Prime Minister Helen Clark

NEW ZEALAND BACKS WORLDWIDE MORATORIUM ON DEATH PENALTY

October 10, 2007: New Zealand is working with other countries to put a resolution to the United Nations seeking the moratorium of the death penalty worldwide, Prime Minister Helen Clark said. Miss Clark made the announcement at an event in Parliament, attended by Amnesty International representatives, to highlight World Day Against the Death Penalty.
"Capital punishment is the ultimate form of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment," she said. "The death penalty violates the right to life...it is known to have been inflicted on the innocent."
The last person executed in New Zealand was farmer Walter James Bolton, 68, convicted of murdering his wife Beatrice. He was hanged in Auckland Prison on February 18, 1957, the 54th person to be legally put to death before capital punishment was abolished.
It was believed some of those in the death chamber had to swing on his legs after the hangman miscalculated and Bolton did not die instantly from a broken neck.
"The spectacle for those required to attend was so horrifying that they indicated they would boycott any further execution," Auckland crown prosecutor Simon Moore said in a speech to the Criminal Bar Association in 2000.
  (Sources: New Zealand Herald, 10/10/2007)