To be sure, some four decades have passed since the international protests
surrounding California's execution of Caryl Chesman, after a dozen years on
death row, brought storms down on international condemnation on America's use
of capital punishment. It still takes years to execute condemned criminals,
though usually not a decade.
The controversy over its imposition continues to polarize groups in the U.S.,
and opinion polls suggest a decline in popular support for the death penalty.
Most polls, however, continue to show that its imposition remains widely popular
at home--even if it brings cries of anguish from allies.
Indeed, one of the ironies of its use by the U.S. is that many of the declining
number of countries which impose the ultimate penalty have otherwise almost
nothing in common with America. After all, anything uniting America with the
likes of Afghanistan, Libya and North Korea is indeed exceptional.
To be fair, it is not only countries like North Korea that provide company
to the U.S. in the capital punishment department. South Korea, too, has a distinguished
tradition of condemning people to death-- particularly former leaders, even
if their sentences are regularly commuted.
Even a list of America's neighbors who still impose the ultimate punishment
reads more like a hemispheric travel brochure than a pantheon of death: The
Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago,
all retain the ultimate punishment--along with their more tourist-oriented
attributes.
Indeed, it can be argued that the imposition of the ultimate penalty upon
the most heinous criminals offers a sense of security to the traveler looking
for a safe vacation spot.
Still, anything which places
America in a list in which China and Russia are among the "friendly" nations
keeping us company with Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Iraq and Libya does give
one pause for thought. Canada and our
European allies have long thought us a bit uncivilized, if not uncivil, on
the topic of the ultimate penalty. How much those feelings would change if
the penalty were banned remains, of course, a matter of speculation.
The implementation of the death penalty does, however, assure us of a place
in AI's successive Rogues' Galleries of death-penalty practitioners. Should
this bother us? Perhaps not, but it does serve as a reminder of one of this
nation's more dubious--however popular--distinctions. We'll almost certainly
be on next year's list, too.
