According to the Republican Party candidate for the US presidency, Mr George Bush, the death penalty is a successful deterrent which saves lives. The Democratic candidate, Mr Al Gore, believes that you have to allow the likelihood that some mistakes will be made if the death penalty is used. Both men were contributing to the national debate on capital punishment arising from the execution of Gary Graham in Huntsville, Texas, an execution authorised by Mr Bush as governor of that state.
The debate is all too necessary and overdue, given that the United States is so out of line with other developed democracies in its acceptance of this barbarian form of punishment. But, significantly, the issue will not divide the candidates in the presidential election, since they both favour capital punishment. President Clinton takes a similar view, and steadfastly refused in the 1992 campaign and during his two terms in office to move away from it. The number of executions has been rising annually since the policy was re-introduced in 1976 - after the Supreme Court had suspended it for four years on the grounds that it had been applied unconstitutionally - and nowhere as fast as Texas. Public opinion continues to support the death penalty, although the proportion in favour has reduced in recent years. This makes it difficult indeed for politicians to oppose it, despite research showing grave inconsistencies in its application and many discrepancies between new evidence emerging on appeal and original convictions. In fact only a very small number of those convicted of murder end up being executed, precisely because of these factors. But a disturbing pattern emerges from the research, showing that it tends to be the poorest people, and very often black people, who are most disadvantaged by the appellate system, because they cannot afford good lawyers. Comparative research shows that China far outstrips other states in its use of capital punishment, followed by Ukraine, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and then the US. It is certainly not an auspicious list of countries; nor does it sit at all comfortably with the annual survey of human rights provisions around the world published by the US State Department. Mrs Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, was particularly critical of the Gary Graham death sentence in a letter to Mr Bush, because he was a juvenile of 17 when he was convicted of murder; this abrogates the 1990 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the US has ratified. One must go back to first principles on this issue. States with the death penalty do not have lower levels of criminality, including murder, than those without it. If anything they have higher ones. In Canada the murder rate peaked before abolition of the death penalty and declined after it. Homicides tend to go up, not down, after executions. So much for the deterrent value of this most cruel, degrading and inhumane form of punishment. Americans may well be shocked by the angry reaction evoked from Europe by this and other executions. For instance, the French government says it will raise the issue with the US during its EU presidency. It would be as well that US opinion leaders took account of these criticisms from their friends and allies.