The president of the Constitutional Court of Montenegro,...

The president of the Constitutional Court of Montenegro, Ratko Vukotic, is of the view that Montenegro "would not have had the death penalty had it been an independent state, since it would have been bound by European laws".
Commenting on the two death penalties passed recently by the council of the Higher Court in Podgorica, and the fact that the Council of Europe had declared a moratorium on executions, Vukotic said that "the court's rulings must be in accordance with current criminal law".
"The problem is a revision of the criminal law, since the death penalty is envisaged both by federal and the republican laws. We have proposed adopting European standards and abolishing the death penalty by extending the prison sentence," Vukotic said.
According to the law, if the death penalty is commuted to a prison sentence, the term of imprisonment could range from 15 to 20 years.