Samoa began formal measures to abolish the death penalty,...

Samoa began formal measures to abolish the death penalty, which should not be in the law books if it is not going to be carried out, Prime Minister Sailele Malielegaoi told parliament when introducing the bill to delete the statute.
Although the death sentence was still delivered by judges, it had always commuted to life imprisonment.
The last time the death penalty was carried out in Samoa was in 1952, when a man was hanged for axing his wife to death while the country was still under New Zealand control. New Zealand abolished capital punishment in 1961, but when Samoa gained independence the following year it retained the former New Zealand law to cover crimes of murder and treason.
The were calls demanding the use of the death penalty in 2003 following the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl in the island nation where murder of children is virtually unheard of.
"I believe that in a severe case such as this one, carrying out the death penalty should be considered," Veletaloola Matia Semu, the head of the End Child Prostitution and Trafficking (ECPAT) advocacy, said then.
Even the assassination of a cabinet member several years ago did not prompt such a call for capital punishment and the two convicted assassins had their death sentences commuted to life in prison.