MOSCOW, November 9 (RIA Novosti) - On behalf of a request from the Russian Supreme Court as of October 29, the Constitutional Court of Russia will consider at its plenary session on Monday whether capital punishment could again be legal from January 1.
In February 1999, the Constitutional Court introduced a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, ruling that no court could sentence criminals to death until all courts had switched to jury trials.
However, jury trials have now been established throughout Russia. Chechnya will become the final Russian republic to institute jury trials on January 1, 2010.
Russia still has capital punishment on its books, but undertook to abolish it in 1997, when it signed Protocol 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights.
Russia is the only one of the 47 members of the Council of Europe not to have ratified the protocol, under which states commit to abolishing the death penalty except in times of war or the imminent threat of war.
