If death penalty is abolished, what next?

Even harder to measure than deterrence is the impact of executions on relatives and close friends of murder victims. Some relatives campaign against the death penalty; others, like John Rizzotti of Los Angeles, support capital punishment and believe abolition would create an unjust void.

Rizzotti, whose 78-year-old great-grandmother, Leah Schendel, was sexually assaulted and fatally beaten in 1980, said he and other family members found some relief in the execution of her killer, Manuel Babbitt, in 1999.

The long legal process between conviction and execution was frustrating, Rizzotti said, but he believes families of other murder victims nonetheless have a right to see such killers put to death.

“What he did and how he did it was so unbelievably gruesome that there was no reason for him to have a life,” said Rizzotti, who witnessed Babbitt’s lethal injection. “It was very cathartic, very calm and peaceful for us. ... After all that time, he finally got what he deserved.”

However, skeptics of capital punishment note that death sentences are issued in less than 1 percent of all homicides, and suggest that victims’ relatives in places without the death penalty come to terms with its absence.

“The very availability of the death penalty makes it something that victims have to want,” said Steven Shatz, who teaches at the University of San Francisco Law School. “If you love the person who died, and the defendant is treated less harshly than another defendant, it means society values your loved one less. But if it weren’t available, you wouldn’t miss it.”

Improving national image
Abolition of the death penalty would improve America’s image in the majority of nations that already have forsaken it. In some cases, countries without capital punishment have balked at extraditing people to America who might face execution.

The issue has provoked passionate protests in Europe. The Council of Europe, whose 47 member nations have either abolished or declared moratoriums on the death penalty, is on record as supporting worldwide abolition and has leveled stinging criticism at the United States.

“Europeans are increasingly asking whether they share core values with the United States,” said Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch.

The Council of Europe’s secretary general, Terry Davis, has taken note of the Supreme Court’s decision to review lethal injection and expressed hope that the procedure would be banned.

“It should help the United States of America to catch up with the majority of civilized and democratic countries in the world,” he said.

According to Amnesty International, the United States was the only Western Hemisphere nation to conduct executions in 2006, and its 53 executions were exceeded only by five countries lacking strong credentials as democracies — China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan.

“We definitely have image problems with this issue,” said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor. “People here think it makes us look tough. I think it makes us look cowardly.”

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