U.S. criticized by EU for death penalty

by Toby Fallsgraff
For The Post

As governor of Texas, President George W. Bush signed 40 death warrants in 2000, the most for any governor in one year. His presidential election has triggered rising levels of international criticism about the United States' death penalty policy.

Throughout Bush's campaign, the European Union entreated Bush to save the lives of death row inmates whose executions it considered "clear infringements of internationally-recognized human rights norms," according to the European Union Web site (http://www.eurunion.org). The EU focused on inmates who were not U.S. citizens or who were considered mentally deficient.

The EU has been actively combating the death penalty on an international level, including drafting several resolutions to the United Nations to place international restrictions on the death penalty in recent years. The EU's 15 member states have abolished the death penalty.

France, which abolished the death penalty in 1981, has been openly disapproving of the U.S. system and is at the forefront of the worldwide censure.

A French abolition movement, Together Against the Death Penalty, condemns the U.S. government in a petition, a part of which reads "You often claim to rank as a model for humanity, [but] the death penalty is a symbol of archaic justice ... By abolishing the death penalty and giving those numerous people on death row a chance, you will bring the principles of your Declaration of Independence to American prisons." The petition, featured on the organization's Web site (http://www.ecart-type.com), has received hundreds of thousands of signatures worldwide and eventually will be sent to Bush.

Ohio University graduate student Sylvain Colombani is from France. She said most people in her country oppose capital punishment.

"The majority of people in France are all against the death penalty [because] it's not always objective, and many innocents could be killed ... if only we could educate people in that way," she said.

Foreign efforts to sway the United States' position on the death penalty have been largely ineffective. President of European Parliament Nicole Fontaine said she is convinced that by setting international example, Europe can convince the United States to abolish the death penalty, according to a December article in Marie Claire magazine published in France.

"Capital punishment is a barbaric act of another age that devalues the sacred character of all human life and encourages contempt in the world," she said in the article.

Turkey, one of the few European powers that have maintained the use of capital punishment, cannot join the EU until it has abolished its death penalty, according to the article.

The United States is one of 87 nations still employing capital punishment. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, about 85 percent of known executions worldwide take place in five countries: the United States, The Congo, China, Saudi Arabia and Iran, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the DPIC.

OU senior Hye-yoon Chung, a native of South Korea, which still uses the death penalty, said he believes in capital punishment's deterrent effect.

"For some cases, I think [criminals] deserve a more serious punishment."

Abolitionist nations worldwide have more than tripled in number over the past 30 years. Seventy-one countries, including Australia, Canada, France, South Africa, Poland, Germany, the United Kingdom, and most recently the Ivory Coast and Malta, have abolished capital punishment for all crimes. Thirteen nations have abolished the death penalty for all but "exceptional crimes," and 20 are abolitionist in practice, meaning they have not employed the death penalty in 10 years and might have a policy of not carrying out executions, according to the Amnesty International Web site (http:// www.amnesty.org).