The report also leaves out valuable and extensive information provided to him on the strong and effective procedural processes in the United States against miscarriages of justice. These processes go to the heart of whether the instances of capital punishment are extra-judicial, summary, or arbitrary. In the U.S. those processes have evolved carefully over the past 200 years under the world's oldest written constitution and one noted internationally for its strong protections for the broad range of civil liberties. By leaving out this material, the report is incomplete and therefore falls short of fulfilling a basic purpose of the special rapporteur, which is to help define and advocate the due processes which protect human rights. He should spend less time on his secondary mandate of reviewing the establishment of, and adherence to, international standards for capital punishment, particularly in countries in which those international standards of due process are fully protected, as they are in the United States.
Capital punishment is permitted under both U.S. and international law.
The U.S. judicial system provides an exhaustive system of protections to ensure that the death penalty is not applied in an extra-judicial, summary, or arbitrary manner. The U.S. respects the right of other countries to ban the use of the death penalty on their soil and to enter into related treaties and other agreements. The U.S. is not a party to any of these treaties or agreements. The report fails to recognize that the Constitution and laws of the United States, as implemented by our state and federal courts, provide rigorous protections for the rights of criminal defendants. The U.S. system of criminal justice is one of the fairest in the world.