Ronald Ryan was the last man hanged under Australian capital punishment laws, in February 1967.
An inmate at the former Pentridge Prison in Melbourne, he was convicted of murdering warden George Hodson during an escape three years earlier.
The sentence sparked mass protests at the time.
Peter Norden - a member of the advocacy group, the World Coalition against the Death Penalty - says half a century later many members of Ryan's family are still struggling.
Mr Norden says it was difficult for some of his closest relatives to join an event commemorating his death outside the old gaol.
"I've seen the impact on the family of Ronald Ryan. His daughters didn't attend this morning's vigil. They're very supportive of the different ways in which the execution is being commemorated, but they're sharing their thoughts privately."
The last Australian jurisdiction to abolish the death penalty was New South Wales in 1985.
But dozens of countries around the world still actively retain capital punishment.
Six Australians have been executed overseas since Ronald Ryan was hanged.
Two years ago, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan were executed in Indonesia for drug trafficking.
Bids for clemency were rejected, despite the best efforts of the Australian government and advocates.
Lawyer Julian McMahon represented the men, as well as Van Nguyen, a Victorian executed in Singapore almost 12 years ago for drug-related offences.
"I was in prison when Van Nguyen was executed, and I was down the road when Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were executed, and six other people. Each of those experiences was brutal in its own way."
More than a dozen Australians have been sentenced to death or are potentially facing execution for crimes overseas.
Fiona McLeod is the president of the Law Council of Australia.
She says it is incumbent upon human rights groups and politicians to advocate for the practice to be abolished.
"You will find that the Australians who have been executed since the execution of Ronald Ryan are not going to have been persuaded not to do the things they did that exposed them to the death penalty. The death penalty as a deterrent, just does not work."
President Gillian Triggs says the Human Rights Commission is working with its counterparts in countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea on the issue.
She believes some progress is being made.
"It's eternal vigilance. You cannot sit on the assumption that you've achieved a step forward because there's always a chance that it will regress. But I think, perhaps the best news is that in the Asia-Pacific region - although the numbers of executions are still very high, well over 1,500 a year, and possibly higher than that in China - we are still seeing the development of the concept of moratoria, of reducing the offences that are subject to the death penalty, and a growing willingness to accept that the death penalty should not be available to drug-related offences."
Professor Triggs says the Commission holds the view that alternative punishment should be found.
"There needs to be a penalty. There needs to be a sanction. But we would argue that the sanction should not be loss of yet more life. In other words, you cannot resolve these issues by taking the life of the entity responsible for it. We simply need a more sophisticated understanding of why crimes occur."
The resolve to end capital punishment has bipartisan political support in Australia and the federal government says it would be a focus in its bid for a place on the United Nations Human Rights Council.
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