ACT
LOCALLY, THINK GLOBALLY, PART TWO: Why Evolving International Standards
May Have Rendered the Death Penalty Unconstitutional
By
AKHIL REED AMAR ---- Wednesday, Aug. 08, 2001 This column
is Part Two of a two-part series by Yale Law professor and author, and
FindLaw guest columnist, Akhil Reed Amar on constitutional issues raised
by the trial of Timothy McVeigh. Part One, which appeared earlier on this
site, argues that transferring venue for McVeigh's trial from Oklahoma to
Colorado was unconstitutional. - Ed.
As
debates over the death penalty once again heat up, basic constitutional
questions are resurfacing: "Cruel" according to whom? "Unusual"
by what standard? To what extent should states and localities be bound by
emerging national norms? Indeed, to what extent should states, localities,
and the federal government be bound by emerging international norms?
Our
Constitution's text and history suggest that international views on the
death penalty might perhaps be relevant in construing the words "cruel
and unusual." Given that legal trends among the fifty states can
inform evolving Eighth Amendment standards of decency, why aren't emerging
international trends among advanced democracies abroad likewise
informative?
Why
the Capital Punishment Debate Has Intensified
Several
factors explain capital punishment's return to the spotlight. New DNA
technology has produced a parade of death row inmates who are
incontrovertibly innocent. Journalists and politicians have responded with
renewed attention to some of the biggest problems in the criminal justice
system: often inadequate defense lawyering, occasionally sloppy forensics,
too frequent mistakes in eyewitness identifications, and so on.
In
addition, some governors who previously supported capital punishment are
now calling for a halt, at least temporarily. General issues of racial
profiling intertwine with specific concerns about the racial composition
of state and federal death rows.
And,
of course, the federal government is now back in the death business, with
two executions (including Timothy McVeigh's) in the last two months after
a moratorium of almost four decades.
Europe's
Reaction to U.S. Executions - and Why We Should Listen
This
last development has had momentous implications abroad. Modern European
governments have foresworn the death penalty. Indeed, no country that
practices capital punishment may join the European Union. In this rule-and
indeed, in the very idea of a European Union-we see a new post-Cold War
European consciousness emerging, defining itself in part in
contradistinction to all things American.
For
years, American diplomats abroad could explain away capital punishment as
a quirk of American federalism: states make this decision, so please don't
blame Congress or the President. But with the high visibility federal
execution of Timothy McVeigh coinciding with President Bush's first visit
to Europe, Europeans are increasingly challenging Americans on the issue
and claiming the moral high ground.
The
fact that President Bush rode into office directly from the governorship
of Texas, a state notorious for its commitment to capital punishment, has
only served to heighten European disdain for America on this issue.
Some
Americans may be tempted to sneer back: "America has a more
distinguished tradition of democracy and freedom than most of Europe. And
if hadn't been for the Yanks' winning two hot world wars and one cold one,
there wouldn't even be an EU to dis us. The impudence of the Germans! The
arrogance of the French!"
But
if in some sense modern Europe is America's child, America should remember
that at our Founding, we were Europe's child. Our Framers drew inspiration
from the European enlightenment, and our Declaration of Independence
appealed to a global audience: Out of "a decent Respect to the
Opinions of Mankind . . . let Facts be submitted to a candid World."
Why
the Eighth Amendment Invites a Comparative Perspective
In
this light, let's reconsider the Eighth Amendment's ban on "cruel and
unusual punishments." At the Founding, the death penalty was common
in America and throughout Europe. Death for ordinary felonies was not an
"unusual" punishment in 1789. But the matter is far different
today.
Even
though America has maintained widespread use of the death penalty, most
other civilized democracies have repudiated it. In this sense, the regular
recourse to capital punishment in America is indeed "unusual"
today in a way that was not true in 1789-or even in 1989, prior to the
rise of a new democratic Europe and the emergence of its strong anti-death
consensus.
If
a guiding idea underlying the American experiment and the American
Constitution is to be a light unto the world, a city on a hill, can
Americans ignore our global standing, or allow our criminal justice
practices to fall far below those of our sister democracies?
No
stretching of constitutional language need be done here-the word "unusual"
itself seems to require attention to the way standards of decency evolve
over time. Put another way, it invites comparisons and endows them with
legal force.
Thus,
when a state practice is challenged as "cruel and unusual,"
judges often look to the practices of other states in the Union. As these
practices evolve, a state policy that might have been constitutional at a
given time in history can become unconstitutional-because it is much more
unusual in sister states-at a later time.
In
short, a strong consensus in most States to eliminate or qualify a given
punishment may render the imposition of that punishment in outlier States
unconstitutional.
The
Comparative Eighth Amendment in McCarver
This
type of comparison may come to the fore in a case the Supreme Court has
agreed to hear next term, McCarver v. North Carolina. McCarver will decide
whether states may continue to impose the death penalty on convicts with
moderate mental retardation. (That is, persons who are able to tell right
from wrong-and thus are properly held criminally responsible for their
misdeeds-but who nevertheless have IQs well below normal.)
In
1989, the Supreme Court upheld this practice, in the case of Penry v.
Lynaugh. But at that time, most states allowed death in this situation. In
the intervening years, the tide has turned.
Fewer
than half the states now permit capital punishment of retarded inmates. In
recent years, more than a dozen states have explicitly repudiated this
practice, and no new states have embraced it. Moreover, in many of the
states that formally allow the practice, no retarded person has recently
been put to death.
Taken
together, these facts mean that capital punishment in cases of moderate
retardation is now more "unusual" than it once was. Accordingly,
the Supreme Court next term may well rely on this evolving trend to
proclaim the practice unconstitutional.
Why
International Comparisons Matter, Too
This
approach to the Eighth Amendment raises an obvious question: If American
judges may properly canvass the evolving principles and practices of
democratic states on this side of the North Atlantic, why shouldn't they
also consider the evolving norms of other advanced democracies? When
regressive States lag, the Constitution brings them up to speed; shouldn't
judges also be concerned when America as a whole lags behind the civilized
world?
Whether
or not courts use international standards to inform Eighth Amendment
decisionmaking, surely nothing prevents American politicians and citizens
from directly engaging our friends in Europe. In such conversations, both
sides might begin to find common ground.
Consider,
for example, the recent execution of Timothy McVeigh. Polls indicate that
even many Americans generally opposed to capital punishment thought
McVeigh deserved to die. There was no real doubt about his guilt; no gross
procedural unfairness or shabby lawyering; no complicating issue of race
or poverty; no mental retardation; no abusive childhood. Indeed, the man
seemed an unrepentant moral monster. His was no fleeting crime of passion
but a savage slaughter of innocents, a cowardly war against a peaceful
people.
Seen
this way, McVeigh appears as a kind of Hitler, though McVeigh wreaked his
nazi genocide on an infinitely smaller scale. And, on this view, McVeigh's
case resonates not so much with Europe's current anti-death penalty stance,
but with its earlier stance that the death penalty is warranted under
particularly horrific circumstances.
After
all, modern ideas of universal human rights-the very ideas modern
Europeans are now hurling against America-took root in the modern soil of
Nuremberg, where various Nazis were indeed tried and put to death by a
court of law representing democracies on both sides of the Atlantic.
Perhaps,
then, some Europeans might allow that in a truly extreme case like
McVeigh's, capital punishment is more European and more modern than they
first thought. And some Americans might admit, for their part, that for
anything less than genocidal mass murder, the death penalty is now highly
"unusual" among the world's great democracies, and thus
*
Akhil Reed Amar teaches Constitutional Law at Yale Law School and is the
author of The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (1998).
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