Small states like Ireland can play a significant role in voicing continued opposition to the death penalty in the United States, according to a leading human rights lawyer.
Bryan A Stevenson also appealed in Galway yesterday for Irish governmental support for a campaign to eliminate life imprisonment without parole for 13- and 14-year-olds in the US.
"There are about 70 of these children across the US, many in adult prisons where there is a high risk of rape and assault and many north Americans don't even know about this," he said. "It all comes of a society which is comfortable with the death penalty."
Mr Stevenson is in Ireland this week as a guest of Amnesty International. He addressed human rights practitioners at NUI Galway's Irish Centre for Human Rights and was introduced by Prof William Schabas of the centre as "one of the most iconic figures in the US campaign against capital punishment".
A professor of law at New York University and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, Mr Stevenson represents disadvantaged people and death-row prisoners in the US.
He and his staff have been successful in overturning dozens of capital murder cases and death sentences. He noted that 125 people on death row had been acquitted as a result of being found innocent.
Twelve US states have abolished the death penalty and Mr Stevenson said he hoped to see total abolition in his lifetime.
"The influence of states like Ireland is important, as the US is going to have to become much more responsive to international opinion if it is to have any influence around the world."
Mr Stevenson is due to speak at Amnesty International events in Cork today and Dublin tomorrow and Friday.
