Criminal Justice System of Argentina Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Criminal Justice System of Argentina - Assignment Example Earlier, on 2nd September 2007, it had ratified the Second Optional procedure to the International Covenant targeting the suspension of the death penalty, which dealt with civil and political rights (adopted in 1989) which served to abolish the death penalty on ordinary crimes (Ebbe, 2013). With this, Argentina became the seventh nation to amend all human rights regulations in the Inter-American system. On 7th August 2007, a law that saw the removal of the 1951 Military Code of Justice was unanimously passed by the country’s Senate (Amnesty International, 2008). This meant that the death penalty had been removed from all crimes including those committed during military operations, hence removing the military Court (Amnesty International, 2008). In recent times, capital punishment has not been practiced in Argentina, the last one having been implemented in 1916. Given that the death penalty is unlawful in Argentina following a series of legislative amendments in recent times, the use of methods such as torture, hanging, flogging, lethal injection and others for execution no longer apply. Certain other methods have been adopted to deal with crimes that would otherwise warrant the death penalty. In some cases, sentences have been reduced to life imprisonment while in others sentences have been reduced to a jail term of several years, depending on the nature of the case. A few examples of how serious crimes have been punished recently follow hereunder. In the case of Mario Ferreiro who was accused of murdering his wife after a quarrel in 1998, the judge passed a life imprisonment on November 26th2007 (Ebbe, 2013). In another case, an ex-army officer accused of kidnapping, torturing, and killing four reformists before dumping their bodies in the streets to simulate death in a shootout in 1977 was also sentenced to life imprisonment.