The Guatemalan penal code (1973) provides for the death...

The Guatemalan penal code (1973) provides for the death penalty for parricide, aggravated homicide and assassination of the President or Vice-President. Kidnapping and extra-judicial executions became capital offences in 1996.
According to some observers it is difficult for Guatemala to apply the penalty since, in 1978, the country ratified the American Convention on Human Rights, essentially pledging not to extend the death penalty to other crimes after the ratification. Constitutional Court declared void the law.
Under the 1986 Constitution the death penalty cannot be imposed on women, people over 60, those guilty of political crimes or related common crimes, or people extradited on condition that the death penalty will not be applied. Pardons to convicted criminals are no longer handled by the presidency, but by the Supreme Court. After a 13-year lull in executions, two men were shot by a firing squad in 1996.
The Guatemalan Congress adopted lethal injection after a botched firing squad execution in 1996 forced prison guards to finish off two men with pistol shots to the head, a gruesome scene replayed hundreds of times on local television. Lethal injection was applied for the first time on February 10, 1998. The country, which has emerged from a 36-year civil war, has seen its crime rate escalate, and dozens of suspected criminals have been lynched in rural areas.