I'm certainly no palpitating, hand-wringing absolutist opponent of capital punishment in the abstract. If there were any evidence whatsoever that the death penalty's deterrent effects outweighed its high costs, brutalizing impacts, and other perverse side-effects, and that it was not just someone's idea of "I-4-I"/ Old Testament/Koranic personal justice, then by all means -- bring on the scaffolds and start selling ring-side seats!
However, especially in the wake of last week's extra-legal fiasco of Saddam Hussein's midnight lynching by a Klan-like band of hooded henchman for Iraq's increasingly partisan Shiite-dominated government, it is worthwhile reminding ourselves that:
(1) The vast majority of countries that are "civilized" and "developed" have long since abolished the death penalty.
These include all First World/ OECD countries except the US (38 out of 50 states), Japan, and South Korea -- Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Slovak Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK (plus Vatican City, San Marino, Monaco, and Andorra).
(2) Most enlightened/ mid-level developing countries have also abolished the death penalty.
These include Albania, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Bosnia, Brazil, Bhutan, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Haiti, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, Serbia, South Africa, Timor-Leste, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
Indeed, the anti-death penalty ranks
now include every South American country except Guyana and Suriname,
all Central American countries except Guatemala and Belize, most
FSU/Eastern European countries, several key African countries like Cote
d'Ivoire, Liberia, Namibia, South Africa and Mozambique, and even a few
Central Asian countries.
All told, as of 2007, 88 countries have completely abolished the death penalty for all crimes, while 40 more have effectively abolished it in practice. Furthermore, despite the "global war on terrorism," the global abolition movement appears to have gained momentum, with 40 countries abolishing the death penalty since 1990.
(3) On the other hand,
the countries that still employ the death penalty -- especially by way
of primitive methods like hanging, beheading, and stoning -- are
dominated by such stellar examples of enlightened democratic development
as Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Burma, China, Equatorial Guinea,
Egypt, Indonesia, India, Iran, Kazahkstan, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia,
Morocco, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE,
Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.
Most of these
countries also are at the head of the class among the world's most
nefarious one-person, one-family, one-party, and one-general
dictatorships.
(4) Many countries that still retain the death penalty, like the US, Japan, and Singapore, have long since decided to use alternatives to the barbaric practices of hanging, stoning, or beheading.
In China, for example, which now accounts for at least 83% to 95% of the world's 2138 to 8400 legal executions per year, most executions are now handled by lethal injections.
Only such leading "negative role models" as Iran and Saudi Arabia -- the world's second and third largest legal execution markets respectively, just ahead of the US-- still employ hanging, let alone beheading and stoning.
There is a demand among some "Christian Taliban" sects in the US for a return to these anachronistic punishments, perhaps because they would be such crowd-pleasers among their followers. But so, I'd bet, would witch dunking, cross burning, and the occasional fitted-sheet night ride.
BLIND JUSTICE
Of course, during his 35-year reign, Saddam Hussein also made Iraq a world leader in "legal" hangings and beheadings -- in addition to mass gassing, shooting, and torture. From this angle, many would argue that he only reaped what he'd sown.
However, precisely in this situation, we might have hoped that Iraq's new democracy and
its Washington patrons would have been smart enough to recognize the virtue of breaking sharply with Saddam's own wretched past practices, seizing the opportunity to set an example for the whole region.
What an example it would been for him to have been condemned to live out the rest of his miserable life in a dark, dank cell at an undisclosed location, with no publicity whatsoever.
In such a situation, reeking vengeance against Prisoner Saddam Hussein was a needless indulgence.
At the very least, his execution should have been designed to avoid granting Saddam the very status that, next to being set free, he desired most of all, and that he never would have been able to achieve without the cupidity of his captors -- the status as a martyr, a victim, and a myth.
As Pontecorvo remarked long ago -- "Better silence than songs," for you cannot kill a myth.
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