INTERNATIONAL: European Perspective on America’s Death Penalty

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.