NCJ Number
192968
Date Published
2002
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This chapter predicts that international pressure will become an increasingly important factor in bringing the United States into long-overdue compliance with customary international norms and several international treaties, all of which condemn the death penalty.
Abstract
At the dawn of a new millennium, the United States remains the only Western democracy to retain the death penalty. Indeed, holdings such as that of the U.S. Supreme Court in Stanford v. Kentucky (1989) have rendered the United States increasingly isolated in a world that is growing more abolitionist. Rather than acknowledge this widespread condemnation of capital punishment as indicative of customary international law, however, the United States has actually increased its rate of executing criminals over the past decade; and in so doing, has executed increasing numbers of foreign nationals in violation of their rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and a startling number of juvenile offenders in violation of a wide array of international instruments. Many of these individuals remained on death row for decades before their death sentences were implemented, raising questions about the psychological impact of such delays. Just as the numbers of recent executions have sparked a need for the United States to re-examine both the fairness and the effectiveness of capital punishment as a whole, flagrant disregard for its obligations to the international community has created a situation in which the United States must soon come to terms with those obligations or risk alienating friend and foe. 61 references