By signing the Treaty of San José in 1987, the death penalty had already been abolished de facto.
[5][6] From independence in 1975 to 1980, capital punishment was on the statute books, but no crimes committed were considered severe enough to warrant prosecution for it.
The government did carry out a series of extrajudicial executions in December 1982, when 15 imprisoned opponents of the military regime were shot without trial.
[9] The death penalty had already been abolished de facto by signing the Treaty of San José in 1987, and in March 2015, the National Assembly approved legislation formally abolishing the death penalty in Suriname.
But the legislators raised the highest prison term limits from 30 to 50 years in what is seen as a compromise to amending the Criminal code.