by Darris McNeely, David Palmer, Phil Schafer and John Schroeder
The death penalty continues to stir
debate in many parts of the world. On February 23 a jury in Texas found
John William King guilty of the brutal murder of James Byrd Jr. Byrd,
an African American, was dragged to his death behind a vehicle driven
by King and two others in a vicious hate crime that shocked the country.
The judge sentenced King to death by lethal injection. We feature two
reports on the status of the capital punishment in this issue.
The Death Penalty: Britain's Dilemma and America's
British Home Secretary,
Jack Straw, has virtually signed away Parliament's right to restore
capital punishment. The hanging penalty was removed from the law books
in the United Kingdom over 30 years ago. Mr Straw recently endorsed
the Sixth Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights-making
it very, very difficult to reverse the Human Rights Act now enshrined
in British law.
The Daily Mail commented: "Among
everything Britain has signed away to Europe, the right to reintroduce
the death penalty may be the one that is regretted most, especially
by victims of future murderers." Polls over the last 30 years have shown
that the vast majority of the British people want hanging reintroduced.
Though former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher always voted "yes," the
British Parliament consistently refused to do so when the decision was
still in its power.
This landmark decision comes at a
time when the evidence is beginning to show that the reintroduction
of capital punishment in some 38 states is working in the United States.
The American murder rate has dropped considerably over the past ten
years, and some observers feel that the death penalty is primarily responsible.
