GUATEMALA. DEATH PENALTY UNDER REVIEW

it was reported that Guatemala, one of the last Latin American nations with capital punishment, was considering doing away with it.
On September 13, 1996, peasants Pedro Castillo and Roberto Giron were shot by a firing squad in the Central American country's first executions in 13 years. They had been convicted of the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 4-year-old girl. But the execution of several people and capital sentences meted out to the 36 others now on death row had done virtually nothing to stem a rising tide of violent crime.
The government's plans to send Congress a proposal to abolish capital punishment revived a debate on the issue.
In 2002, Pope John Paul II formally asked Guatemalan authorities to end the practice.
The chairman of the Presidential Commission on Human Rights, Frank La Rue, said on April 4 that a draft of a bill to eliminate the death penalty had been prepared and sent on to the president's staff for review.
According to La Rue, the measure was expected to be presented to Congress in a week by Guatemalan President Oscar Berger.
"We defenders of human rights definitely are in line with this entire tendency for the abolition of the death penalty and we support these measures," activist Amilcar Mendez said.
The representative of the Runujel Junam Council of Ethnic Communities said Guatemala's own experience had shown that the death penalty was no deterrent to crime.
The Rev. Vitalino Similox, leader of the Ecumenical Forum, said that the Catholic and Protestant churches affiliated with his group likewise favored a permanent end to executions.
"We always maintain that the death penalty does not solve the problems of violence, rather the contrary, it infringes on a right that belongs only to God: the right to life," the cleric said.
Even so, polls consistently showed that capital punishment was overwhelmingly popular in the country.
Opposition lawmaker Mario Taracena said his center-right PAN party opposed abolition, while congressional speaker Jorge Mendez, of the ruling conservative Grand National Alliance, opined that "for now, it's not appropriate to abolish the death penalty."
Guatemala's first execution by lethal injection was Feb. 10, 1998, when farmer Manuel Martinez received a deadly drug cocktail for slaughtering seven members of a single family.
The most recent executions in the Central American country took place in June 2000. Shopkeeper Luis Amilcar Cetin and farmer Tomas Cerrate were given lethal injections for the abduction and murder of businesswoman Isabel de Botran.