In an op-ed in the New York Times, Sylvie Kauffmann, of the French magazine Le Monde, described the interaction between Europe and the U.S. on the death penalty. She noted that Felix Rohatyn said the most controversial subject he faced as the American ambassador to France was the enormous opposition to the U.S. death penalty. She also noted the broad European refusal to have their drugs used in lethal injections. In a recent development, a German investmunt fund sold off its stock in an American drug company because the company planned to sell drugs to Alabama for executions. Kauffmann attributed the decline in the U.S. use of the death penalty to the proliferation of innocence cases and the shortage of lethal drugs.

(S. Kauffmann, “U.S. Execution, European Abolition,” New York Times, November 4, 2014). See International and Lethal Injection.

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