The U.S. is one of very, very few western nations that still engage in state-sponsored killing. The rest of the western world sees the death penalty as barbaric, which it is.
It is also illogical: Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?
And it is unethical. Amnesty International calls the death penalty "the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment." And most major religious denominations in the United States are opposed to the death penalty.
Some people believe that the death penalty serves as a deterrent to crime, but that theory doesn't hold up under careful scrutiny.
And then there's the risk of executing an innocent person. Since the first DNA exoneration took place in the U.S. in 1989, 208 people have been freed via DNA evidence after being wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit. Many more have been exonerated via other kinds of late-coming evidence.
Some of those innocent people were freed from death row. These folks are the "lucky" ones, because they had a chance to prove their innocence before they were put to death. How many others have not been so lucky? We cannot know. But do we really want to risk that kind of mistake?
Furthermore, the American Bar Association recently described the legal process leading to executions as "deeply flawed". Studies in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and elsewhere have shown that the death penalty is applied in a discriminatory, arbitrary, and uneven manner, and is used disproportionately against racial minorities and the poor. For example, a 1998 study of death sentences in Philadelphia found that African-American defendants were almost four times more likely to receive the death penalty than were people of other ethnic origins who committed similar crimes. That's not what I would call justice.
And these are just a few of the many good reasons to go instead with a sentence of life in prison without parole. Like the rest of the civilized world.
So, on November 15, a human rights committee of the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for a global "moratorium on executions with a view toward abolishing the death penalty."
The vote was 99 in favor and 53 against, with 33 abstentions.
Want to guess who voted against the resolution? Yep, the good ol' United States of America, along with Afghanistan, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, and a handful of other countries known for their systematic violations of human rights.
What do they say about the company you keep?
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http://www.maryshawonline.com
Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist, with a focus on politics, human rights, and social justice. She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning human rights group Amnesty International, and her views (more...)
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
While I oppose capital punishment, this simply is not the business of the United Nations. The citizens of thirty-eight of our states, along with the federal government, have prety thoroughly expressed their opinions, through their elected representatives, that they believe capital punishment to be an appropriate punishment and perhaps even a deterrent. If the American people want to end it, then it is fitting and proper that they express those desires, through communication with their elected representatives and at the ballot box.
But it is not the proper function of the United Nations or any other supra-national body to tell the United States what laws it should have or how they should be administered.
by
Dana Pico (9 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 193 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Nov 17, 2007 at 4:37:55 PM
Reply: WORLD HAS THE RIGHT AND DUTY TO CONDEMN U.S. DEATHY PENALTY
Just as it is proper for the United States to condemn violations of human rights in China and North Korea, it is proper, as well as long overdue, for other countries and supra national organizations to condemn the many and increasing number of human rights violations in the United States.
If 38 of the states out of the 50 in the United States had the penalty of burning at the stake, would abolishing burning at the stake be the sole business of the people of those 38 states "acting through their elected representatives"? The rest of the world would have both a right and a duty to condemn burning at the stake in those 38 states. Although the methods of execution currently used in the United States are not anywhere near as bad as burning at the stake, it is still a barbaric practice that the rest of the world has both a right and a duty to condemn.
The comment by Dana above is absolutely correct. No outside party should tell any perverse and barbaric country what to do to its own citizens within its own jurisdiction. The U.N. however has the right to point out the barbarity involved in any social policy within member states and perhaps to terminate the membership of such sadistic countries. A country is known by the company it keeps as stated above and I think the U.S. knows where it stands in the community of nations, at the bottom along with the most despotic and criminal regimes in the world. Lastly to bring Dana's comments to the ultimate conclusion maybe it is time the U.S. stopped telling other countries what to do within their own territories and ceased supporting turmoil and civil wars all over the world to advance its own agenda.
by
Archie (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1750 comments [111 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Nov 19, 2007 at 1:08:32 PM
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