VIII. NO MERCY FROM EXECUTIONS Pakistan fails to provide an effective right to seek pardon or commutation of the sentence of death. The right to seek pardon or commutation of death sentences is enshrined clearly in international law. The ICCPR provides unambiguously: “Anyone sentenced to death shall have the right to seek pardon or commutation of the sentence. Amnesty, pardon or commutation of the sentence of death may be granted in all cases.”183 The right to seek pardon or clemency has been affirmed by the practices of almost every country applying the death penalty and is sufficiently widespread to be considered a rule of customary international law.184 In the words of the U.S. Supreme Court, clemency “is the historic remedy for preventing miscarriages of justice where judicial process has been exhausted . . . the 'fail safe' in our criminal justice system.”185 The right to pardon must exist in fact, not just on paper. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights held in the case of Lamey v. Jamaica that the state failed to fulfill its obligation “to guarantee . . . an effective right to apply for amnesty, pardon, or commutation of sentence.”186 In that case, the Commission found that Jamaica, by denying the plaintiffs access to legal counsel and delaying their criminal proceedings, had “effectively barred recourse for those victims.”187 Pakistan's clemency process makes it virtually impossible for the accused to obtain pardons or commutations of death sentences. The Pakistan Prison Rules formally require prison authorities to submit a mercy petition on behalf of each prisoner unrepresented by legal counsel.188 In practice, most mercy petitions contain just three perfunctory lines: “The prisoner's Supreme Court decision has come through. He has been sentenced to death. Please consider his case for mercy.”189 Even prisoners who are fortunate enough to secure legal representation face insurmountable odds. Although the President of Pakistan possesses the constitutional authority to pardon death row defendants by accepting mercy petitions under Article 45 of the Constitution,190 in practice, such petitions are always denied. The President's office repeatedly denied mercy petitions submitted by all prisoners whose cases were reviewed by the authors of this report. According to a recent press article, the President's office has rejected mercy petitions filed by more than 444 people since December 2014.191 The enactment of the Juvenile Justice Systems Ordinance(JJSO) in 2000 prohibited the sentencing and the application of the death penalty to juvenile offenders. However, since the JJSO was not retrospective in effect, the President of Pakistan on 13.12.2001 issued a Notification192 stating that any prisoner who had their death sentences confirmed prior to the introduction of the JJSO, but in whose cases there existed evidence that they were juveniles at the time of committing the alleged offences, should be granted a “special remission” and have their death sentences commuted. Following the Notification, the Supreme Court of Pakistan directed in the case titled Ziaullah v. Najeebullah193 that the benefit of the Notification was to accrue on the basis of determination by a trial court under the provision of the JJSO. A “MOST SERIOUS CRIME”: PAKISTAN'S UNLAWFUL USE OF THE DEATH PENALTY 23