Russia's Constitutional Court has ruled that the death penalty cannot be re-introduced after the current moratorium expires on 1 January 2010.

The moratorium was introduced in 1999 when the Constitutional Court ruled the death penalty could not be applied until people in every Russian region had access to jury trials.

On 1 January, Chechnya will become the last region to introduce jury trials, but Constitutional Court President Valery Zorkin writes in his ruling that the death sentence is now "impossible" because the government has signed international protocols outlawing capital punishment.

Russia pledged to abolish capital punishment when it signed the corresponding protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Russian parliament, the Duma, has yet to ratify the document, but is unlikely to do so as 80 percent of the population is in favour of capital punishment. 

Photo: Russian flag (Wikipedia)