| About this series: The Tribune-Star is presenting a four-part series on the execution of Timothy McVeigh. Opinions expressed in this series reflect a consensus of the editorial board. The series is written by Dave Bennett, associate professor of journalism at Indiana State University. |
A divided nation -- a changing world
Societal decisions on death penalty command respect
Second in a series
Globally, capital punishment is as controversial as issues come. The debate is voiced convincingly in so many languages that the resulting clamor is a linguistic Tower of Babel.
Yet the arguments are those you'd hear in a café on Wabash Avenue: life is sacred; punishment should fit the crime; let God judge; society has the right -- the responsibility -- to put to death those who have taken life.
Amnesty International's record of supporting human rights is generally admirable. Consistent with its principles, Amnesty also spearheads efforts to ban capital punishment globally, regardless of crime.
In a critique that is particularly harsh on the United States for our use of capital punishment, Amnesty concludes that "the death penalty is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it."
Most Americans disagree.
The latest Gallop Poll on capital punishment, released March 2, concludes that two of every three of us -- 67 percent -- favor the death penalty for convicted murderers. In May 1995, less than a month after 168 people died in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the approval rating climbed to 77 percent.
Today, about half the world's nations retain capital punishment for their societies' most brutal crimes.
Eighty-seven countries have and use the death penalty for capital offenses. Thirteen more sanction its use for terrorists and traitors. Another 20 have death penalty laws on the books, but haven't carried out executions for at least 10 years.
Much of the global opposition comes from Europe, where nearly every country has banned capital punishment. Among the 19 members of NATO -- which includes such old friends as Great Britain, Canada and Australia -- only the United States and Turkey, which hasn't executed anyone in years, retain the death penalty.
Global opponents of the death penalty are highly organized -- and increasingly visible -- in their campaign to push the issue higher on every nation's political agenda.
In December, a coalition of religious and human rights groups handed the United Nations a petition with 3.2 million signatures from 146 countries urging a world moratorium on capital punishment. In Italy, a giant "thumbs-up" -- the old Roman gesture of mercy for defeated gladiators -- was projected onto the Coliseum's weathered walls.
But sometimes the pressure is less symbolic. Officials warned in February that the cost of Japan's system of capital punishment could include loss of its status as observer on the Council of Europe, a 43-nation coalition formed in 1949 to protect human rights.
Meanwhile, the Transatlantic rhetoric grows strident in tone as the more radical death penalty opponents label nations which retain the practice as less civilized.
Last year, Albania outlawed capital punishment, as did the island of Malta and Cote D'Ivore in West Africa. The international trend over the past decade has seen about three countries a year take stands against the death penalty. Today, 75 nations and territories have abolished it for all crimes.
In much of the rest of the world, people convicted of capital crimes stand a good chance of execution. Chile retains the death penalty, as does Cuba, India, Pakistan, Japan, Korea and much of the Mideast. Israel, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru and Mexico reserve the right to execute criminals under exceptional circumstances.
Amnesty International says that 3,058 people were sentenced to death last year world wide, and that it documented the executions of 1,457 prisoners. The London-based human rights group contends that actual totals are certainly higher.
Eighty-five of those executions were in the United States, in each case after seemingly endless legal actions and rejected appeals. This year, for example, lethal injection ended the life of a man who spent 28 years on California's death row. Robert Lee Massie was sentenced to death in 1965 for the murder of Mildred Weiss. His sentence was commuted to life in 1972 and he was paroled in 1978. He killed again a few months later and was returned to death row.
Elsewhere, justice may be neither as meticulous nor time-consuming.
Critics argue that too often the death penalty is not the ultimate response to heinous criminal acts, but instead a way to rid a society of the troublesome. Common targets are political dissidents, religious heretics, ethnic minorities and petty criminals.
They point to China as an embodiment of capital punishment run amok.
China executed at least 1,263 people 1999, according to Amnesty International, which notes that the actual figure is a state secret. That's about 24 a week and more than the rest of the world combined. Death penalty crimes there ranged from murder and rape to stealing firearms, embezzlement and misappropriating public property.
Examples of such behavior are not limited to China, although abuse seems more endemic there than elsewhere. There are few Americans who, despite differences in culture, wouldn't cringe at the beheading of drug smugglers in Saudi Arabia. Or balk at sentencing bank executives to death for fraud in Vietnam.
Granted, injustice is a bitter fruit. But that does not move us to accept the flawed logic that abuses of capital punishment negate the validity, and occasional necessity, of its application.
When all is said and done, at the root of the issue is our conviction that people-and nations-have the right to decide for themselves whether their death penalty should be abolished.
Individually or collectively, those decisions demand respect.
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