Russia Extends Death Penalty Ban

Russia’s Constitutional Court, with two dissents, ruled that courts cannot apply the death penalty unless Russia formally rejects Protocol 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (on abolishing the death penalty), which it signed in 1997 but has not ratified. The question of possible reintroduction of the death penalty arose in 1999, when the Constitutional Court ruled that the death penalty is unconstitutional before jury trials are introduced in all of Russia’s constituent regions, which process is to be completed by the beginning of 2010.
http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1277603