Cases of condemned prisoners that have given impetus to the abolitionist campaign

• Pietro Venezia - On 27 June, 1996, the Italian Constitutional Court said "no" to the extradition of Pietro Venezia (an Italian citizen who pleaded guilty to a murder committed in Florida). Moreover, the Court stated that as the Italian Government had abolished the death penalty, it should not extradite offenders toward countries that inflict it. Following this sentence, some of the treaties between Italy and retentionist countries have been reviewed. Convicts cannot be extradited secretly to countries where they risk being put to death. The Constitutional Court�s decision came after over six months of mobilisation, led by Hands off Cain.
• Joseph O�Dell - On 23 July, 1997, Joseph O�Dell, was executed in Virginia for rape and homicide. The highest authorities in the Italian Republic, the European Parliament and the Pope intervened in favour of the condemned prisoner, while thousands of Italian citizens, informed of O�Dell�s case by a commercial on RAI Channel 2, bombarded the Governor of Virginia with messages on the Internet. Hands off Cain said that Virginia�s laws were mainly at fault, as they stipulate that new evidence must be presented no later than 21 days after the sentence has been pronounced.. O�Dell was executed, but his case gave added impetus to the abolitionist movement in Italy.
• Karla Tucker - On 2 and 3 February 1998, Hands off Cain took part in the demonstrations in Texas against the execution of Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman to be killed under Texas law in a hundred years. Millions of Americans began to discuss the death penalty for the first time in their lives, asking what sense there is in a justice system that after 14 years kills someone who is no longer the same person who committed the crime. On the day of the execution Hands off Cain was outside Huntsville Prison with an enormous banner, reading: "From Europe: Texas, don�t kill!". This was a message from European abolitionists and from Europe itself, asking that Karla Tucker�s life be spared. Images of the largest abolitionist demonstration ever held outside a U.S. prison were seen the world over.
• Joe Cannon - On 22 April 1998, Joseph "Joe" Cannon, a 38-year-old white condemned to death for a murder committed in 1977 when he was 17, was put to death at Huntsville Prison in Texas. After having kept him on death row for more than half his life, and after having raised, educated and "reducated" him, the State of Texas killed him. Joe Cannon brought to the attention of the international community the fact that the United States, together with a very small number of other countries, continues to put to death people who were minors when they committed the crime. The Joe Cannon case also pushed the British Presidency of the European Union to ask the American Government to withdraw its reservation to the article forbidding the execution of minors that the United States had entered when it ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This was the first time the EU had taken such a position on the death penalty towards the United States.
• Rocco Derek Barnabei - Hands off Cain, together with the Sant�Egidio Community and the City of Rome, campaigned to urge citizens and parliamentarians to send messages to the Governor of Virginia, asking him to suspend the execution of Rocco Derek Barnabei, aged 33, an American citizen of Italian extraction under death sentence for the murder of his girlfriend. A computer was set up in order to enable people to send their messages of support via Internet to Governor Gilmore. The night before the execution, which took place on 14 September 2000, thousands of people gathered in front of the Coliseum in Rome to stage a demonstration which was covered by the leading Italian and international media.