Thursday, January 25, 2001

Death Penalty in U.S. Must be Rethought

Walter Schwimmer

STRASBOURG What do Wanda Jean Allen, Floyd Medlock and Dion Smallwood have in common? They were suffering from different forms of mental illness or retardation. They were executed in the United States in the last few days.

In other cases, people are executed who have not had effective legal assistance. People are being executed in spite of doubts about the evidential basis for their conviction. Minors are being sentenced to death and executed.

Reports of racial and economic bias in the application of the death penalty by the U.S. criminal justice system are well known. In spite of all this and sometimes in plain disregard of international legal standards, 85 people were executed last year in the United States, one of the highest figures in the world.

The maintenance of the death penalty in the United States is becoming more and more anachronistic. International organizations like the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the European Union have issued calls for a moratorium on executions. There is a clear trend toward abolition, often preceded by the institution of a moratorium.

For several years now, no executions have taken place in the area covered by the Council of Europe, spanning from Reykjavik to Vladivostok. Thirty-nine countries have accepted Protocol No. 6 to the European Human Rights Convention, providing for abolition in peacetime. At a recent conference in Rome, the initiative was taken to aim for abolition even for offenses committed in time of war.

These developments are not symptoms of an ephemeral trend, but the consequence of a profound belief that the death penalty has no place in a civilized democracy.

It takes effort and time to promote awareness in society that humane alternatives to the death penalty must be pursued. All too often, public opinion is influenced by populist discourse by politicians who find that putting the death penalty high on their agenda is a cheap way of showing their toughness on crime.

Nonetheless, experience in many countries shows that public opinion is capable of discovering the fallacies of such simple retributive attitudes. People can come to realize that it is possible for society to be tough on crime and attentive to the concerns of victims' families without resorting to this inhumane punishment. But this presupposes that the public is made aware of the fundamental issues and facts surrounding the death penalty.

Let's face the facts. There is no proof that the death penalty is a more effective deterrent to potential criminals than other forms of punishment. There is no causal link between use of the death penalty and the murder rate.

Miscarriages of justice cannot be excluded in any legal system. The risk of executing innocent people is an inevitable consequence of capital punishment. In practice, the death penalty is imposed predominantly on people belonging to ethnic or other minorities or for crimes committed against persons belonging to majorities.

The time has come for Americans to stop and think. Fortunately, this is precisely what a growing number of them seem to be doing. A recent report by the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington refers to polls that confirm that public support for the death penalty is declining. The report speaks of a broad change in the way Americans view capital punishment. More voices are being heard and initiatives taken in favor of a moratorium on executions.

This movement deserves full support. Establishing moratoriums on executions in Europe has not been an easy process, and there is no reason to think that it will be any easier in the United States. But I have no doubt that willingness to consider the facts can only lead to the conclusion that this madness must end.

It is high time that more politicians explain to the public that moratoriums at federal and state level are necessary. For the 3,700 people on death row in the United States there is no time to waste.

The writer, secretary-general of the Council of Europe, contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.