Cover
story U.S.
allies see death penalty as fascist relic
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
NCR Staff Rome
When it comes to executing
criminals, the United States is marching to a different drummer from its
closest allies.
When the 15 member states of the European Union signed a new human
rights charter Dec. 6, its second article, reflecting a consensus, said:
No one shall be condemned to the death penalty, or executed.
It is striking that European politicians, even in moments of
public outrage over hideous crimes, generally do not renew calls for the death
penalty, said James Walston, a professor of political science at the
American University in Rome. There is, generally speaking, a consensus
that it is simply beyond the pale, little more than the law of the
jungle.
If, as expected, Mark Fowler is executed in Oklahoma on Jan. 23,
his death, along with other executions in the United States, will be widely
reported here, perhaps even more so than in much of the American press.
Another Oklahoma case, that of Wanda Jean Allen, scheduled to be
executed Jan. 11, has garnered even more overseas attention. Allen would be the
first black woman put to death in the United States since 1954, and is said to
suffer from sufficiently low intelligence to be considered disabled.
In European coverage of the U.S. presidential campaign, no point
was made with more regularity -- and, in some instances, incredulity -- than
George W. Bushs record-setting use of the death penalty in Texas.
A scene in a the recent Italian film Il Partigiano Johnn
vividly captures the mental associations many Europeans make when confronted
with governments that put people to death. The film, set amid Italys
underground resistance to the Nazis during World War II, opens with a column of
prisoners moving past a wall. An enormous poster proclaims the death penalty
for disobedience to German authority. One desperate inmate makes a break and is
machine-gunned on the spot.
For many Europeans, capital punishment seems a legacy of
absolutism, whether of kings or fascist dictators, incompatible with modern
democracy. Many regard capital punishment as a human rights violation analogous
to censorship or slavery.
Europe is home to some of the worlds most highly organized
anti-capital punishment campaigns, including secular efforts such as
Hands off Cain and Amnesty International, and, from the Catholic
side, the Rome-based SantEgidio community.
Working together, these groups last year launched a
Moratorium 2000 campaign, asking nations to declare a halt to
executions.
Organizers point to seven countries that officially abolished the
death penalty in 2000: El Salvador, Bulgaria, Albania, Turkmenistan, Bermuda,
Ukraine and Ivory Coast. In addition, the Philippines declared a temporary
moratorium.
According to statistics from SantEgidio, the long-range
trend in the world is toward abolition. In 1970, there were 21 nations that had
officially abolished the death penalty, virtually all in Western Europe; today
there are 75, with another 21 that are abolitionist in practice,
meaning that while they still have capital punishment laws, they in fact avoid
executions. There are 86 nations that still put prisoners to death under at
least some circumstances.
The United Nations adopted a resolution favoring abolition of the
death penalty in 1971, and the 1989 International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights likewise calls for abolition. U.N.-sponsored tribunals, such
as those currently operating in Bosnia and Rwanda, do not include capital
punishment among the range of possible punishments.
Interest in American death penalty cases peaks when European
citizens are involved, as happened in Arizona, for example, in 1999 when German
brothers Karl and Walter LaGrand were put to death despite repeated appeals
from the German government. Germany brought the United States before the World
Court in the Netherlands and won an injunction, but Arizona officials refused
to acknowledge the courts jurisdiction.
Fourteen foreign nationals from 11 countries have been executed
since the reinstitution of capital punishment in the United States in 1976, and
another 82 remain on death rows. According to a 1999 report from the
Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, in many of these cases the
foreign citizens were never advised of their right to contact their ambassadors
for assistance, as required under the Vienna Convention on Consular
Relations.
Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and U.N. High
Commissioner for Human Rights, articulated the prevailing European view in
1998. The increasing use of the death penalty in the United States and in
a number of other states is a matter of serious concern and runs counter to the
international communitys expressed desire for the abolition of the death
penalty, she said.
In December, death penalty opponents from around the world
delivered a petition with 3 million signatures to the United Nations supporting
a global ban on capital punishment. Of that total, more than 2 million came
from Europe.
Italy is an especially staunch death penalty foe. The Grand Duchy
of Tuscany was the first sovereign state to abolish the death penalty, in 1786,
and some Italians are pushing to have the date of that act, Nov. 30, made into
a national holiday.
Italians from several walks of life have made contributions to the
cause, ranging from fashion magnate Oscar Benetton, whose company launched a
controversial advertising campaign featuring soulful photos of death row
inmates, to novelist Dario Fo, who recently announced that the proceeds from
his new book will go to anti-death penalty efforts.
The e-mail address for John L. Allen Jr. is
jallen@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, January 19,
2001
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