards contained in article 6 of the Covenant relate to the prohibition both on imposing death sentences “for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age” and on the carrying out of such sentences on pregnant women. Further, as described above, according to article 6(2) of the Covenant, death sentences cannot be imposed “contrary to the provisions of the ... Covenant”, which means that all the due process guarantees must have been respected in the trial leading to the death sentence. The Second Optional Protocol to the Covenant aims at the abolition of the death penalty and entered into force on 11 July 1991. As of 8 February 2002 there were 46 States parties to this Protocol.221 ***** Article 4 of the American Convention also contains safeguards against abusive recourse to capital punishment and it cannot, for instance, “be reestablished in states that have abolished it” (art. 4(3)). Further, “in no case shall capital punishment be inflicted for political offences or related common crimes”, a limitation that is particularly important in public emergencies. In addition, the penalty shall not be inflicted on persons who committed the crime below the age of eighteen or over seventy years of age, nor shall it be carried out on pregnant women. On 8 June 1990, the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty was adopted and, as of 9 April 2002, it had eight ratifications.222 According to article 2 of this Protocol the States parties may, however, when ratifying or acceding to the Protocol, “declare that they reserve the right to apply the death penalty in wartime, in accordance with international law, for extremely serious crimes of a military nature”. ***** 219 Ibid., p. 16, para. 33. 220 Communication No. 390/1990, B. Lubuto (Views adopted on 31 October 1995), in UN doc. GAOR, A/51/40 (vol. II), p. 14, para. 7.2. 221 UN doc. GAOR, A/55/40 (vol. I), p. 8, para. 5. 222 See the OAS web-site: http://www.oas.org/juridico/english/treaties.html. Human Rights in the Administration of Justice: A Manual on Human Rights for Judges, Prosecutors and Lawyers 303