Uzbekistan abolished the death penalty on January 1, 2008.

Uzbekistan abolished the death penalty on January 1, 2008. These decision is based on the presidential decree 'On the abolition of the death penalty in the Republic of Uzbekistan'. "Individuals sentenced to life or to long prison terms shall serve their terms at correctional institutions featuring special conditions," the decree says.  The document says the Uzbek government should undertake measures to change opinion of the people on death penalty and develop programme on creation of infrastructure to hold prisoners, jailed for long term.
On August 1, 2005, Uzbek President Islam Karimov signed a decree stating that “the death penalty shall be cancelled in the Republic of Uzbekistan as of January 1, 2008, as a form of criminal punishment and shall be replaced by sentence for life or long prison terms”.
The three-year delay was motivated in the decree by the need to build new prisons to house people condemned to life terms instead of death, state-run television reported.
The move was based on “generally recognized principles and norms of international law, provisions of the Uzbek Constitution proclaiming the right to life” and had “the purpose of implementing measures to further liberalize criminal punishment” the decree stated.
President Karimov had earlier said it would take at least 2-3 years to abolish the death penalty in the country. Addressing the first joint session of Uzbek parliament's upper and lower houses on January 28, 2005, Karimov said, "The issue in question is not about introducing a moratorium on the death penalty as in some countries where death row inmates have been awaiting the execution of the punishment for many years. The issue here is about its total abolition." According to the president, changes in public opinion were needed since the majority of Uzbek people were in favour of the death penalty.
On June 29, 2007, Uzbekistan's upper house of parliament adopted amendments to the constitution that would abolish use of the death penalty. The amendments would replace capital punishment with life imprisonment.
On April 29, 2008, , the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan began the process of revising death sentences in April. Tamara Chikunova, the head of Mothers Against Death Sentence and Torture (Uzbek Ngo), says seventeen sentences have been revised already.
All those sentenced for murder were given 20 to 25 years imprisonment.
The Supreme Court detracted the time the criminals had already spent behind the bars from the new sentence. The prisoners whose verdicts were already revised have been transferred from death row in Tashkent to prisons and colonies in Andijan, Urgench, Nukus, Karshi, and Navoi.
Of the seventeen death sentences already revised, not one of the convicts drew a life sentence.
On December 20, 2012, Uzbekistan voted in favour of the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.