Europe's View of the
Death Penalty New York Times,
May 13, 2001 The legal drama and publicity surrounding Timothy McVeigh
point up a fact of cultural geography. America and Europe
are land masses separated by both the Atlantic Ocean and
enthusiasm for the death penalty. Americans who travel in
Europe, whether as tourists or ambassadors, marvel at
the frequency with which they are called on to defend the
American legal system's reliance on capital punishment.
At least among European elites, the death penalty has become
an even stronger metaphor for America since the nation is
led by a man who presided over 40 executions in 2000 alone
and the government was preparing, until Friday, to carry out
on May 16 its first federal execution in 38 years. The McVeigh saga and the media's response are "the latest
twisted piece of Americana," according to The Sunday
Herald of Glasgow, expressing a typical view. Such
commentary underscores the fact that the United
States, in its belief that execution is an appropriate
punishment, stands nearly alone in the community of
democracies. Felix Rohatyn, ambassador to France during the Clinton
administration, says that every time he gave a speech,
French audiences asked him to defend America's use of the
death penalty -- and it was usually the first question
asked. European politicians and intellectuals, who view the
death penalty as a human rights issue, are incredulous that
Americans support a punishment that fails to deter crime,
targets mainly those who cannot afford a decent lawyer, is
used on the mentally retarded and has often gotten the wrong
man. America's high execution rate stands in striking
contrast to its history of respect for individual rights and
its role as an international champion of human rights. The death penalty is becoming a diplomatic impediment
for Washington. Some European countries will not
extradite suspected murderers to America. Capital
punishment may be one reason that Washington's European
allies voted against American membership in the United
Nations Human Rights Commission. Today, the European
Union will admit no country with a death penalty. It
was abolished in Germany, Austria and Italy right after
World War II. Later, other European nations gradually
abolished it and signed international treaties that make it
unlikely that the death penalty will be revived there in the
foreseeable future. Surprisingly, public opinion polls show that the death
penalty is still popular in many of the countries where it
is illegal. Support ranges from very low in Scandinavia to
65 percent in Britain. But supporters do not hold their
views strongly. The death penalty is not a subject of
ongoing political debate, in part because European nations
do not elect judges or prosecutors. So most officials who
administer the legal system are not subject to campaign
pressures or fears of being depicted in television ads as
soft on crime. These attitudinal differences have cultural and historic
roots. America was shaped by a frontier culture and an
emphasis on individual accountability. We endorse longer
sentences than European nations, which stress
rehabilitation, not punishment. A recent Gallup poll showed
that American supporters of the death penalty do not believe
it deters crime. Almost half of those polled believe in the
justice of "an eye for an eye" and endorse execution as
social vengeance. That view is anathema among Europe's
parliaments. The size of the American popular majority supporting the
death penalty changes with the intensity of the public's
fear of crime. The more violent the state, the more likely
it is to employ the death penalty. Shamefully, it is also a
shorthand for attitudes about race relations, an issue that
Europe is only now beginning to confront. The death penalty
is most used in the American South, and is
disproportionately applied to those who kill whites. Certainly, many of the Europeans most scornful of our use
of the death penalty are motivated by resentment of America,
not concern for human rights. Nevertheless, they are seeing
a reality to which Americans seem blinded. In our
reliance on capital punishment, America stands apart from
the other progressive democracies.