If anything, American and European views on the death penalty are converging. Only in the case of heinous crimes like rape, murder or terrorism As President Clinton's senior adviser for European affairs, listening to denunciations of the death penalty was a regular feature of my job. I was on the receiving end of letter-writing campaigns, diplomatic demarches and questions from journalists about this or that capital case. Towns in Italy and France deployed delegations to the U.S. to lobby members of Congress and state governors for pardons. In my meetings with Europeans, I would point out that some 100 other countries at least nominally permit executions, including large democracies like India and Japan.
International law allows the death penalty.
The U.S. Supreme Court has held it constitutional. The 38 U.S. states that have adopted it did so through a democratic process. These arguments failed to sway my European interlocutors. The death penalty, they argued, has no place in a civilized society. But if you peel away the layers of emotion and rhetoric, some surprising facts emerge.