EDITORIAL U.S. pressured to end death penalty
Sixty-eight people were legally
executed in the United States last year. That number was third highest in the
world, behind China (1,067) and Congo (100).
More people were executed in the United States than in countries
such as Iran (66), Saudi Arabia (29), Vietnam (18), Afghanistan (10), Cuba (5),
Syria (1) or the Russian Federation (1).
More telling even than the unseemly company we keep when it comes
to state executions is the fact that the number of countries that have
abandoned the death penalty, either by law or de facto, reached an all-time
high of 105 in 1998.
In 1999, the number of executions in the United States is
predicted to reach 100.
While the rest of the world is moving steadily toward a
repudiation of capital punishment, the United States keeps marching more
determinedly in the other direction.
The rest of the world is becoming so repulsed by the trend here
that other countries are ready to risk the wrath of the United States. The
European Union, which has banned the death penalty, is planning to introduce a
motion in the United Nations General Assembly, most likely in November, seeking
a global moratorium on capital punishment.
The resolution would probably resemble one passed in April by the
U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which states, The abolition of the death
penalty contributes to the enhancement of human dignity and to the progressive
development of human rights.
Perhaps that language is too hazy for the advocates of the death
penalty, now allowed by 38 states in the United States.
But what is accepted in a rather unremarkable way here is seen as
barbaric elsewhere. Not only do we keep company with some of the worlds
worst human rights violators when it comes to the death penalty, but according
to the Death Penalty Information Center, the United States has become the
most flagrant transgressor of the international ban on executing juvenile
offenders.
The prohibition against imposing the death penalty for crimes
committed by those below 18 years of age is contained in the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the American Convention on Human
Rights. The United States has simply claimed exemption to the relevant
death-penalty provisions of the treaties it has signed. Since 1973 in the
United States, more than 180 juveniles have been sentenced to death and states
have carried out 13 executions. Ten of the 132 have occurred in the 1990s,
including seven in Texas.
By most international standards, execution of mentally retarded
people is banned. But those standards are ignored in the United States. Since
the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, at least 34 individuals
with identified mental retardation have been executed, about 6 percent of
all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The Washington-based center also charges that the United States
ignores the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations when it executes foreign
nationals without informing suspects of their rights to consult with officials
and seek counsel from their own countries. In a number of well-documented
cases, the United States ignored pleas from other countries and the ruling of
international courts to delay executions. Instead, in several cases, the
executions were speeded up.
In addition to charges of violating treaties, the United States
exposed itself to further criticism for eroding diplomatic relations and
diminishing the authority of international courts. It will be interesting to
see how the United States deflects the growing consensus and criticism from
some of its closest and oldest allies, those whose cooperation we have sought
to give international heft to so many of our recent military adventures.
It might make for good sound bite bluster for politicians to be
defiant of international consensus and international courts. But it will be of
no small consequence that we continue to excuse ourselves from treaties, while
expecting the highest degree of compliance from others.
David Cole, a constitutional law expert, made the point in an
article in Legal Times: "When it comes to Cubas record on human
rights, Japans trade practices or Iraqs compliance with treaties on
chemical weapons, the United States is a staunch proponent of international
law. But when the tables are turned and were accused of violating
international law, we couldnt care less. Nowhere is this more apparent
than with respect to the death penalty."
If the United States persists in imposing the death penalty at an
increasing rate each year, it will only place greater distance between itself
and some of its most loyal allies. This country will continue to fall outside
the majority of Western industrialized nations that have abolished such
sentences.
The increasing isolation will be accompanied by an erosion of U.S.
credibility in other human rights issues and of its integrity and authority as
a world leader.
National Catholic Reporter, October 22,
1999
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