LOS
ANGELES TIMES - December
21, 2001
COMMENTARY
- Spurned
for Our Death Penalty
By
BRUCE SHAPIRO, Bruce Shapiro is a co-author, with the Rev. Jesse Jackson
and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), of "Legal Lynching: The Death
Penalty and America's Future" (New Press, 2001).
Will
the United States have to choose between its war on terrorism and its
addiction to the death penalty? With the Justice Department's indictment of
French national Zacarias Moussaoui and the approaching deployment of
European troops in Afghanistan, the pursuit of Al Qaeda is colliding
head-on with a dispute to which few Americans until now paid any attention:
a worldwide legal war against the U.S. death penalty.
It's
a serious confrontation. Spain refuses to extradite Al Qaeda suspects if
they will face capital charges.
France
will go to court against a death sentence for its indicted citizen
Moussaoui. Tony Blair's administration has tied itself in knots over how
its Afghanistan occupation troops might handle a captured Osama bin Laden.
Europe's immovability on the subject of the death penalty, even for World
Trade Center conspirators, has left Washington gob smacked. But it shouldn't.
The pursuit of Al Qaeda simply has pushed to the boiling point
long-simmering disquiet with American capital justice.
Earlier
this year, France refused to extradite James Kopp, the alleged murderer of
a Buffalo obstetrician. After months of negotiations, the Bush
administration promised not to pursue capital charges.
This
spring the high courts of both Canada and South Africa ruled that their
nations may not extradite suspects to the U.S. if they could face death
charges.
All
this turmoil reflects a fundamental shift in the global politics of death:
To most of our closest allies, execution is now as repugnant as slavery.
And the nations retaining capital punishment make for dubious company.
Despite
the brutality of the Taliban's soccer stadium execution spectacles, last
year it was the U.S., Saudi Arabia, China and Iran that together carried
out 90% of the world's executions, according to Amnesty International.
In
recent years, U.S. death sentences have proliferated in inverse proportion
to the abolition of state-sponsored killing worldwide. In 1981, the U.S.
carried out a single execution. That year, only 31 countries had abolished
capital punishment.
This
year, 66 individuals have been put to death in the U.S., while 107 nations,
including all of Europe and countries from Chile to Azerbaijan, are
execution-free zones.
This
isn't just a matter of elite opposition: In June, more than 60% of voters
in Ireland approved a constitutional ban on capital punishment even in
wartime.
As
the reaction to possible death sentences for Al Qaeda suspects demonstrates,
many nations are looking for ways to actively intervene in U.S. capital
cases.
Two
years ago, the European Union declared capital punishment worldwide its top
human rights priority.
In
early June, the Council of Europe--which requires death-penalty abolition
as a condition of membership--proposed revoking U.S. observer status unless
a national death penalty moratorium is imposed within two years.
President
Bush has asked for and received worldwide law enforcement cooperation in
pursuit of Bin Laden's terror mafia. But transnational justice is not a
one-way street.
As
the war in Afghanistan winds down, it is clear that American isolation over
capital punishment jeopardizes our capacity to bring Al Qaeda suspects to
justice in our own courts.
Behind that tension is a fundamental question:
whether the United States has more in common with the Taliban's standards
of punishment or with the 107 countries that have left the death penalty
behind.
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